Returning to my body, my soul is anything but intact.

As I open my eyes to find myself staring down at my younger self, sitting on his ass with tears drying in his widened eyes.

"Who...are you?" He asks.

"I am you, long in the future...I am you." I respond, seeing no reason to keep the truth to myself, seeing every reason to tell myself reality.

"What..." He was about to ask further, but I knew his question.

"The beast inside you, which ruined your life, which created mine...I've destroyed." I answer, as I watch Alison rush to his side, terrified of me yet still she came.

Bringing me a smile.

As my younger-self glances at her, then me, then his own hands as frostfire still frolicked about his fingers.

"T-Thank you..." He says...

"Don't thank me yet kid, I didn't come here to be your saviour. I never was, nor ever will be a hero." I say bitterly, as both of their young eyes stare up at mine.

Confusion filling them...

Expectation filling them...

Then worry, as I feel the cracks in time take their effect.

Glancing down at myself, I watch as it begins at my feet and tails.

As my body begins to slowly dissipate.

"What is happening to you?" She asks.

"I destroyed the beast," I answer with a smile, "Therefore, I cannot exist. Yet my existence is such a powerful one that, even time shall take some...time, to fix the paradox that is now me."

"Then...you did save me, at the cost of your own..." My younger self says, ever the sharp mind.

Causing me to chuckle coldly, "No, saving you is only a side-effect. Time will continue the same, the same events, just different people. Different beings, yet the outcome is now open. The ending to this story, has yet to be written." I muse, kneeling down before them.

I raise my clawed hand onto Alison's forehead then, "You, and only you will know of what has happened today." I tell her, as screams fill our surroundings, as my blade-ended tendrils of slime splatter the bodies of what was once a group of idiots.

Filling each of their expressions with fear, as they hold onto one another much more tightly now.

As I glance at the sky, or what I know to be simply a simulation of it. "Promise me, you old fool, that your plans for Chaoz remain the same." I ask the creator.

"The Story of Chaoz remains untouched, heroes will be summoned, wars will be fought. Lessons, will be learned." The voice responds, yet only I can hear it.

"No, not untouched." I chuckle, terrifying the young ones before me further with my insanity, as I glance down at my younger self. "Not after this." I whisper, a bitter-sweet smile upon my face.

"You wouldn't..." The voice says.

"That's what they all say." I muse back, as blueish slime forms at my hand, taking the shape of a thin blade.

As I plunge it into his chest, into my younger self's heart.

Hearing Alison's scream then, still I smile.

"Why?" The voice asks, "A happy life, he...you would have had now. With her." The voice tells me.

As I pull away, allowing the boy to collapse to the ground, shivering, clutching not his pierced heart but Alison who held him back.

"I've lived a long, happy life. With a beautiful family, children and a loving wife." I respond to the voice, as I step away from the scene. "This...This ensures the story, this ensures the beginning of it all..."

I sigh as the disappearance of my body quickens, "This ensures, a different outcome."

No response came from the creator.

Only the screams of this horrified and heart-broken child before me, as the boy dies in her arms.

"Now, you can call me hero..."

As my very existence...

"Two lives, for the price of one. I give."

Finally.

Comes to an end-