AN- I watched Wakfu about eight years ago and that's when I watched the Noxmillian the Clockmaker special. I rewatched the show when season 3 aired, but I haven't rewatched Nox's backstory episode since that first time. I'm working off of memory here so I can't promise total canon consistency.

The names of Nox's kids came from the wiki and are Quartz, Aiguille, and Pulsar. His wife's name from the wiki is Galanthe.
Grammar is intentionally ignored (a bit) here for this writing style.

Wakfu and its characters do not belong to me. All rights go to their respective owners.

He was right.

The cube had been correct- 200 years of research, of preparing, none had been in vain. No moments of hesitation or brief thoughts to cease and let time lay had been rewarded.

The wakfu from the little eliatrope had topped the meter.

The cube was finally ready.

And Nox felt time do as not even Xelor had felt it do:

the universe groaned and reality strained and yet all remained together as time itself began its reverse.

Nox's body went through the motions it had in the recent past (now the present, soon a future he would not allow to happen a second time) although his mind remained conscious. Conscious enough to think, to speak.

There were 200 years to go through. He had time to speak before this blip in time with the brat passed (before the child's short life was reversed completely until the centuries had passed once more and he found himself born) and Nox would be left alone in this rewinding process as the only one conscious of what was happening. There was a giddy glee to this as well. To winning. To succeeding. To going back.

(Everything would be undone, then done right; he would not let his family watch him waste away in obsessive work on a magical device mortal humans were never meant to touch; he would not be oblivious to their departure as they left him while he, locked within his work, ignored their pleas to leave the cube enough that he did not note when they'd stopped; he would not have them die while thinking he cared more about his work than their lives)

Nox's arms were out. All motion was uncontrolled but his voice.

"I was right," he spoke as his body went through the puppeted motions of reversed time. "I'm going home."

The child's body lifted in reverse until the head came in between the xelor's hands.

"You'll see, little friend."

See that all the resistance had been pointless. The dragon Grougaloragran's resistance and suicide had only delayed a better ending for everyone, the world, (for himself and his family and he would never hide that was always his primary priority here).

"Everything I've done will be forgiven."

There would be no guilt or regret there. No pain or hurt he caused would remain after this and so what was there to grieve for?

"I won't make the same mistakes again."

The cube would remain in that cave. A simple watchmaker would not take it into his proximity, not again.

My mistakes will mean nothing.

Perhaps once, centuries ago, he could have watched his own treatment of the world until this point and seen it as wrong, stressed over it, wondered what Galanthe would have done to see how he treated Igole or the grambos.

(She would have been disturbed, as disturbed as she would be to see the enormous amount of deaths left in his wake. That was not behavior the man she married would have exhibited)

He didn't wonder this, however. Why should he? What he did here was of no consequence. It would be undone. The grambos would get their chance to live outside servitude in his clock and would never remember a world with him in their lives. If one was thrown from a platform to crash lifeless below, its death could not lay on a conscience. He had not bothered to feel guilt, he could not afford to bother, not when his goal would eliminate any of the grief he caused those along the way to reversing time.

And Igole...

Igole had been his last connection to his family of old. Both of them had lived on too long, too long, so far past the lives they should have had. It had been selfish to preserve the bowwow when its mind was gone and family dead and nothing but the whispers of the cube were there to fill the silence. But Igole had been that last link and he could never let the creature slip away. When the bowwow had been stolen from Nox because of the brats, it had shattered that last living connection. Left him with the puppets and hope and promises of the cube that just one more wakfu harvest would be needed before he could go back.

What had happened to Igole was unfortunate, but it would be undone. The bowwow would never know of this lifetime. It would live out a normal pet's life with Quartz, Aiguille, and Pulsar as it should have had Nox not found the cube in a cave that fateful day and started his obsession.

All would be right.

All would be right.

Even if he'd lost his last household member to the two brats here with him now, it would mean nothing soon. Everything would be undone. He would see them- Galanthe, his children, Igole- all again, all as they should have been.

And all the actions he'd made to this point- the prolongevity and insanity the cube gave Igole, the thousands killed, the peoples devastated- would reverse until all those hurt were alive and well once more and would never face the mad xelor or his machines. They would be happy. They would be fine, at the least. He would be happy.

There'd be no consequences. There'd be no losses.

He would be home again.

The cube had always made it quite clear this venture was a win-win for all involved in Nox's plot.

Teleporting had given him a great advantage alongside time spells. They had grown to feel like second nature especially as trying to move himself came only with strain and force on a body that should have been past its natural death date by a few dozen years.

Now he teleported one last time.

Zapped into reality again beside the graves.

Any relatives close enough to Galanthe's side of the family that would have set up such a memorial had died alongside her and the children in the Chaos. Nox had made these himself. Made them once and never visited again.

He preferred the company of ghosts to the memorials of the forever dead.

The puppet shows that reminded him both of those he would hold for his children and gave him a reminder of life with them like a withheld promise: finish, and this will return to you.

Finish what the cube spoke of

(-the rest said the cube could not speak, but he had heard- he- he had heard-)

(it had lied, the whole time, it had lied, it had not returned his family, it had not undone all those mistakes he had made in its name)

and he would go home again.

The graves were finality. The ghosts were his future just as much as the past. Or they had promised to be in the lie.

Nox's feet did not touch the ground yet. When they did, he knew they would not lift again. The headstones were untouched by all but time. The helmet Pulsar had enjoyed so much sat atop the smallest stone. There ought to be flowers. Left from loved ones. But in 200 years, most graves had lost those family that would leave flowers in memory. These had only him and he had never come again because he had thought such graves would be undone.

That everything would be.

That those mistakes, those grievances, those crimes, made from the first day he'd seen the eliacube to this last one- undone. Erased. That there would be a second chance.

When his feet did touch the ground, it was after he had the memorials properly decorated. Finally given the grief their one survivor (as if he was a survivor of their deaths: he had died with them; before them, even, as he wasted away in a workshop with a magic he should never have touched) had avoided offering.

They'd died while he let the eliacube take his full attention. Died while he was gone from their lives. He should have been with them, all that time ago. Should have died with them if there was no chance to go back and prevent their passing to start with.

These graves should have held him as well.

There was no undoing mistakes. No relief from the multitude of them. No going back.

So he would return.

Return to his family in the graves he should have joined them in long ago.

He would go home that day- to the only touch of home reality would offer.

AN- Thanks for reading!