⚡ ARC3: The Loss of Time

The sound stopped breaking.

Things collapsing. Metal grinding. Rubble bursting. Someone shouting. Whether it’s a warning or a scream, I can’t tell anymore. There’s no room to pick out each one—everything overlaps until it becomes a single mass of noise.

My view is narrow.

Dust rises and outlines melt. People run through the gaps in the rubble, trip, get dragged. A shoulder slams into someone; a staggering body is shoved back by another body.

There’s no time to stop.

"—It’s coming!!"

That voice hit me before thought did.

My feet move. I step in. My hands move. The sequence for assembling magic outruns my mind. There’s no sense of “preparing” anymore. I’m building it while moving.

Whether I make it in time.
That’s all.

Light cuts through. The air trembles; impact punches up from the pit of my stomach. Heat and dust surge at once, turning the world white. Something rings—sharp—in the back of my ears.

—Bad.

By the time I thought it, it was already too late.

The force is pushing too far forward.
Control can’t catch up.

But I can’t stop it.

"Next!!"

A voice snaps over.

Not judgment.
Reflex.

Before I can measure whether it’s dangerous, I close the distance, reach out, drive the magic in. I don’t know if it made it in time. Another one comes anyway.

Something blows apart, something caves in, the ground heaves hard. The footing turns unstable. My breathing breaks. My heart is loud.

And still, I don’t stop.

If I stop, it ends.

Something catches in the back of my head.

The body convulsing on the stretcher.
A mouth that made no sound.
Fingers scraping the floor.

...Don’t look.

Don’t think.

If I think, my body stops.
If I stop, I won’t survive here.

"…!!"

My throat clicks.
I don’t know if I want to scream or if I just want air.

Time is stretching.

A moment grows unnaturally long.
And yet, inside it, I can’t think of anything at all.

The next impact.
The next light.
The next sound.

Everything stacks, becomes a current, and the step called “judgment” gets shaved off somewhere along the way.

Here,
the ones who think before they move are the ones who break.

My body understood it first.

...No.

This is wrong.

The same words collide again and again inside my head.

I want to change it.
I want to break it.
This can’t stay like this.

But—

How?

No answer comes.
There isn’t time left to think anymore.

"Next!!"

That voice blows my thoughts apart.

Damn it.

I’ll change it.
Even if I don’t know how.

By the moment I thought it,
my body was already stepping forward.

— Lumi🪄💕