Interlude: Stopwatch

Ambrose Thane sat alone in his dimly lit chamber. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair, his gaze fixed on the holoprojection before him. A flickering image of a young girl appeared—dark curls framing a pale face.

His daughter.

Thane’s jaw tightened as he reached out, his fingers brushing through the projection, as if that simple motion might bridge the distance between them. But it never could.

The holo shifted, replaced by another image. His mother, her body suspended in a cryostasis pod, eternally frozen at the brink of death.

He had spent years watching both of them slip away, first his mother to the illness, and now his daughter, suffering from the same unrelenting disease. The doctors had called it Chronomalic Decay—a condition that consumed a person’s very essence. 

There was no cure. Not yet.

He closed his eyes, and the memories began to surface.

Ambrose was barely 15 years old when it happened.

His mother’s hands were warm against his face, her smile radiant despite the pain that lingered behind her eyes. “I want to spend these moments with you,” she had said softly, “Not frozen in some machine…”

Ambrose had nodded, his young heart clinging to her every word. But his father—his brilliant, unrelenting father—had other plans.

“I can’t let her die,” his father had insisted, pacing the length of his lab, “If there’s even a chance—a sliver of hope—I have to try.”

“You’re taking away her choice,” Ambrose had argued, his voice breaking. “She doesn’t want this. She wants us.”

But his father had refused to listen. His mother had been placed in stasis, her final wishes ignored. His father changed after that. He became obsessed with finding a cure.

But to no avail.

Years later, on his deathbed, Ambrose’s father had reached out to him with frail, trembling hands, his once-sharp eyes clouded with regret.

“I’m sorry, Ambrose,” he had whispered. “It seems that… you can’t outrun time, no matter what.”

The words had shattered Ambrose. His father—the man who had devoted his life to defying the inevitable—had admitted defeat. He didn’t know how to feel. He had hoped against logic that his father would succeed. But hearing those words destroyed that.

He carried that bitterness into his adult life, vowing never to rely on the whims of fate or time. He pursued excellence in the Chrono Knights, determined to forge a life where he held control. He married a woman who was his anchor, his tether to the chaos he sought to escape.

But even that was taken from him.

During the birth of their child, his wife had died on the operating table, and he was left clutching a newborn child—a daughter who bore her mother’s warmth and fragility.

Her name was Ava.

Years passed. Ava grew, her laughter and joy filling the void her mother had left behind. But when she turned five, she began to weaken. The signs were subtle at first—a cough here, a fever there. But soon, it became clear. Chronomalic Decay. The same disease that had taken his mother.

Ambrose fought desperately to save her, exhausting every resource the Chrono Knights and their allies could provide. He scoured medical research, enlisted the brightest minds, and pleaded with anyone who might offer a solution. But as time passed, her condition worsened. He was losing her. Just as he had lost his mother. Just as he had lost his wife.

He couldn’t let it happen again.

That’s when he realised how his father felt. What he needed to do. But unlike him, Ambrose knew he could succeed.

He had placed Ava in stasis, ignoring her pleas to let her live her final days free. He couldn’t let her die. He wouldn’t.

When whispers of the Eternal Hourglass surfaced, Ambrose clung to them like a drowning man to driftwood. Legends spoke of its ability to manipulate time, to erase history, or rewrite it entirely. For others, it was a tale of destruction, of power too great for any one being to wield.

But for Ambrose, it was hope.

He crafted a lie—a grand narrative to rally allies to his side. He told his commanders and soldiers that he sought to reverse time itself, to erase humanity’s discovery of chrono energy and the chaos it had wrought. He gathered criminals who could do their bidding undeterred, and idealists who wanted to believe in a better, free world…

But in truth, Ambrose wanted to use the Hourglass not to erase time but to transcend it. To travel forward—beyond the limitations of his present—into a future where a cure existed. Where his family could be saved.

The present snapped back into focus. Thane’s gaze shifted to a recent report from his spies in Neotera—news of Jessie Valis and Squad GX being branded fugitives.

Then the pieces began to align. Jessie Valis… the son of Thoma Valis. The brilliant researcher who had vanished during the Valis Incident, whose work had pushed chrono energy to its zenith.

Thoma’s cryptic warnings, his obsessive secrecy, his death… It all made sense now. Jessie wasn’t just his son. He was the Eternal Hourglass. A living, breathing vessel of time itself.

“Of course,” Thane whispered, his voice tinged with both awe and frustration. “The boy was the answer all along.”

Realization snapped him into motion. He knew he had no time to waste. No time to explain to his pawns. He simply left, leaving only a single message behind, signaling for his troops to follow.

He would be faster alone. For he knew where to go.