Monster of the Past

"The mind is a maze of locked doors, yet somehow, you always find the right one to open. Not by logic, not by will—but by something deeper. Something older. A silent hand guiding you toward safety… or into the arms of what you fear most."

---

Juno's footsteps echoed against the hollow wooden floor, each step swallowed by the silence that pressed in around her. The orphanage had never been warm, but now it felt like a tomb—sealed away from time, from reason, from everything beyond the walls that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking. The air was thick, cloying, laced with the scent of aged paper, damp wood, and something sharper beneath it—something metallic, like rust, like old blood.

Her breath hitched. Her fingers twitched at her sides, curling into fists before she even realized it.

"Why did I run away?"

The question was unbidden, slipping past her lips like a whispered invocation—like saying it aloud might conjure the truth she had spent years burying.

And then the memory came.

A sudden flash—blinding, suffocating—a classroom.

Sunlight slanted through cracked windows, the golden light turned hazy from dust motes swirling in the heavy air. The rhythmic sound of wood striking flesh cut through the quiet. Sharp. Methodical. Inevitable.

Her hands were outstretched. Red. Swollen. Stinging from repeated strikes.

"Again," a voice commanded.

The ruler came down. The pain was dull now, numbing, as if her skin had stopped registering the sensation. Around her, indistinct faces—classmates, blurred at the edges of memory, their expressions unreadable. Their gazes turned away.

She looked down. Her assignment sat on the desk before her. The page wasn't filled with numbers or letters but clocks.

Intricate, detailed. Some shattered. Some melting. Some with no hands at all.

It had made sense at the time.

The teacher's voice blurred, warping into a low, unintelligible hum. The edges of the room darkened, swallowing details, swallowing her, reducing the moment to bare emotions. Shame. Anger. Confusion.

She had not cried then.

Even as the ruler struck again. And again.

Even as the rejection settled in her bones, sharper than any punishment.

Then—

She was back.

Juno's eyes snapped to the present.

She was standing in the entrance hall, her fingers curled around the door handle. The silence was suffocating. The kind that wasn't just quiet, but deliberate. Waiting.

Something moved in the corner of her eye.

She turned sharply.

A shadow darted through the hallway.

Juno's pulse spiked.

It was her.

The teenage version of herself. The same one she had seen before, the one that had not attacked her, the one that had looked at her with something close to fear.

She didn't think. She followed.

Through the dark corridors, past rooms that had no names, past doors she did not want to remember. The walls felt closer than they should have, as if they shifted inward when she wasn't looking, forcing her down the path they wanted her to take.

And then she saw it.

The door.

The one at the end of the hall.

Her stomach twisted.

The study room.

She didn't want to remember. Didn't want to go inside.

But even as the dread settled deep in her bones, something in her pushed forward.

Juno reached for the handle—

And the world fractured.

A memory—violent, all-consuming—crashed into her, dragging her under.

Hands gripping her arms. Nails digging into her skin. The rough fabric of a nun's habit brushing against her face as she was dragged—no, pulled—toward that door.

She twisted. Kicked. Clawed at the floorboards, splinters embedding under her nails.

She had never screamed during the punishments. Had never cried when she was ignored, when she was beaten, when she was starved.

But she screamed then.

She wailed. She howled. Her voice cracked, raw, animalistic. A sound of something breaking inside her.

Anything but that room.

Anything but what was behind that door.

But the nuns did not listen.

The door swung open.

And light swallowed her whole.

—

Juno gasped, lungs burning, her vision blurring back into reality.

She was standing in front of the door.

Her hands were trembling.

Something wet streaked down her face.

She was crying.

But she felt… nothing.

As if something had been hollowed out of her long ago and she was only now noticing its absence.

Juno wiped her face with the back of her hand, inhaled sharply—once, twice—then reached forward.

She gripped the handle.

And pushed.

—

The moment she stepped through, the room shifted.

No—expanded.

It stretched unnaturally, growing vast, warping at the edges like an illusion trying to maintain its shape. The walls breathed. The shadows stretched and recoiled. The air crackled with something unseen, something watching.

And in the center—

She saw her.

A younger version of herself.

Sitting on the floor. Calm. Unmoving.

Staring at her with wide, empty eyes. Silent tears streaked down its cheeks.

Juno's breath came fast, uneven. The room pulsed around her, twisting at the edges of reality.

And behind the child—

A figure loomed.

Her teacher.

But not as she remembered her.

A chimera of flesh and nightmare.

A grotesque amalgamation of creatures stitched together—clawed hands of some predatory beast, hooved legs of a stag, a tail that twitched and coiled like a serpent. Its body was a mess of fur, feathers, and sinew, its form shifting with unnatural fluidity, as though it couldn't decide what it was supposed to be.

But its face.

Its face was intact.

Human. Familiar.

Dark hair. Smooth nose and lips.

The same cold, piercing eyes. The same thin, cruel lips that had sneered at her as a child.

A teacher who had told her she was wrong.

A teacher who had beaten her until she stopped drawing clocks.

A teacher who had dragged her into this room.

Juno's breath hitched.

The creature smiled.

Then its mouth—no, its maw—stretched wide.

Far, far too wide.

Rows upon rows of needle-thin teeth glistened in the dim light, a void of hunger, of something endless.

Juno barely had time to react before it lunged.

She ran.

But her younger self—

Her younger self did not move.

Just sat there.

Watching.

It's face blank yet its eyes crying.

And waiting.

Juno screamed.

Juno barely had time to react but she came close.

The chimera's monstrous form twisted unnaturally as it let go of the younger version of herself. The girl bolted into the shadows without looking back, her small form swallowed by the ever-expanding labyrinth of the orphanage's study. Juno wanted to follow, to make sure she was safe, but she had no time. The teacher-thing lunged, its grotesque body moving far too fast for something so deformed.

Juno barely dodged, rolling to the side as the chimera's claws scraped the floor, carving deep gashes into the wooden boards. Splinters shot into the air, and the air itself seemed to warp around the creature's mass, like reality was struggling to contain it.

She ran.

Bookshelves loomed around her, stretching endlessly as she sprinted through the maze of literature and shadows. The room wasn't just expanding—it was shifting. Shelves rearranged themselves, corridors twisted at impossible angles, doorways blinked in and out of existence. The heavy scent of aged paper filled her lungs, but beneath it was something rotten, something damp and festering.

Juno didn't look back. The sound of clawed feet pounding against the floorboards was enough. The chimera was right behind her.

She grabbed a book off a shelf and hurled it backward. It hit the creature's shoulder, but the thing barely flinched. Desperate, she shoved an entire stack of books down behind her, hoping to slow it down. The heavy tomes tumbled like falling bricks, sending up a cloud of dust. The beast crashed through them effortlessly, its multiple mismatched legs stomping over the debris as if it were nothing.

Juno's heart pounded. She needed something—anything. A weapon. A way out.

Another book caught her eye, its spine gleaming under the dim candlelight. The title was familiar in a way that sent a shiver down her spine.

"Time Severance."

She skidded to a stop, grabbing the book and flipping it open. The pages were written in a language that flickered between readable and unreadable, the ink shifting like a living thing. The words blurred and reformed, and instinctively, Juno whispered them aloud.

The air crackled.

A barrier of light erupted between her and the chimera, glitching at its edges like static on a broken screen. The monster slammed into it full force, recoiling as if it had hit solid steel. The impact sent tremors through the floorboards, the walls shuddering as if the orphanage itself was in pain. But she remembers... is time severance like this?

Juno barely had time to process what had happened before the chimera let out a guttural, wheezing snarl. Its eyes—too many, too red—locked onto her, and then it did something she didn't expect.

It raised a hand. And it called.

The shadows around the room shuddered. And from them, they emerged.

Children.

No—not children. Orphans, familiar yet horrifying. Their small bodies had been twisted into unnatural fusions of forest creatures and human features. One had the antlers of a stag sprouting from its skull, its eyes black pits of nothingness. Another had the elongated fingers of a bird's talons, its skin stitched together with thorns. Their faces were wrong, their expressions vacant, like dolls forgotten in time.

Juno's breath hitched.

The barrier flickered.

The orphans moved through it like mist, unhindered.

She didn't think. She ran.

Her mind was spinning as she dodged through the endless labyrinth. How did I do that? she thought, remembering how the barrier had appeared. It wasn't magic—not the kind she had seen before. It was something else, something raw and intrinsic, something tied to her.

The chimera let out a bellowing screech behind her, and Juno's pulse spiked. She needed more time. More distance. Her thoughts raced as she ducked through a narrow passageway between the bookshelves, her hands skimming over the spines of the ancient tomes.

She needed to figure out how her abilities worked. Fast.

The orphans moved unnaturally, their twisted limbs scuttling over the bookshelves, their whispers carrying through the shifting corridors. She shoved a rolling ladder into their path, knocking several off balance, but more took their place. The sound of pages rustling filled the air as books flew off the shelves on their own, pulled by invisible hands.

Her foot caught on an uneven floorboard, and she stumbled, barely catching herself before she hit the ground. The chimera roared in the distance, its patience wearing thin. The orphans were getting closer, their breath ragged, their steps too light, too swift.

Juno's hands clenched. Think, damn it.

She had spoken the words aloud. Time Severance. The book had responded. But why?

She looked down at the book still clutched in her arms, the pages flickering in and out of clarity. This wasn't normal magic. This was something else. Something ancient. Something connected to her in ways she didn't yet understand.

The orphans' whispers grew louder, an eerie chorus of voices overlapping, forming words she couldn't understand.

Juno grit her teeth and ran, her mind racing faster than her feet. She didn't have her system. No Chronosword. No time rewinds. But she still had herself. And whatever this power was—it was hers to wield.

She just had to figure out how before the monsters caught her.

The air was thick with the scent of decay, old paper, and something far worse—something ancient and rotting. The chimera teacher prowled through the warped corridors of the orphanage, its grotesque form shifting with each step. The mismatched beastly limbs twitched, muscles rippling with tension, sniffing the air like a predator on the hunt. The monstrous, elongated mouth gaped open slightly, rows upon rows of jagged, misaligned teeth clicking together in anticipation.

It was searching for her.

Juno crouched behind a half-toppled bookshelf, her heart slamming against her ribs. The room twisted and bent around her, the walls stretching in unnatural ways, warping as if reality itself wasn't sure what shape to take. She forced her breath to slow, gripping the old, cracked book against her chest—Time Severance. The words on the cover pulsed with an eerie, almost liquid glow, flickering like a dying star.

She didn't know how she had activated the ability before. Instinct? Desperation? But she had no choice now. She had to figure it out.

The chimera teacher snarled, sniffing the air, its hooves clattering against the wooden floor as it stalked past her hiding spot. Then, it stopped. The silence stretched, and Juno's stomach dropped.

It knew.

With a sudden, ear-splitting shriek, the chimera teacher lunged, tearing through the bookshelf in a blur of monstrous speed. Juno barely rolled out of the way in time, her back slamming into another row of bookshelves as they toppled over like dominoes. She hit the ground hard, coughing as dust and shredded pages exploded into the air around her. The teacher turned, its grotesque body weaving unnaturally, and it let out a guttural, bone-rattling growl.

Then it raised its hand.

No—hands. Arms. Claws.

The chimera teacher's body warped further, and from the mass of twisting shadows, children emerged. Or what was left of them. They crawled forward, their bodies fused with the limbs of beasts—one with a deer's antlers, another with the segmented legs of a centipede, others covered in feathers or thick, matted fur. Their eyes—once human—were now hollow voids, blacker than the deepest abyss, their mouths stitched shut by something unseen.

Juno's breath hitched. She had known these children.

The chimera teacher let out a wheezing, mocking laugh and pointed at her.

The twisted children moved.

They surged toward her with inhuman speed, their misshapen limbs carrying them in jerky, unnatural movements. Some skittered across the walls, some leapt from the ceiling, others sprinted straight for her, fingers curling into claws that dripped with something black and tar-like.

Juno acted on pure instinct.

She raised the book, and the words burned against her skin.

Time Severance.

The air broke.

A crack formed between her and the oncoming horde, a jagged, shimmering line that spread outward in all directions. For a split second, everything froze. The corrupted children halted mid-motion, their bodies flickering between past and present, caught in the web of severed time.

And then—

Collapse.

The time fracture imploded, folding everything caught within it. The orphaned chimeras crushed inward, their bodies contorting unnaturally, shrieking as they were ripped from existence. Time didn't rewind. It didn't move forward. It ceased for them. Their forms twisted, crumbling into dust that never truly existed, erased from the fabric of reality itself.

Juno gasped, gripping the book tighter as the sheer weight of the power made her limbs tremble. She had done that.

The chimera teacher shrieked in fury.

Juno turned her gaze toward the monstrous figure. It lunged again, but this time, she was ready.

She moved. The book pulsed in her hands, and she spun to the side, dodging the beast's massive claws by inches. Another rupture in time split the air as she whispered the words again, Time Severance, and a shimmering wall of fractured reality appeared between her and the beast.

The chimera teacher slammed into it—

—and stopped.

Time refused it.

The creature writhed, its body twisting and contorting as it fought against the frozen boundary. Its many mouths opened in silent screams, red eyes burning with fury, but it was trapped, locked in a fragment of shattered time.

Juno let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. Her entire body ached, the strain of wielding this strange, impossible power weighing down on her, but she had done it.

She had stopped it.

For now.

She exhaled slowly, stepping back from the frozen monstrosity. The orphanage walls groaned around her, shifting as if displeased with her interference.

But she didn't care.

She turned on her heel, gripping the book tighter as she whispered to herself, "What the hell is happening to me?"

There was no answer.

Only the silent, frozen scream of the monster behind her—and the knowledge that this was only the beginning.