Given Knowledge of Demise
[the world has and must exist without me.] Her destiny was to die to save the world. - Chronica-centric.
She stands, waiting for an audience with a dying god. She has defeated and gained recognition from the relic of time and holds most of the powers of time already. With the last powers in her hands she will achieve transcendentalism.
It is a responsibility many would feel too grand for them, too much of a burden. She does not feel so.
After all, she has been born for this.
When the doors of the temple opens she walks in, no hesitation in her steps.
"The outcome of this world all lies within your choice, my daughter. Will you walk the path that I have walked and maintain the balance of time as I have, or will you refuse the power of time?"
"What is to happen should I choose to refuse the power of time?"
"You were born as an empty existence for the purpose of inheriting my power. Refusal will lead to your eventual death as your empty body collapses."
"I do not fear death."
"As you should not. Perhaps, between the two, death is an option that would be preferred. Once you awaken, your fate will be set and sealed."
"I know."
"Yes, love, you do."
"But you are in need of a successor? Someone to take your place?"
"Of course. There must always be a Transcendent in the world to keep and maintain the balance, and I have become unfit for the duty. Before my fate and the outcome of the world I have seen come true it must be changed by a new Transcendent."
"If I were to refuse, would you create another heir and teach them as you did for me?"
"If I could, yes, my daughter. I have little time left, but life is a gamble in the end. If I could save this world, there is nothing I would not do."
"I see."
". . ."
"I will succeed you and become the Transcendent of Time."
". . . thank you."
In the cold stone temple she stands, head bowed, waiting. Her dress is kept in place by only two thin straps and her arms are only covered by the slick, silky gloves that do not provide her with any warmth but her hair, black enough to be indistinguishable from her dress and long enough to be a cloak wraps around her pale shoulders.
It does not matter, in the end. She does not feel cold, not anymore.
Ahead of her the smiling, ancient woman who was once the carrier of the burden of time lies in the location of her final rest, her immortality a curse then and now. She sheds one single tear, perhaps from exhaustion or world-weariness, and by the time the glittering liquid reaches her chin the old woman is stone forever more, extinguished from true existence at the awakening of her successor.
The last powers of time come to her, acknowledging her as its master. The relic of time appears as a black-bound book in her gloved hands and the cover is the inky black of her hair and dress. The shape that best fits her best, it seems, is the chronicle of Grandis.
She holds it close to her chest, sighs, and walks away from the temple.
She is Chronica, and she has achieved Transcendentalism.
The relic, the chronicle of Grandis tells many stories – it tells the story of the world, every possible story in Grandis. To hold the relic in her hands is to hold the past, the present and all the possible futures in her hands.
And yet there is only one story she continuously returns to and re-reads, over and over and over again – the story of a woman with black hair and red eyes, dressed in black and smiling sadly all alone amongst a sanctuary of chronicles filled with the records of the world and countless machine-like, efficient timepieces. In the story the woman had a duty and the responsibilities that came with the powers bestowed to her.
She was a good woman. She fulfilled her duty.
She didn't deserve punishment for this but one day, a prince, garbed in white and gold like a gentle angel came to the woman in black and beseeched her assistance in order to change his dreams into a reality. And what a dream it was, of a perfect world where hate did not exist and love was bountiful, where the good, rich earth provided for all equally and men had hearts, not tools of war. A dream of a utopia.
The woman had a duty. She felt honour-bound, and more importantly, she was bound by the threads of fate to a destiny. Singular. Unlike other living beings she could only have one destiny and could never change the outcome of her end.
She refused to aid him. The prince, mad with grief and desperate to see his utopia become real, attacked and sealed her away with the help of his servants. He stole the powers granted to her, a great wrong, to fulfil his desires.
The woman in black with the red eyes was left to drift in her once-sanctuary, now-jail until her existence was nullified by the transcendentalism of her replacement.
The woman's story was not a happy one. The woman was real. The woman was Chronica, and that was her end.
Out of all the Transcendents, the Transcendent of Time is the most unfortunate. Being aware of the flow of time, watching the deaths of countless beings, seeing history repeat itself and make the same mistakes, over and over again –
And, of course, the obvious. To know their fate, their end and be unable to change it.
Chronica is no exception to this rule.
Aeona kisses her on her forehead and smiles before dissolving into pure light and vanishing.
There is no one else who understands the pain of immortality, the burden of balance and she feels alone, blacker than ever due to the absence of light.
But eventually time marches on and she moves along with it in the streams of events and passing emotions. All wounds heal with time, after all.
She dreams of him. He is near, so near, and her being sings a tragic requiem for him and the demise he will bring her.
He is born, a healthy prince who has a destiny of grandeur and a fate that will lead to her obsolescence.
She cannot help it. In his dreams she visits him, drawn by the powers not yet awakened within his frail mortal body. Forever a boy compared to her age, sometimes she kisses his sweet forehead as Aeona did in the dream world that he only partly remembers in his conscious state and reads him the stories of the world from her chronicle.
And just like she did to all of his previous incarnations she repeats duty and responsibility, over and over again.
It changes nothing.
Furious at the loss of his race and the disrespect for life the mortals have grown, he awakens just like he has done before, just like she once achieved transcendentalism and made her own creator obsolete.
Taking a step outside of her sanctuary she takes a deep breath, filling her immortal lungs with the crisp, cold air filled with the damp smell of rain, mud and rotting leaves.
Chronica sits in her sanctuary, dressed in black, awaiting his entrance. What has her life been? It has been a long time since her ascension to Transcendent of Time. Centuries, no, millennia have passed. The Transcendent of Light has sealed herself into a sanctuary where only light may reach. The Transcendent of Life has been born over and over again, refusing his duty only once. Mortals have done things that will be recorded in the chronicles of her sanctuary.
She has continued to fulfil her duty and her meaning for existence.
Today is the day she has been waiting for all her life.
The clocks around her tick and the sands trickle down in hourglasses and the water flows within glass measures and the candles burn down, eventually extinguishing within their own melted wax and stubs.
Her remaining time is slipping away and there is nothing she can do but wait for the fate that is for her, the destiny that is the dark-clothed assassin who will plunge his blade into her heart and offer her as a sacrifice for the primal forces of fate and destiny set in stone. A sacrifice to turn the world, a silent requiem for the world to continue on, a prayer sung to continue.
In the end even she is but a pawn in the chess game of life played by the Overseers. She is drenched in black, but she wonders which side will benefit from the outcome of her final destiny.
Even more importantly, she wonders which side she is on.
Her life has been time and duty and it will end soon, first in captivity and then in true obsolescence.
As her infinite self she dreamed of a finite fate. What immortal, pray, would fade away? Only the Transcendents, perhaps. Death was a companion that would never appear or take their hand.
In a way she envied the mortal transcendent. Capable of resetting life at the price of their former memories, their lives were bright and meaningful.
Eventually she would fade away, a mere stone shell of her former existence and another would take her place, created for all of eternity yet not able to fulfil their lives. A prisoner in an everlasting land, charged with the harshest life sentence. She would always watch over the countless possibilities and alternate futures of others like her predecessors had.
There was only one future for her. There was only one future for all of them.
And there was nothing they could do to change that, the terrible price they had to pay for the sight they had never wished for.
"Greetings, Lady Chronica," the prince clothed in white robes bows to her and it is not a dream she had, not her imagination of the story she has read countless times. He is real and has grown into a beautiful man, graceful and elegant and soft-spoken. Once, he was the heir to a prestigious race who spoke of peace and believed in the good of men. Once, he was the heir to a prestigious race who engaged in a war of hate with their cousins and was wiped out.
Eventually he will be able to laugh about it after time's flow washes the scars away.
They are like opposites, she with all her darkness and recluse, her immortality and resignation, he with his bright appearance and smiles, his fragile mortality and his yearn, his desperation for change. He is blind to it all and stumbles through life, glowing like a beacon in the uncertainty. He knows nothing but his belief is strong, strong enough for him to shine like one of the moons in the night sky of Grandis. She sees everything and waits for the events to unfold. She is no bright celestial body – she is the night.
He has forgotten her from his childhood dreams. She remembers him like all the events were but yesterdays.
"Greetings," she nods back for she is mistress here, and he her guest, a man with a seemingly simple request.
She knows just what his request is. She will indulge him, and perhaps herself, by letting him take the time to present his dreams and ideals to her. Yes, she is stalling, but the outcome does not change anyhow. Perhaps she was always meant to hear his words of passion before refusing him.
The prince, once softly-spoken and laughed at by his own people paints images of peace, a world where all lives do not hate but only love, a united people who will not kill their own. His words are his paint and they are truly vibrant shades, beautiful and tempting.
There are many fates and many futures and many outcomes for all decisions in the world, all decisions and all lives and all thoughts but hers. Her future, her destiny, her life does not change.
This is her fate.
"Will you join me?" the words ring in the air of her own sanctuary, the one to be her prison soon enough, and he extends a pale hand to her.
What, she wonders, would happen if she took his hand? Side by side, the handsome man next to her, the world bowing to their powers, easily shaped by their whims.
She could help create a utopia. A world with no suffering to continuously watch over. No mistakes made by blind rage and hate for differences. She would live on, ever unchanging.
Would the world call them mad? Ah, but history was written by the victors, and no one called victors mad.
But her future does not change. Her fate is here. She knows in her heart that his ideals and fantasies would never turn into reality.
The grandfather clock behind her rings slowly, majestically, an impossible thirteen times. Some of her time-keepers begin to slow and twist while others speed up. Some just stop entirely, like the pendent at her neck. The delicate metal timepiece and its tiny metallic thrumming like another heart against her breast stop its beats.
Her time has come.
She stands from her throne of elegant memories and dead bones, head held high. She is the last. The last true Transcendent of Time for the world of Grandis. The future she has seen is one that will truly end her after her sealing.
"I refuse," she tells the prince softly.
Behind the elegant glowing prince his minions snarl and laugh, gleeful at the thought of destruction.
Another world's tale comes into play, and the tapestry of the other world is laid before her. She examines its fine, foreign threads with critical red eyes until she reaches the chronicle's page telling a story about a mortal transcendent, hungry for power.
His greed and plans will lead to the merging of two worlds, pulling at each other to fill the absence of essential pillars.
She will never have successors, true successors like she herself had been to the Transcendent before her. Grandis will merge with another world and she will be obliterated, the new Transcendent of Time belonging to the other world taking her place and acting as the balancer for two worlds rather than one.
Chronica closes the book and leans against her throne for a while, resting her eyes. Any more of the words like the sharp hands on the clocks, and they will dig into her eyes and blind her cruelly.
She was born to be a sacrifice. That is her fate in this world, this immortal life of hers.
It takes a long time for the prince and his servants to subdue her – the powers of time continue to heal her and drag out the process. Scars over her body fade away within moments, only to be replaced by new mars caused by quick blades and furious tempers.
It takes a long time but eventually she is worn down and in the unavoidable end she falls and is sealed, her powers stripped from her and taken. Her sanctuary, her home is her prison. Every tick of the clock's hand reminds her of her fate, the time slipping away from her black-gloved grasps. The ticks gather into higher numbers until minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years have passed and she sees that her second end will come soon.
The prince visits her often, eyes tired and face drawn sometimes. He plans for something, and while he's stopped his march of genocide and mass murder his new plans will be put into action soon and that, unavoidably, will be worse.
Chronica allows the prince to seek her company. He sees a reflection of childhood feelings on her, associating her appearance to the innocent, safe feeling of being a child. Subconsciously, he remembers the black-haired, black-dressed woman who read him stories and kissed him goodnight in his dreams when no one else would.
Chronica never gets tired of the feeling of running her eyes across the creamy white pages of her relics and the black words, in sharp contrast with each other. There is doom, there is death, there is the promise of a better possibility and there is the promise of her obliteration but she devours the words of the world like a starving beggar presented with a feast.
While she reads, she prays. She prays desperately for the salvation of Aeona, for the salvation of this world that she loves no matter what.
The other Transcendents of Time – one has been split into two and they call themselves nothing, the beginning of everything – have not achieved full, perfect transcendentalism. When they do she will fade as she must.
Their destiny is not clear to her. Perhaps they will be able to change the course of hers – only another Transcendent of Time, after all, may influence and redirect her unshakeable river of fate – and free her from her cage. Perhaps they will help in ridding the fusion of the two worlds of her presence, for now and for all of eternity.
Either way, it is the beginning of the end.
She lies asleep in her sanctuary when the prince comes to her as he always does when he seeks company and tales of wonderful, dream-like times when the world was young, she was young and everyone was too much in love to kill and fight. He is as beautiful and bright as he had been when he came to her the day she was sealed and imprisoned in her own sanctuary, well-rested and the stolen powers of time in her possession having been used to stop his time passing completely.
He is still beautiful, but he is panicked and worried as he wakes her.
"He will kill you," he says. "Join me in my cause to purify life on Grandis. Become my queen. Let me protect you from obliteration. Let me kill the other Transcendent of Time and save you."
He takes her hand and it is warm, full of the trace of life and the outside world that she has not seen for herself ever since her ensealment, the scent of crushed leaves and musk intermingling with the still air of her prison and home.
Her fate has not changed yet. Perhaps it never will.
She extracts her hand gently. "The world has and must exist without me. If that is my fate, then so mote it be."
The beautiful prince mad with grief and grieving with madness leaves.
Perhaps she should have created a successor like the former Transcendent of the other world did instead of bowing her head and following the path to slaughter like an obedient lamb.
Chronica will never know. The alternate path has never been open to her and she has not forged one herself.
An old man of power, time's power is there, standing over her with a servant of Darmoor's. "If she is uncooperative, she is of no use to us," he tsks and strokes the head of his gray-black snake who hisses when she looks at it with tired red eyes. "We shall fare better chances and odds with the others."
The dragon-man nods and exits with the man cloaked with the powers of time. A new alliance?
She will not exist long. What does it matter to her?
Aeona is in danger. The corrupt man was once the Transcendent of Light in the world that is now merging with Grandis, and he plans on becoming the wielder of light in both worlds. One will be obliterated should he regain transcendentalism and a man of planning this extensive will not leave anything to chance. All threats will be disposed of and properly eliminated.
Aeona is in danger.
Chronica spends her remaining time praying and begging the Overseers. If they hear her, they do not reply.
"Have you made a deal with him?" she asks the next time the prince visits her.
He is not nervous as he had been before, on the verge of tears and anger. It is like watching the surface of a lake on a day when the playful winds are stilled and silenced, his inner tranquil and serenity shining through his vessel. He plays with her hair, seemingly fascinated by the inky black of the strands. Or perhaps it is the length of the locks that intrigue him and make him wrap and unwrap it around his slim, long fingers. Either way he is close to her, leaning close enough that she smells his scent of crushed leaves and musk all too easily.
"If I have?" he asks, his fingers never stopping their roaming in her hair.
She turns her face away from him and the hair still entangled with his finger tugs slightly before loosening. "I just wanted to know."
Her second demise is here, the two born out of one who calls themselves nothing and the beginning. Their blades have the blood of the enemy's servants and they have the power of time. But this is not her power; it is the power of another Transcendent of Time, one she has never met before.
"Greetings," she says softly.
They free her and she lets herself fly freely for the first time in a long period of captivity. She asks about everything and everyone, relishing the feeling of hearing about events from another person.
She asks about Aeona and is pleased to hear that her fellow Transcendent has been placed in a safe place, forever out of the greedy hands of the enemy.
The young Transcendents of Time try to persuade her to enter an alternate dimension called the Mirror World. They say that it will keep her alive, keep her from fading away as a Transcendent must do when their heirs have succeeded them.
"How do you know it will work?" she questions them, her offered relic not yet taken.
"It works," the male says confidently. "Rhinne, Maple World's former Transcendent of Time is already there and she's fine."
But she's shaking her head already at their suggestion. "Two Transcendents cannot exist in one dimension," she reminds them. "If I were to join her, my presence would lead to the demise of your Rhinne."
They stiffen and it is obvious they haven't thought of that possibility. "But that's not fair," the female says softly.
Chronica gently places the chronicle of Grandis in their hands. "It has always been my fate," she tells the two, relinquishing her powers of time to them, "to be a sacrifice for the continuation of this world."
"It's not fair," the male echoes his counterpart's words.
She simply shakes her head in response. "Please take care of the worlds. It is your duty now."
And then she closes her eyes.
Maybe a single tear slips from her eyes.
The prince drags his broken body in front of her unending imprisonment, her second and last demise. The powers of time he stole from her are gone from him. "Why?" he sobs.
Her body is stone and she cannot move to wipe away his bloody tears. She is nothing but a conscious statue. Duty, she thinks as the Transcendents she has passed her powers to come after him, victory's sweet favour on their sides. How could she explain to him now, when her demise had come to her already and his was to come soon for him? She was always to live and die as she was, and he had never understood that. It was always my duty.
AN: Too long for UPP.
The Zero update ruined my plans for the Hamartia series. Enjoy this while I try to fix the storyline.
Chronica's appearance here comes from the Sound Horizon Chronica. It popped up while I searched 'Chronica' with Google and I thought she was pretty. Chronica is also female for the same reason I have given in Hamartia (hey, mistaken translations are possible).
While writing this and seeing the Darmoor x Chronica way it was going, I grew curious and looked it up. The Korean fans did not disappoint (sort of). I'd like to say that the plans for this story was done before I read that story - I did not copy the author's work.
The KMS version says that Chronica was attacked by Darmoor in the sanctuary of chronicles, hence where my hc for her came from (in both this and Hamartia). Her relic being a chronicle was more of a nod to the SH Chronica.
Because Zero updates have revealed that Maple World and Grandis are coming together to merge as one, and because the BM has someone in mind to be the Transcendent of Life, Darmoor plays the role for that ToL here. I mean, sure, it COULD be Cygnus, but with Magnus being included amongst Commanders again, I say it's more likely that it's Darmoor.
Playlist: Life Reset Button (Gumi, and the Dancing Dolls Cover), Reincarnation (Gumi, Rin), Common Heroes (Miku, Gumi, Mayu, Rin), Underdog Supremacist (IA)