CHAPTER 16: Forfeit
2957 Words
To fix a cosmic crime, she needed to go back to the source. She needed to find the said mother of the witch.
The next morning, the physical world felt sharper, almost painfully real. Val’s fever had broken, and the phantom heat in her right palm had settled into a dull, icy numbness. She spent the early hours of the day at a frantic pace, pulling strings she didn't know she had left.
"Mia, please, I just need you to look into the system," Val pleaded, leaning over her friend’s desk. Her voice was raw, her eyes bloodshot. "The palm reader from my birthday. That lady with some sorts of nerdy rings. She has to have a permit, a name, a tax record, something registered with the city or the event organizers."
Mia, typing furiously on her laptop, sighed and shook her head. "Val, I’m telling you, I’ve run every background check, looked through every vendor registry for the past three years. The spot she occupied at the bazaar? It was marked as an empty lot on the official floor plan. The organizers thought she was a relative of the property owner. The property owner thought she was with the catering team. There’s no ID, no bio-data, no digital footprint. It’s like she crawled out of a crack in the floorboards and slid right back into it."
"It's crazy, but we have seen her. She really is a fraud. Or a con-art," Mia said with an ick.
Val stared at the blank screen. No truth. No identity. A ghost in a maroon gown.
She tried other solutions. She spent hours scouring local occult forums, looking through old civic records of eccentric residents, and even trying to track the lineage of known fortune tellers in the area. Nothing. The woman was a phantom, a shadow cast by a light that didn't exist in this dimension.
But as the afternoon sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the city streets, a sudden realization struck Val like a physical blow. The lady hadn't appeared out of nowhere. She had always been at the center of the web.
Val didn't need a database. She needed to go back to where it all began.
On her way home, her feet dragged to 4th street. Val walked down the narrow alleyway, her eyes locked onto the rusted iron frame of the door that had once changed her life. It was the same open door where she had first received the device—the primitive tempad that had allowed her to slip through the seams of reality.
She pushed the door open, expecting the damp, crumbling concrete of a forgotten storage unit.
Instead, she stepped into an entirely different world.
The room had been completely renovated, smelling faintly of expensive jasmine and fresh paint. It was bright, clean, and overwhelmingly modern, though the color palette remained chillingly familiar. Deep maroons and cosmic purples dominated the space, but the archaic trinkets and dusty crystal balls were gone. In their place were sleek, high-end vanity products, advanced skincare serums that seemed to shimmer with iridescent light, and digital displays that flickered with relevant-to-this-year advertisements. It looked like an upscale boutique from a high-fashion district, yet it felt entirely displaced from the filthy alley outside.
Sitting behind a minimalist glass counter was the vanity shop vendor.
Val froze. She looked at the woman’s face, then at her hair, then into her eyes. The breath caught in Val's throat.
The vendor wore a sharp, modern blazer, her posture professional and poised. But her eyes—those ancient, all-knowing eyes—and the unique, silver-streaked pattern of her hair were unmistakable.
It was her. Finally.
Val realized with an absolute, terrifying clarity that the vanity vendor from months ago, the palm reader from her birthday, and the woman from the hospital stairwell were all the exact same person. They were all disguises, masterfully tailored to fit the context of whatever room she stood in, except for those two defining features: the silver hair and the deep, ageless eyes. She was a woman frozen in her late 60s, navigating the currents of time like a shark in shallow water.
"You're back," the lady said, her voice dropping the cheerful tone of a shopkeeper, adopting the solemn resonance Val remembered from the hospital.
"I spent all day looking for you," Val said, closing the door behind her. The sleek locks clicked into place, shutting out the noise of the city. "Your names, your records... they don't exist."
"Of course they don't," the lady replied, leaning back against her glass counter. "When you monitor the margins of reality, you learn not to leave footprints. Why are you here, Valentina? I told you what must be done."
"I know what must be done," Val said, stepping closer to the counter. Her hands were steady now, the hesitation that had plagued her for months entirely burnt away by the rain on the bridge. "I want to reverse the deal. I want to give it all back."
The lady fixed her with a long, evaluating stare. The silence stretched between them, heavy and thick. "Are you entirely sure, child? Is that what your soul truly desires? There is no turning back from this. No second chances. No more borrowing."
"I am sure," Val said, her voice ringing clear in the quiet boutique.
There were no words left to counter her decision. Her conscience was eating her alive, a slow, agonizing rot that grew with every breath she took in a body that wasn't hers. The regret was a physical weight in her chest. She thought about the real owner of this body, a girl whose soul had been bartered away to a demon just so Valentina could play house with a boy who couldn't let go of the dead. She thought of Perseus, whose physical shell was currently being piloted by Demetrius like a stolen car.
It might be too late to save everyone, but she refused to carry on like this. It was far too much to bear. Living a life of happiness built on a foundation of fake realities and constant frustration was a worse hell than non-existence.
The lady sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weariness of centuries. "You cannot reverse a contract of this magnitude through me, Valentina. I am merely a spectator to my daughter's sins. If you want to tear down the house you built, you must talk to the architects."
The lady reached beneath the sleek glass counter and pulled out a small, metallic object. She slid it across the smooth surface toward Val.
It was a tempad, but it was vastly more advanced than the crude, heavy device Val had used before. This one was incredibly thin, its metallic edges shimmering with a faint, blue luminescence. The activation ring, which had previously been a simple, rough circle, was now a perfect, sharp rectangle, humming with an immense amount of localized chronological energy.
"The Time Keepers Association is already looking for you," the lady whispered. "But I think you'll be needing this again. Go give yourself up."
Val didn't hesitate. She picked up the sleek device, her thumb pressing down on the rectangular ring. The air in front of the vanity shop split open, a doorway of pure, crackling light tearing through the maroon wallpaper.
Without looking back, Valentina stepped through.
At TKA
The transition didn't jostle her. Instead, she found herself standing at the end of an impossibly long, vaulted corridor.
The architecture of the Time Keepers Association was staggering. The walls were made of a polished, dark stone that seemed to shift between deep grey and midnight blue, illuminated by strips of soft, amber light that stretched vertically into a ceiling so high it was lost in shadow. The air here smelled of old parchment, cold copper, and something entirely synthetic—like a room that had never known the warmth of a sun.
As Val began to walk down the echoing hall, her bare feet making no sound against the polished floor, she came across a massive construction zone in the center of a wide rotunda.
A colossal statue was being erected, though it was far from finished. Scaffolding made of strange, floating metal beams surrounded the monolith. Workers in practical, grey jumpsuits were hovering around the torso of the giant figure, using laser-like tools to carve intricate details into stone that didn't look like stone at all.
Val slowed her pace, pulling herself back into the shadow of a massive pillar to eavesdrop.
"Hey, hand me the precision leveler," one of the workers shouted, his voice echoing off the high vaults. "We need to get the jawline exactly right this time."
Another worker, leaning against a floating platform, laughed and shook his head. "Why bother being so meticulous? We always rebuild this statue with the exact same features every few cycles, and we still don't know why. Nothing ever changes. It’s always the same three faces, over and over again."
"Orders from the top, man," the first worker replied, wiping sweat from his brow. "Maybe Them-Who-Remains could do some wacky next time. Give the guy a mustache or something. Change the routine."
The men shared a short, booming laugh, their humor sounding hollow in the grand, sterile space.
Val frowned, her mind spinning. Rebuilding the same statue? Nothing changes? Them-Who-Remains? The words sounded like a language she understood but couldn't quite translate. It didn't make any sense. If this place was the anchor of all time, why did it feel like a loop of its own?
Before she could ponder it further, a sharp, piercing wail shattered the silence of the corridor.
An alarm, high-pitched and rhythmic, began to pulse through the rotunda. The amber lights along the walls instantly flashed into a violent, blinding crimson.
From the ceiling high above, a mechanical device—a sleek, multi-lensed camera mounted on a silent, floating drone—dropped down at a terrifying speed. It halted precisely three feet in front of Val’s face, its lenses whirring and focusing as a blue laser swept over her features.
A cold, synthesized voice boomed from the hidden speakers in the walls, echoing through the chamber.
ANOMALY IDENTIFIED. TARGET VALENTINA-094-DELTA LOCATED. PURSUIT PROTOCOL TERMINATED. CONTAINMENT INITIATED.
Val didn't run. She stood perfectly still, her hands at her sides, as the heavy thud of marching boots approached from every intersecting hallway.
Within seconds, a group of twenty Time Keepers surrounded her. They wore heavy, matte-black armor that absorbed the flashing red light of the alarms, their faces hidden behind dark, expressionless visors. They held long, crackling batons that hummed with a terrifying kinetic energy.
The lead keeper stepped forward, his weapon lowered but ready. He didn't strike her. Instead, he tilted his head, analyzing her lack of resistance.
"Valentina," the keeper's voice was muffled through his helmet's modulator. "You are under arrest for timeline incursion and soul trafficking."
"I know," Val said quietly. "I'm not fighting. Take me to whoever is in charge."
The keepers exchanged a brief glance. The leader nodded sharply. "Assist her to the office of the Chiefs."
They didn't chain her, but the wall of black armor surrounding her left no doubt that escape was an impossibility. They guided her through a series of increasingly secure corridors, past giant humming generators that sounded like the heartbeat of a sleeping god, until they reached a set of massive, seamless black doors.
The doors slid open with a heavy hydraulic hiss.
The room beyond was immense, designed to intimidate any mortal soul who dared cross its threshold. The walls were made of a dark, reflective glass that showed glimpses of swirling galaxies and flickering golden threads—the timelines themselves, captured and pinned like butterflies under glass.
In the center of the room sat an enormous, oblong table made of a single piece of polished black obsidian. Surrounding the table were exactly twenty-four high-backed chairs, carved from a strange, pale wood that seemed to glow from within.
But the room was mostly empty.
Only eleven chiefs were present. They sat scattered around the massive table, arranged in a precise, eerie pattern: one chief, then an empty chair, then another chief, sitting one space after another like pieces on a chessboard that had been abandoned mid-game. They wore flowing robes of deep indigo, their faces varied in age and ethnicity, but all possessed the same expression—an absolute, unyielding coldness born of watching entire universes rise and fall.
One of the keepers silently stepped beside Val, guiding her past the empty seats until he stopped behind the twenty-third chair. He tapped the back of it, indicating for her to sit.
Val pulled the heavy chair out, the wood cool against her palms, and sat down. She felt incredibly small in the vast room, a fragile creature of flesh and bone sitting among the arbiters of existence.
The chief sitting at the head of the table—a man with deep-set eyes and hair as white as salt—leveled his gaze at her.
"Miss Vergara," he said, his voice carrying no anger, only the clinical detachment of a judge reading a foreclosure notice. "You have cost this authority an immense amount of resources. For almost countless of your lifetimes, you and the entity known as Demetrius have evaded our trackers, hopping across the branches, stealing the physical vessels of rightful citizens, and disrupting the local chronal flow. Explain your presence here."
Val looked around the table, taking in the eleven faces that stared back at her. She took a deep breath, the air cold in her lungs.
"I am here to surrender," she said clearly.
A subtle ripple of movement passed through the chiefs. One of them, a woman with sharp, angular features, leaned forward. "Surrender? You have spent centuries running from us, using dark magic to mask your energetic footprint. Why stop now?"
"Because it’s a lie," Val said, her voice trembling slightly before finding its strength. "The life we lived... it’s built on murder. We stole those bodies. The souls that belonged in them were sold to demons because of us. Every time we meet, every time we try to force a 'forever' out of a timeline that doesn't want us, we ruin everything around us."
She leaned forward, pressing her hands against the cold obsidian table. "I am confessing to everything. The witch on the edge of the dying universe, the contract, the soul trade, the locations of the previous incursions we caused. I will give you every bit of information you need to wipe our tracks clean."
"And what is it you want in return?" the white-haired chief asked, his eyes narrowing slightly. "A lighter sentence? A preserved pocket dimension?"
"No," Val said, a tear finally cutting through the dust on her cheek. "I want us sent back. Send me back to my origin universe, where my true body is dead. Let me face the end I was supposed to have. And Demetrius... send him back to his home timeline. Let him live out his remaining years where he belongs."
"He will be alone," the angular woman reminded her. "He will return to the very grief that drove him to commit these crimes in the first place."
"It is his grief to bear," Val said fiercely, though her heart fractured at the words. "And it is my death to face. We cannot keep stealing other people's lives just because we are afraid of our own endings."
The chiefs remained silent for a long moment. They didn't speak to one another; instead, they closed their eyes, communicating through a silent, telepathic network that Val couldn't access. The golden threads on the glass walls seemed to pulse faster, as if evaluating the weight of her choice.
After what felt like an eternity, the white-haired chief opened his eyes. "Your confession simplifies our work, Valentina. But apprehending Demetrius will not be as easy. He is stubborn. He has proven adept at slipping through our containment fields the moment he senses our armor."
Val nodded. She had already thought of this. It was the hardest part of the plan, the ultimate betrayal of the man who had torn the universe apart just to love her. But it was the only way to save him from total erasure.
"We will meet through a dream tonight," Val said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "He always finds me there when my physical body is unstable. He doesn't know my plan yet. He thinks I am still recovering in the hospital."
She looked directly into the chief’s eyes. "I will call him to the dream space. He will come to me completely unguarded, believing we are safe." Val took a deep breath before she could stutter. "This will allow you to catch him in a glimpse. You can anchor his soul before he has the chance to jump."
The eleven chiefs looked at each other once more. The silence in the room was absolute, the gravity of a girl offering up her lover to the keepers of time hanging heavily in the air.
Slowly, the white-haired chief nodded.
"The terms are accepted," he declared.
- Writer
