The Pendant..

“I really have become young… How could this be…?”

The words left my mouth quietly, almost afraid of being overheard.

They sounded unreal even to me, like something borrowed from a half-remembered dream.

I lifted my hands into view again, turning them slowly, as if a different angle might contradict what I was seeing. The skin was smooth, unmarked. No scars. No signs of the years of toil that should have been etched there.

My reflection on the TV screen didn’t help much, but it was enough to confirm what my body was already telling me. This wasn’t an illusion..

'I became young again!'

The hospital room felt smaller after that realization, as if the walls themselves were pressing closer, trying to contain something they weren’t built for.

My breathing slowed, forcing it into control by habit rather than calmness.

My gaze drifted down to the object resting against my chest.

The clock pendant.

I took it into my hand, lifting it carefully, as though it might react to rough handling.

The metal was cool, heavier than it looked, the chain worn smooth in places as if it had passed through many hands before mine. The face of the clock was complex in an odd way. There's no hour or minute hand inside the clock pendant, instead there were dozens of minute clock faces inside, with visible gears turning in its own internal rhythm. There were no inscriptions, no identifying marks, but the craftsmanship was too precise to be called mundane.

I turned it over, examining the back. Nothing. No crest, no logo of the maker but, it was oozing with demonic mana signature.

I had never seen this artifact before.

I searched my memory thoroughly, combing through years of encounters with relics, tools, and magical devices. Nothing matched this pendant. It hadn’t been part of my possessions. It hadn’t even felt familiar when I first noticed it.

And yet, it had been there.

“I touched this pendant before death…” I muttered, the memory rising slowly, fragmented but persistent. The sensation of cold metal against my skin. “This must be the cause of my regression.”

The idea felt absurd even as it solidified.

Regression. One's return to their past selves.

It was the kind of nonsense that everyone would dismiss outright for lack of precedent.

And yet, I was standing here, breathing easily in a body that should not exist anymore.

There were no other explanations that fit.

The ward was quiet when I noticed it—too quiet. The distant hum of equipment remained, but something about the air felt suspicious. I hadn’t moved from my spot near the bed, but my attention snapped outward all at once, alert in a way it hadn’t been moments ago.

The pendant in my hand felt warmer now.

“What the…?”

The words barely finished forming before I realized what was wrong.

Everything had frozen.

The subtle flicker of the fluorescent light on the hospital ceiling had stopped mid-pulse.

The curtain by the door hung unnaturally still, its folds locked in place, suspended in air.

I took a step forward, and noticed there was no sound from my footsteps either. My foot met the floor without echo, without friction, as if the room itself had lost the ability to respond.

I turned slowly, heart pounding, scanning every corner of the ward. The machines were silent now, paused in time.

Time hadn’t slowed. It had stopped.

I swallowed hard and moved again, intending to discover what was going on.

My body responded normally, though the sensation was strange.

Like walking through a space that no longer acknowledged my presence. I waved a hand in front of a nurse's face. They didn't even blink.

A pigeon sat perched outside the window, frozen mid-balance on the metal bars. Its head was tilted slightly, eye dull and unmoving.

I approached the window and leaned in, studying the bird. Every feather was perfectly still, unaffected by wind. It was like a 3D model rendered in flawless detail.

Carefully, I reached out and touched it.

“Ouchh—!”

The moment my fingers made contact, pain exploded through my arm, sharp and immediate.

At the same time, the world lurched violently back into motion.

Sound crashed in all at once—the hum of machines, the faint noise from the hallway, the sudden frantic flutter of wings as the pigeon shrieked and flapped wildly.

The bird slammed against my arm and the metal bars, feathers scattering as it escaped, vanishing into the sky in a split second.

I staggered back, clutching my arm as my muscles gave out.

My whole body felt heavier than before, as if gravity had increased without warning. Blood rushed through my head, pressure building behind my eyes, my vision narrowing for a brief, frightening moment.

I braced myself against the wall, breathing through it, forcing my body to stabilize.

The pain in my arm faded quickly, leaving behind a dull ache and a lingering sense of wrongness.

Whatever I had done, it hadn’t come without a cost.

I waited several minutes before moving again, letting the weight in my limbs recede.

When I finally straightened, my body still felt different. I wasn't injured, not exhausted in the usual sense, but it felt like, i was taxed, for pushing out my life energy too hard, and too fast.

My gaze dropped to the pendant again.

It lay still against my palm, indistinguishable from an ordinary object now.

Nothing to indicate what it really does, and it can't even be used to read time, either.

And ever since touching the pendant, my body had been healing faster than what a standard 'Heal' spell could manage.

I had dismissed it earlier as adrenaline could be the cause of this interpretation, but now the pattern was impossible to ignore. The ache from standing too quickly earlier had vanished entirely. The sharp pain all over my body from earlier had already dulled to almost nothing.

This wasn’t normal recovery. It's excessively accelerated. Maybe, this might be one of the passive effects on the holder.

Shrugging all the fear aside, I decided to start testing the limits of this pendant over the next few days.

I paced the room, increasing my speed slightly, watching for dizziness. I pressed my fingers into my forearm until discomfort flared, then released, counting the seconds it took to fade.

Too fast.

I repeated the process, varying the pressure, the duration, the movement. Each time, the result was the same. Damage—if it could even be called that—repaired itself with unnatural efficiency. Not instant, but close enough to be alarming.

I sat on the edge of the bed afterward, hands resting on my knees, grounding myself in the physical sensation of the moment. The pendant hadn’t activated again. Time remained normal. The world continued moving forward, indifferent to my thoughts.

But something fundamental had changed.

I didn’t know whether the pendant responded to touch, intent, or something else entirely.

I didn’t know whether the time freeze was limited, conditional, or dangerous beyond what I’d already experienced. And I didn’t know what price I would pay for using it again.

What I did know was this: Whatever state I was in now wasn’t temporary.

And whatever that pendant was, it had bound itself to me the moment I touched it.

I leaned back against the bed, staring at the ceiling, letting the weight of that realization settle slowly. The room felt ordinary again. Too ordinary. As if it were pretending nothing had happened.