There was a conversation that occurred once, in the depths of the Void where existence itself became negotiable.

A Null Scale entity…powerful by most standards, capable of reshaping star systems through deliberate effort, floated beside a Level Zero Scale entity whose mere presence made The Void tremble.

They discussed many things, as beings at such elevated states often did when lesser concerns became meaningless.

The Null Scale entity asked about time.

"How does it work for you? I experience temporal flow as linear progression…moments following moments in orderly sequence, causality maintaining its forward momentum regardless of my power. But you... you seem to exist outside that progression somehow."

The Level Zero Scale entity considered the question with patience.

When they spoke, their voice pulsed with glory.

"Time is not uniform," they said. "It does not flow at the same rate for all existences, does not impose identical constraints on entities operating at different scales. What you experience as immutable progression is merely one possible relationship with temporal dimension…the relationship imposed on beings who remain bound by Pre-Civilizational limitations."

They paused, consciousness organizing complex concepts into explanations that might be comprehensible to someone operating at a lesser scale.

"For you, time is a river carrying you forward whether you wish it or not. You can swim faster or slower within that current, can achieve more or less during any given interval, but the river itself maintains its flow independent of your will. A year passes, and you experience that year as a sequence of moments that must be lived through sequentially."

The Null Scale entity nodded, recognizing their own experience in that description.

"For me," the Level Zero Scale entity continued, "time is not a river but a landscape. I do not move through it but across it, treating temporal position as no more fixed than spatial position. I can take a single step and disappear from this moment..."

They paused for emphasis.

"And in that single step, I can carry out events and do things that seemingly span dozens or hundreds of years by your reckoning. I can engage in projects that require centuries of sustained effort, can pursue objectives that unfold across temporal distances you would consider vast. And then I can return with another step, and truly... only a second will have passed in the timeline you're anchored to."

WAA!

"In that one second you experienced," the Level Zero Scale entity explained, "years worth of advancement could have occurred for me. Not because I experienced those years differently, but because I was operating in temporal regions where your single second overlapped with my extended duration. The same moment, experienced from different scales of existence, yielding vastly different subjective intervals."

They gestured at the emptiness around them.

"Time flows differently for many entities depending on which Scale of Existence they stem from. Many- not all, who are bound to Pre-Civilizational limitations experience it as linear progression. Those who have transcended those constraints can navigate it as dimension no more restrictive than spatial distance."

The Null Scale entity processed this revelation with the growing understanding.

"So when you say you'll return 'soon'..." they began slowly.

"I might mean a second by your experience," the Level Zero Scale entity confirmed, "during which I've lived through years of activity in temporal regions you cannot access. Or I might mean years by your experience, during which I've experienced only moments because I was operating in compressed temporal states."

They smiled.

"Scale determines experience. And experience determines what 'time' even means."

—

At this moment, in the scope of the Sea of Thalassara and those within its radiant depths, something impossible occurred without anyone observing its beginning.

Achilles had taken a single step and disappeared.

The action itself went unwitnessed…his Constellation Dream Body simply ceasing to be in one temporal position and beginning the process of relocating to others, treating the distance of thousands of years as merely another form of space to be traversed through proper application of quantum principles.

To those who remained anchored in the present moment, in the steady flow of linear time that governed existence...

He had been there, and then he was gone.

Just a bit over a single second passed.

One heartbeat. One breath. One moment following another in the orderly progression that entities bound to conventional chronology experienced as immutable reality.

And then…

BOOM!

Reality split.

Literally split as the fabric of space-time tore like paper being ripped apart by forces it hadn't been designed to contain!

The surrounding reality fragmented into pieces as dimensional barriers simply gave up trying to maintain coherence in the face of what was emerging.

Achilles's figure exploded back into existence.

His entire body pulsed with steam that rose from his form like heat shimmer, as if he'd just engaged in physical exertion so tremendous that even his elevated physiology needed to vent excess energy.

His purple-gold hair moved wildly, and his eyes blazed with authority that made the surrounding waters of Thalassara boil!

His expression…was slightly heavy as if he had exerted a bit of work.

Just…a bit of work.

Behind him, reality continued tearing.

The space he'd ripped through to return wasn't healing cleanly…it remained fractured like a shattered mirror, pieces of dimensional stability hanging askew as if existence itself couldn't quite figure out how to repair damage on this scale.

After all.

There was cause and effect.

With every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction.

And through those tears, through the gaps in reality's fabric...

Six presences emerged.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Six figures materialized in rapid succession, each one erupting into existence with force that made the stellar waters surge outward in waves.

Their auras blazed with power that ranged from Tier 7 to Tier 9 of the Null Scale of Existence!

It may have seemed like only a second had passed.

But in that interval…in that single heartbeat of time experienced by those anchored to conventional chronology, Achilles had traversed vast distances of temporal space.

He had stepped backward through thousands of years, had located specific moments where specific deaths occurred, had identified his ancestors at the precise instants before their termination.

And he had pulled them forward.

He had simply grabbed them, reached across centuries with authority that refused to accept 'no' from reality itself, and dragged each of them to the present!

Oh!

Oh!!!

They were his Ancestors.

The Adrastia Emperor Kings, pulled from their deaths and relocated to an era thousands of years removed from their original temporal positions.

From the Sixth Adrastia Emperor King, all the way back to the First…the legendary figure who had fallen in love with Syl'thessara herself, whose forbidden romance had sparked the cascade of events that led to everything that followed!

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