Max's mind spun wildly. Past and future collapsed together, rging into a blur of sensations. He was everywhere—at his birth, at his battles, at his death. He was both the child in the courtyard and the conqueror of worlds. He saw himself die a thousand tis and be reborn a thousand more.
He could feel himself slipping. His sense of self was breaking apart, dissolving into the endless current. The flow of ti was no longer around him—it was inside him, through him, tearing at every thread of his being.
And then out of nowhere, Max found himself standing in front of a ruined battlefield.
The ground was cracked and scorched, rivers of lava snaking between mountains of ash. The skies were torn open by lightning and fire, and the faint remnants of stars rained down like dying embers. The air was thick with the sll of iron and smoke.
Everywhere he looked, there was only death.
Bodies—human, demon, beast, and god alike—littered the land, their essence long burned away. The oceans had turned black, the winds howled like mourning spirits, and the sun hung in the sky like a bleeding wound.
At the center of it all stood a figure.
Max froze.
It was him.
He recognized the silhouette instantly—the stance, the energy, the aura of overwhelming power. But the man standing there was not the Max he knew. His hair flowed like black fla, his body emanated an aura that devoured everything around it, and his eyes—his eyes were voids.
In those eyes, there was no rcy, no remorse, no warmth. Only a calm, unending hunger.
This version of him stood upon a mountain of corpses. Each breath he took scattered ashes into the air. In his hand was a blade forged of pure darkness, and with every swing of that blade, entire regions vanished. Space shattered. Ti fractured.
Even gods kneeled before him.
Max's heart pounded. "No…" he whispered. "This can't be…"
The world around that future version of himself was collapsing. The heavens scread as if rejecting his existence. The stars dimd as though consud by the sa darkness that flowed from his aura.
And then, that future version of him turned. Slowly. Deliberately.
Their gazes t.
For the first ti, Max felt fear—not of death, but of himself.
The future Max's lips curved into a faint smile, one that carried no emotion, no joy, no sadness—only inevitability. His voice reached across ti, cold and resonant.
"Do you see it now?" it said. "This is what remains at the end of your path."
Max took a step back, but the vision followed him.
"Peace?" the voice continued. "There is none. There is no peace in this world. There is only chaos, death and suffering that awaits you."
"No," Max said firmly, his hands trembling. "That's not ."
The scene changed and he saw Alice. No, he saw her die. He saw Lenavira. He saw her death too. The sa went for his parents, his sister and many other faces he couldn't recognize dying one by one like a never ending nightmare.
The scene blurred. He saw flashes of more futures—wars upon wars, corpses piled high, worlds burned to cinders. He saw gods fleeing, dinsions collapsing, and realms stripped of life. He saw his na whispered in terror across ti.
He searched desperately for another possibility, a different path—sothing brighter. But there was none. Every future he saw ended the sa way. The chaos never ceased. The slaughter never ended.
There was no peace.
No ho.
No light.
Only endless death.
The corridor of futures shattered into fragnts, collapsing into an ocean of black and silver light. Max's body was pulled through the fragnts, each one cutting into his soul like shards of ice. He tried to resist, but the stream of ti was rciless.
He was drowning in his own destiny.
"No!" he shouted, his voice lost in the chaos. "That's not the future I want!"
But the flow of ti did not care. It dragged him deeper into the storm.
"Enough," a distant voice said. It was faint, almost drowned by the roar of the collapsing tilines. "Max… co back."
Old Man First.
But Max couldn't answer. His soul was scattered through every era that had ever existed. His heart beat in the past, his breath in the future, his consciousness in a thousand fractured nows.
He scread—not in pain, but in desperation.
"I am Max… I am… I am…"
The mories scread with him. The battlefield, the courtyard, the abyss—all of them blurred into one. And then, in the midst of the chaos, a single spark of clarity ignited.
A golden light burst from his chest—the glow of his First Divine Vein, the Vein of Origin. Its pulse spread through the fractures, stabilizing the collapsing current.
And then the Three Dinsional Body along with Unholy Trinity Body and Yin-Yang Body also glowed in order. It caused the chaos to slow down. The overlapping tilines began to fall back into place.
Bit by bit, his past faded into stillness. His future retreated into distance. And his present—the now—ca back into focus.
When Max finally opened his eyes again, he was back in the starry void. His body trembled, sweat dripping down his face.
Old Man First stood before him, his expression heavy. "You almost lost yourself kid," he said quietly.
Max didn't reply. He was deep in thought. "I was in my past, present and my future everywhere all at once... Tell sothing. The scenes I saw of future, are those true?" He asked.
The old man's face beca solemn. "They are true and yet at the sa ti not. They are true because you have seen it and not true because it hasn't happened yet aning your future isn't fixed and could still be changed. What you saw was just a variation of future and you should know for a future there are endless possibilities."
Max looked down at his trembling hands. "But so what? I didn't find peace. My future self is even more broken than . There is no peace in him or in the future. I only saw death and slaughter everywhere. Is this the future I am fighting for?"
"Max, this is not true!" Old Man First shouted. "What you saw was just a possible future out of many. And what's more whenever soone glimpse of a future, the future will show them the worst case scenario. I have experience this myself. When you play with ti, ti plays with you too."
He added solemnly. "Don't think too much about it. Now that you have seen the future, you are already changing it by talking about it to ."
Max took a deep breath and cald himself down. He was at the very last step from separating the flow of ti from his body. He couldn't falter here otherwise death would be the least of his concerns here.
Taking another deep breath, Max clenched his fists, his aura flaring once again. His Three Dinsional Body began to shine faintly, its layered dinsional nature stabilizing his being. Slowly, painfully, the flow of ti began to separate completely from his physical form.
A brilliant silver light burst from his body, illuminating the starry void. The flow detached from him like a second self, a translucent current of energy that pulsed softly beside him, moving in perfect harmony with his heartbeat.
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