Sometimes, I really hated him.

  Not really. Eren is a great brother. He pulled me out of more tough situations than I could count. He literally would sacrifice his own soul to give me a chance to survive. He’s the shield, the sword, and the nuclear option all rolled into one annoyingly sarcastic package. He’s also my hero.

  But sometimes, standing next to him feels like trying to light a match while under the judging gaze of a supernova.

  My two weeks in Zenith had been a revelation. For the first time in two years, I wasn’t just “Eren’s younger sister” or “Master’s Charge.” I was simply Anna.

  I had walked through gardens where time flowed sideways and learned to shoot arrows that arrived before I loosed them. I had sat in Time dilated chambers until my mana felt like old leather — tough, weathered, and unbreakable. I drank tea made from energy and ate bread baked in suspended animation.

  My Affinity for Time became a lot sharper and I was stronger than I had ever been.

  I checked my party’s condition as we walked the crystalline halls of Floor 49.

  My [Domain of the Chrono-Hunter] wasn’t a fragile bubble anymore; it was solidified authority. My bow, [Final Word] — named after my first mythic skill — felt less like a weapon and more like a limb. I had the gear, the stats, and the team.

  And yet, as we cleared Floors 46 through 49, I couldn’t help but notice how stressed Eren was.

  He was on “Overwatch,” which essentially meant he was floating thirty feet in the air, arms crossed, somehow staying vigilant while eating what appeared to be dried nebula-fruit. Every now and then he’d drop a helpful hint like, “Watch the left flank, Lucas,” or “That spider explodes into acid mist when you kill it,” with the casual tone of someone commenting on a mildly interesting painting.

  It was maddening. It made me want to shoot an apple off his head from a different time zone.

  Floor 46 had been a maze of mirrors that reflected hostile doppelgangers. Freja shined there, realizing that her lightning moved faster than the reflections, creating a strobing kill-zone that shattered the glass constructs before they could spawn.

  Floor 47 was a zero-gravity geode where Silas taught us all how to fight in three dimensions. His shadow-steps acted as anchor points, allowing us to pivot mid-air like ninjas. I got a little dizzy twice, but managed to pin three Void-Bats to the ceiling before feeling the nausea.

  Floors 48 and 49… those were brutal. Constructs made of shifting obsidian sand. Every time Lucas blocked a hit, the sand flowed around his shield to bite him. We cleared it, but only because I managed to “pin” the sand guardians in localized time-loops, forcing them to reform in the same spot so Lucas could play Whack-A-Mole with his sword, Oathkeeper.

  Now, we stood before the Gate to Floor 50.

  The air pressure was intense. It tasted of sharp minerals and ancient, crystallized anger. The mana here was so dense it sparkled.

  “This is it,” Lucas panted, adjusting his Void-Scale pauldron. His shield was scorched black, but his aura was rock solid. “High Tier 7 Guardian territory. Based on the vibrations… it’s heavy.”

  “You guys want the Anima to step in?” Eren floated down, landing softly. He looked frustratingly fresh. Not a scratch on his black armor. His hair was never even messed up. “This boss is going to be nasty. My Perception is picking up a Gem-Colossus type. I am getting the sense it absorbs magic frequencies and reflects basic physical hits.”

  I looked at my team.

  Lucas wiped sweat from his eyes. Silas was sharpening his frost-daggers, his hands a blur. Freja was practically sparking with static, her eyes glowing white.

  They were tired. But their eyes… their eyes were hungry.

  “No,” I said, my voice cutting through the howling wind of the portal.

  Eren blinked. “Anna, it’s a—”

  “No,” I repeated, tightening my grip on [Final Word]. “If you step in every time it gets hard, we will never learn to calculate the variables ourselves. We then stay behind. We keep being baggage...”

  “I don’t think you’re baggage,” Eren said gently.

  “I know. But I feel like it. And today, I’m done feeling it.” I turned to the group. “We can take this. We have the gear. We have the skills. We just need to execute perfectly.”

  Lucas slammed his shield into the ground. “I’m with Anna. Let’s break some rocks.”

  Freja spun Mjolnir’s echo. “My hammer is always ready for some smashing.”

  Silas vanished into stealth, a shadow nodding in approval.

  Eren looked at us for a long moment. Then, he smiled. A proud, slightly worried smile that I cherished and hated simultaneously.

  “Okay. Go get ’em. I’ll keep the healing on standby.”

  We walked through the gate.

  The boss room was a cavern so large it had its own weather system. Storm clouds of crystallized mana swirled around a central spire of jagged diamond.

  And sitting on a throne carved from a single mountain peak was the Colossus.

  It stood two hundred feet tall. It wasn’t just a massive golem; it was a geography lesson given sentience and hatred. Its skin was layered adamant. Its eyes were burning rubies the size of houses. And in its chest, a massive, swirling vortex of prism-light pulsed like a heart.

  “Form up!” Lucas roared.

  The fight started with an earthquake.

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  The Monarch stood up and slammed its fist down. Shockwaves tore the ground apart. Lucas met the wave with a [Dome Shield] manifestation of his Domain, straining as the golden light instantly began to crack under the pressure.

  “Spread!” I ordered. “Mobility protocols!”

  Freja went high, riding a lightning rail into the ceiling. Lucas maintained its attention while Silas went for the back, shadow-stepping through the cracks in the floor.

  I stayed mid-range, analyzing. My eyes shifted to gold. [Fate’s Gaze]. I saw lines of probability. Ley lines of potentiality where some of us die. But also many where we convincingly won.

  The Monarch wasn’t slow. For something that size, it moved with terrifying fluidity. It swiped at Freja, its hand moving faster than sound. She dodged, blasting it with a thunderbolt.

  The lightning hit the diamond skin… and vanished.

  “It ate it!” Freja screamed.

  A second later, the Monarch’s other hand glowed. It fired the lightning back at her, amplified.

  “Absorption!” I called out. “It eats elemental energy! Switch to kinetic!”

  Freja adapted instantly. She summoned a cloud, not to strike with lightning, but to drop hailstones the size of cars.

  The ice smashed against the Monarch, cracking the outer shell.

  “Hit the joints!” Silas yelled, appearing behind its knee. He drove his daggers into the gap between armor plates. “Freezing Touch!”

  He didn’t freeze the surface; he froze the lubrication fluid inside the golem’s knee. The joint seized.

  The Monarch stumbled.

  “Now!” Lucas roared, leaping.

  “[Earth-Breaker]!”

  His massive sword slammed into the frozen joint.

  A shard of adamant flew off. The Monarch roared, a sound like grinding tectonic plates.

  It spun, a backhand swatting Lucas out of the air like a fly. He crashed into a crystal pillar, groaning as the stone shattered around him.

  “I’m fine!” he shouted, spitting blood. “Stay focused!”

  We chipped away. Minute by agonizing minute. Lucas tanked hits that would have flattened a city block, his shield glowing white-hot. Freja kept the pressure on from above. Silas bled mana to keep the joints frozen.

  I fired arrows made of condensed silence, pinning the Monarch’s shadows to the floor to slow it down.

  We were slowly but surely whittling it down.

  Then, a change came.

  The Monarch roared. The prism in its chest flared blindingly bright.

  “Constructs!” Lucas warned.

  From the walls of the cavern, hundreds of smaller, jagged crystal spiders poured out. Peak Tier 5 mobs. Fast. Vicious.

  “I’m overwhelmed!” Lucas shouted, his shield buckling under the weight of the spiders swarming him. “I can’t hold the perimeter!”

  The Monarch ignored the others. It locked eyes on me. It calculated the threat. It knew who was commanding the flow of the battle.

  It charged.

  Freja tried to intercept. She threw herself in front of me, channeling everything she had into a desperate storm-wall.

  The Monarch punched through it. Its fist collided with Freja.

  I heard the snap of ribs even over the roar of the storm. She flew backward, hitting the wall with a sickening thud. She didn’t get up. Her aura flickered and died.

  “Freja!” Silas screamed, breaking stealth. He lunged for the Monarch’s eyes, desperate, sloppy.

  The Monarch caught him mid-air. It squeezed. Silas gasped as his Void-armor crunched.

  I stood there. Time seemed to slow.

  On the ridge above, Eren stepped forward. His mana flared — a terrifying white-gold sun. He was going to intervene. He had to. Freja was down. Silas was crushed. Lucas was under a pile of beasts.

  If he stepped in… it would have been so easy.

  “No,” I whispered.

  I looked at the chaos. The broken friends. The impossible odds.

  “We will do this without his help.”

  I closed my eyes.

  I reached into my soul. I ignored the low mana core. I ignored the ache in my meridians. I grabbed the thread of time that represented the last hour.

  It was heavy. Made heavier by the burden of my failures. Failures that I will make sure won’t happen again.

  “Weaver’s Rewind.”

  I pulled the thread.

  The world turned grey.

  The sound of the battle rushed backward — a sucking, violent noise.

  The Monarch’s fist un-punched. Freja flew off the wall, back into the air, her bones knitting instantly. Silas slid out of the giant hand. The spiders retreated into the walls. Lucas undid his jump.

  The clock wound back.

  The grey faded. Color rushed back in.

  We were standing in formation. The Monarch was fully recovered. Spiders were just beginning to crawl out of the cracks.

  I stumbled, blood pouring from my nose. My head throbbed with the paradox.

  But they knew.

  My team didn’t remember the future, but they felt the Rewind. It was a perk of my empowered Soul. They were able to glimpse fragments of memories I could share through our Domains. They felt my aura change. The phantom pain of hits I hadn’t taken yet.

  Lucas looked at me, his eyes wide. He touched his chest, feeling the ghost of a spider-bite. “Anna?”

  Freja shivered, rubbing her ribs. “I just… I just died.”

  “Focus!” I screamed, wiping the blood from my face. “We have one shot! Here is the script!”

  They snapped to attention instantly. No questions. Absolute trust.

  “Lucas!” I ordered. “Ignore the spiders! Use [Sun-Flare]! Blind them! They rely on light-sensors!”

  “Freja! Do not block! Pivot left! The punch comes high! Aim for the floor beneath its feet!”

  “Silas! The Core is exposed when it screams! We hit it then!”

  “Understood!”

  The Monarch roared. The spiders poured out.

  Lucas didn’t turtle. He raised his shield and unleashed a blinding flash of solar mana. The crystal spiders shrieked, their optic nerves fried. They stumbled, confused.

  The Monarch charged me.

  Freja didn’t block. She slid left, narrowly missing the fist that would have killed her. She slammed Mjolnir into the ground, shattering the footing.

  The Monarch stumbled. It screamed.

  The chest plate opened. The Core pulsed.

  “Now!”

  I leapt over everyone, high into the air.

  I drew [Final Word].

  I didn’t need to aim. I had already made this shot in a future that no longer existed.

  “Fate has been Decided.”

  I loosed.

  The arrow sang.

  It flew true, weaving through the chaos, and slammed directly into the exposed Prism Heart.

  The Monarch froze. Its ruby eyes went dark.

  With a sound like a mountain sighing, it crumbled into dust.

  Silence fell over the room.

  We stood there, panting, alive.

  Eren floated down, landing softly. He looked at the dust pile. He looked at me, wiping blood from my lip.

  He didn’t offer to heal me. He didn’t even offer a potion.

  He just nodded. A deep, respectful nod.

  Then, his face suddenly turned into a wide grin.

  “Nice edit, Chrono Hunter.”

  I smiled weakly, leaning on my bow.

  “Floor 50 was too easy! Hopefully 51 is a bit of a challenge!”