Chapter 7
The Serpent's Shadow
A chilling presence, the Chronos Serpent, makes its malice known. Its influence spreads, actively corrupting the Gates and leaving a trail of temporal chaos.
The air in my room, once as familiar as my own heartbeat, began to feel wrong. Not a chill, not a draft, but a wrongness, like a melody played a beat too soon. It started with a shimmer, a ripple across the dusty sunlight that fell through my window, as if the very fabric of my world had begun to fray. I’d tried to dismiss it, my mind a frantic butterfly trapped in a jar, beating against the glass of normalcy. But it persisted, a silent hum beneath the everyday sounds of birdsong and distant traffic.
Then came the whisper, a silken thread spun from the deepest shadows pooling in the corner. It wasn't a voice I heard with my ears, but one that bloomed directly in the hollows of my thoughts. “Elara,” it breathed, a sound like dry leaves skittering across forgotten stone. *“The Gates… they