Time Stops.
Not just on the battlefield. Not just in the kingdom. Not just in this reality.
Everything. Everywhere.
The ripple of Ethan's last word—"Stop"—was not just a command. It was an absolute. It was law. It was the first and only rule of a world that bent to his will. The Rift Master, a being that had existed before stars learned to shine, a force of entropy made flesh, froze. Its ever-shifting form locked mid-transformation, caught between endless possibilities, unable to choose.
Even the wind had stopped. The sky hung in place, the burning embers of the ruined battlefield suspended mid-air like frozen raindrops. A warrior, mid-fall, remained there, limbs sprawled but unmoving.
Nothing in existence moved.
Nothing except for Ethan.
He stepped forward, his footfall making no sound, because sound too had ceased. There was no resistance, no pull of time, no friction of existence. He moved not through space, but outside it. Not through time, but beyond it.
