Chapter 13: The Cycle of Predation

Chapter 13: The Cycle of Predation

The silent standoff in the ruined church shattered. The familiar, crushing pressure slammed into Sara from all sides, a cosmic vise tightening around her existence. The world dissolved not into a smear, but into a violent explosion of light and static. The shriek of the thwarted Chronovores, the patient stillness of Milton’s form, the cold stones of the altar—all were annihilated in the roaring torrent of the jump. This time, the passage felt longer, more abrasive, as if something was being scraped away from her very essence.

She landed on something soft that gave way with a rustle of dry paper and a soft thud. The transition was jarringly gentle on her body but deafening to her senses. The world snapped into focus with an unnerving, fluorescent hum and the smell of old paper, floor wax, and dust. She had fallen from the vortex into a nest of discarded newspapers in a narrow aisle, the impact thankfully cushioned.

Sara pushed herself up, her entire body screaming from the now-constant agony of its own disintegration. The deep fissure on her bicep was a raw, black chasm, and a new crack had forked across the back of her left hand. The tremor in her limbs was so violent now that her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

She looked around, her mind struggling to process the abrupt shift in reality. She was in a library. Rows upon rows of tall, wooden shelves stretched into the distance, bathed in the flat, sterile light of long fluorescent bulbs. A few scattered students with oversized headphones and strangely feathered hair sat at wooden carrels, utterly oblivious to the temporal refugee who had just materialized in their midst. The architecture, the fashion, the very quality of the light—it all screamed 1980s.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she wasn't in immediate, mortal danger. There was no sign of the hunters. The static in her head had receded from a roar to its baseline, a constant, grating hum that she was beginning to accept as the new sound of silence. This was a reprieve. A precious, fleeting island of calm in a chaotic ocean. But for how long? Minutes? Seconds?

A new desire, sharper and more urgent than the simple need to hide, burned through her pain. Understanding. The scene in the church replayed in her mind: Milton, standing between her and the other ravenous things. He wasn't protecting her. He was claiming her. But why? Why the patience? What was he waiting for?

Panic gave way to a cold, desperate purpose. She was in a library. A repository of human knowledge. The answers had to be here somewhere. It was an insane, impossible long shot, but it was the only shot she had.

She stumbled out of the aisle, trying to make her violent shudders look like a simple shiver from a cold. A large directory stood near a central desk. She scanned the categories, her trembling finger tracing the words. Where would you even begin to look for information on a monster that shouldn't exist? Physics? Metaphysics? Folklore?

Her mind latched onto the one word Milton had used to justify his insane plan: Paradox.

She found the section on theoretical physics. The books were dense, intimidating tomes filled with equations that were meaningless to her. Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, Spacetime Continuum. She pulled a few from the shelves, her shaking hands barely able to manage their weight. She flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning for keywords: paradox, causality, temporal loops. It was all academic, sterile, and offered no explanation for the living, breathing nightmares that were hunting her.

This was a waste of time. The pressure behind her eyes could start building at any moment. She had to think like Milton. He wasn't a scientist. He was a salesman who had stumbled into something ancient and terrible. His knowledge wouldn't have come from a physics textbook. It would have come from somewhere darker. Somewhere on the fringe.

She returned to the directory. This time her eyes landed on a different section: Occult & Esoteric Studies.

It was a smaller, dustier section tucked away in a corner of the upper floor. The air here felt heavier, the silence more profound. She ran her fingers along the spines, the titles a litany of madness and forgotten beliefs: Alchemical Treatises, Goetic Rituals, Theories of the Astral Plane. It felt like the right place.

And then she saw it.

It wasn't a grand, leather-bound grimoire. It was a thin, unassuming volume with a plain black cover, bound like a university dissertation. The title, stamped in faded silver lettering, sent a jolt of ice through her veins: The Chronovore Anathema: A Study of Self-Consuming Paradox Entities. The author’s name was Dr. Alistair Finch.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. Chronovore. Time Eater.

With trembling hands that threatened to tear the fragile pages, she opened the book. It wasn't printed like a normal text; it was a reproduction of a typewritten manuscript, complete with corrections and frantic, handwritten notes in the margins. It was a madman’s life’s work.

She forced her blurry eyes to focus, to read the dense, obsessive prose.

…they are not creatures in the biological sense, nor are they demons from some theological hell. They are knots of impossibility given predatory form. A Chronovore, or ‘Time Eater’ as the ancients termed them, is born when a unique temporal artifact is forced into a state of absolute paradox. The resulting rupture does not summon a monster; it creates one. The soul of the transgressor becomes the seed, their physical form the vessel, for a new, self-sustaining wound in the fabric of spacetime…

Sara’s breath hitched. This was it. This was Milton’s becoming, described in cold, academic horror. She read on, her terror mounting with every word.

…like any wound, a Chronovore seeks to heal, but its very nature prevents this. Its paradoxical existence is inherently unstable, constantly threatening to unravel. To sustain its form, it must feed. It is drawn to disruptions in the timeline—the ripples left by time travelers, the energy shed by other temporal anomalies. It consumes this raw temporal energy to patch the holes in its own being, to momentarily stabilize its impossible state…

The hunger of the other creatures. The way they were drawn to her. It all clicked into place. They were starving, and she was a walking feast. But it was the next passage, a chapter titled ‘Predation Cycles’, that made the world fall away.

…while a Chronovore will feed on any temporal energy it can find, they are not mindless scavengers. More experienced entities, those that retain a sliver of their original cunning, understand that there is a hierarchy of sustenance. Their choicest prey, the most potent and nourishing meal, is a nascent Chronovore. An unmoored soul, freshly severed from their timeline, is a beacon of raw paradoxical energy. The process of their physical and temporal degradation—the ‘cracking’ of their form—releases a font of power that can sustain an older Chronovore for decades, even centuries…

The book slipped from her numb fingers and fell to the floor with a soft thud.

The pieces slammed together in her mind, forming a picture of such profound, calculated evil that it stole the air from her lungs.

Milton didn't just abandon her. He hadn't just used her as a delivery mechanism for his own transformation. This was the final, most hideous part of his plan. He had severed her from time, not as a byproduct of his selfishness, but with deliberate, chilling intent. He had set her adrift, knowing full well what would happen to her. He had created his own personal, mobile food source.

The scene in the church replayed with horrifying clarity. He hadn't been chasing off jackals. He was a farmer, tending to his crop. He was protecting his future meal, letting her wander through time, letting her body break down, letting her paradoxical energy ripen and swell. He was waiting for her to reach the peak of her decay, the moment before she either transformed or disintegrated completely, to harvest her.

He wasn't just a monster. He was a cultivator. And she was the cattle he was fattening for the slaughter.

The static in her head suddenly spiked, screaming from a low hum to a piercing shriek. The familiar, nauseating pressure slammed into the back of her skull. The lights of the library began to flicker and smear.

The jump was coming.

She was trapped, not just in time, but in a cycle of predation designed by the very man who had promised her salvation. Her final, desperate hope for understanding had only delivered a more perfect, complete despair. As the world began to tear itself apart around her, the last thing she saw was the open page of the book on the floor, its terrible knowledge burning itself into her mind.