You’d think, in a moment like this, that Emrah’s first feeling would have been fear.

  It wasn’t.

  It was pain.

  His legs, already tired from the stairs and the standing, flared with a deep, dragging fire. His muscles seized. His breath came hard, every inhale thin, insufficient.

  Not now, he thought.

  His vision narrowed. The world around him fractured into pieces: the angle of an attacker’s gun, the trembling shoulder of a guest trying to aim, Nilay’s white-knuckled grip on Aslan’s arm.

  Then something else cut through everything.

  Heat.

  It started in his chest, spreading outward. A rush coursed through his veins, burning away the ache like paper under a match. His fingertips tingled. His heart hammered, not with panic, but with a sharp, inhuman focus.

  Adrenaline.

  But not the kind he’d grown used to in tournaments and emergencies.

  This was… more.

  The air thickened.

  Sound stretched.

  The scream of a bullet became a low, drawn-out growl. The crash of glass slowed to a lazy cascade. People’s movements turned viscous, like they were swimming underwater.

  Then Silence.

  Total and absolute.

  Bullets hung in the air.

  Attackers froze mid-step, fingers locked on triggers, eyes fixed on targets they would never reach. Guests crouched halfway to the floor; mouths open in soundless panic. Even the chandelier held its crystals at an unnatural angle.

  Emrah stood alone in a world turned to glass.

  His legs no longer hurt.

  He straightened slowly, aware of every muscle responding, every joint obeying without hesitation. A strange, weightless clarity filled his skull, like someone had cleared the fog from his thoughts.

  He tested his balance.

  Perfect.

  Whatever the chocolate had been, it was working now.

  “I see,” he murmured.

  He moved first to the nearest bullet.

  It shimmered faintly in the suspended air, still pointing at a guest’s temple. Emrah’s hand shifted, not just a touch, but a controlled motion, blending martial arts precision with his cane as an extension of his body. The cane flicked, spun, and pivoted, redirecting the metal mid-flight.

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  A bullet aimed at his sister’s chest now curved toward the attacker’s own head. Another, meant for his father’s throat, twirled around and snapped with lethal precision, as if guided by a ghostly blade.

  Each movement was a symphony of combat: kung fu, taekwondo, and championship sword forms merged into one fluid motion. His footwork was perfect; his posture, unbreakable. His cane became both shield and sword, spinning in arcs, striking the air, nudging death away from those he loved.

  He weaved through frozen threats and terrified family, adjusting balance and leverage. A tiny step forward, a wrist twist, a gentle sweep of his cane, each motion calculated to redirect danger, turning bullets against the shooters.

  Time stretched. Perfection stretched with it.

  When he finished, he stepped back to his starting point, retrieved his glass of vodka, and settled into his red chair.

  He lifted the drink. The liquid made a slow-motion wave inside the glass.

  He smiled.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  Then he instinctively snapped his fingers.

  Time crashed back.

  Bullets completed their paths, but not to the targets they had been meant for. Attackers collapsed, undone by their own fire, crashing into tables, masks, and shards of glass. Guests screamed in real time as the chandelier’s crystals tumbled in a glittering cascade.

  Emrah sat, glass steady in hand, his cane resting against the chair, while everyone around him remained oblivious that every motion he made carried the discipline of martial arts, the precision of swordsmanship, and the control of cane mastery, executed flawlessly, without a hint of strain.

  No one in the hall noticed the precision. They only saw the results: death, survival, and chaos.

  The guards moved in cautiously, inspecting the bodies. Every intruder was dead. Not wounded. Not unconscious. Dead. Bullets had entered skulls at impossible angles. One man lay face-down with a clean hole through his forehead, the exit wound perfectly centered at the back of his head. Another had collapsed backward, throat torn open from the inside, vertebrae shattered by rounds that should never have been able to curve that way. A third had been hit by two bullets, both originally fired by different men, now lodged in his chest like they had been guided there deliberately.

  Yet everyone assumed the opposite of the truth.

  “Everyone clear?” a guard asked.

  “Looks like our rounds got them,” another replied, shaking his head at the carnage. “Must’ve hit just right.”

  No one suspected Emrah. The attackers’ deaths looked chaotic, random, like the hall’s crossfire had finally worked in the family’s favor. Not a single person realized that every fatal trajectory had been orchestrated by a single hand—Emrah’s.

  Emrah himself remained calm, glass in hand, watching the confusion of perception. In his mind, he replayed each frozen second, the way bullets bent like ribbons under his will, the absolute clarity of control. And a part of him shivered at the realization: he had rewritten the rules of life and death—and no one knew.

  Leyla’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Emrah?”

  He looked up.

  She was staring at him—not in fear, not in suspicion—but in confusion. Like she was seeing him and not seeing him at the same time.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said softly.

  He glanced down.

  A thin line of blood ran along his palm where glass had cut him earlier—before time stopped.

  Before he became something else.

  He flexed his hand.

  The pain was distant. Almost irrelevant.

  “I’m fine,” he said, and realized it was true.

  Nilay approached cautiously, eyes darting to the bodies, then back to him. “You didn’t move,” she said. “When it started. You just… sat there.”

  Sahra nodded slowly. “I thought you were in shock.”

  Emir stood and turned to the room. “Everyone who’s not family, leave the hall. Now. Guards, lock the perimeter. I want every camera, every angle, every second reviewed.”

  His gaze lingered on Emrah again, longer this time.

  “We’ll talk later,” Emir said quietly.

  Emrah nodded.

  Inside, something else stirred—something vast and patient, coiled just beyond his awareness. Not hostile. Not kind. Observing.

  He could still feel time, like a presence brushing against his senses. Flowing again, yes—but thinner now. As if it remembered being stopped. As if it knew him.

  He leaned back in the red chair, closing his eyes for half a second.

  Time was never the problem, he realized. I just didn’t know how to hold it.

  When he opened his eyes, resolve had replaced shock.

  Someone had given him this power. Someone had watched him use it.

  And somewhere, in the quiet spaces between seconds, that presence waited—ready to demand its price.

  {Subject Infinity ∞ — has acquired Chrono Freeze}

  {More Observation Required}

  {Standing by for the acquisition of the Mark of Infinity ∞}