The Clock Strikes Twice
Chapter 1: The End of Time
Time was never meant to be infinite.
Chronos had watched ages pass like ripples on an endless sea. He had seen empires rise and crumble, stars burn bright and collapse into silence, the ceaseless turning of a world unaware of the unseen hand guiding its rhythm. But for all his power, he had never lived within time. Never tasted the sharp edge of struggle, never felt the weight of a single fleeting moment.
And so, he searched.
Through the fabric of history, he wove his sight, moving through the centuries as a painter studies an unfinished canvas. He saw warriors crowned in blood and glory, poets etching their names into eternity with ink and fire, inventors defying the limits of their age with minds that burned like stars. Each of them magnificent in their own right—yet none of them quite right for him.
Until he found him.
Paschal Beverly Randolph.
A man who walked between worlds. Born of mixed blood in a country at war with itself, he had known both freedom and chains, both reverence and rejection. A healer, a writer, a mystic—he had traveled across continents, gathering knowledge like a nomad gathers the stars. He had touched secrets hidden from most, dared to explore the alchemy of the spirit, the mysteries of the unseen. And yet, for all his brilliance, he remained an enigma to history, a flickering candle in the storm of his time.
Chronos watched him—saw the moments of triumph, the crushing weight of doubt, the endless hunger for something beyond the known. He saw a man whose destiny was unfinished, whose name, though whispered, had never been truly spoken by time.
And in that, Chronos saw possibility.
Yes. This one.
With the final stroke of divine will, he let go. The fabric of his godhood unraveled, folding itself into human flesh, into mortal breath. His existence, once boundless, now fit within the fragile weight of a single body. He felt, for the first time, the slow thrum of a heartbeat, the press of time like a current against his skin.
He opened his eyes.
Gone were the vast corridors of eternity. In their place, the dim glow of lamplight against wooden walls, the scent of old parchment and ink. The weight of a book in his hand. A reflection in a mirror—dark eyes, weary yet alight with a quiet fire, a face worn by travel and thought.
He was no longer Chronos, the god of time.
He was Paschal Beverly Randolph.
And the adventure had just begun.