The space around him rumbled violently.
This was no mere flight across the atmosphere or journey between stars. Inside the dark, boundless corridor of time, the laws of nature shattered into fragments of light. Flashes of dimensional lines and fragments of the past lashed against Chronos's colossal form, trying to tear apart his golden scales under the pressure of time's cycles—pressure capable of annihilating a civilization.
Yet the ancient dragon did not budge an inch.
His enormous wings continued beating hard, cleaving through the raging current of the past. His brightly glowing golden eyes never left a single point: a thin white line that stretched endlessly ahead, guiding his soul backward through the thousands of years that had passed.
'Wait for me,' Chronos said inwardly. 'I'll return to the time before you were tormented by old age.'
Chronos was not searching for a new life or reincarnation in the future. He was turning back fate. He was returning to the past—to a timeline where the woman had only just begun her life in this world.
Hundreds of years of time travel seemed to race through the void. To Chronos, the concepts of hours and years had melted into the silence of the corridor of time. He allowed his ancient energy to drain away in order to turn back the wheel of his own era.
Until, at last...
SRAAK!
The white line plunged sharply, piercing a glittering curtain of the past. Chronos beat his wings faster, breaking through the temporal rift with a tremendous shock wave.
BOOM!
Blinding light greeted his eyes.
When Chronos's golden eyes adjusted once more, he found himself floating above the skies of a world he knew all too well. Green land stretched far below him, blue oceans reflected the warmth of the sunlight, and the highest mountain—the site of his lonely lair long ago—stood majestically in the distance, with no trace of a grave at its summit.
He had succeeded. He was in the past.
Chronos focused his vision. The white line he had followed through time now plunged downward, connecting directly to the womb of a pregnant woman in a human settlement.
'You haven't been born into this world yet...' Chronos breathed. A strange warmth blossomed once more inside his cold chest. 'In this past, you'll only just be beginning everything.'
Yet the dragon knew he could not simply reveal his massive form near a human settlement. The presence of a being his size would only trigger disaster and alter history before its time.
SRAAK!
Chronos controlled the ancient energy within his body. His enormous, mountain-sized body slowly shrank, compacting until he was only as large as an ordinary house. His scales absorbed the surrounding light, concealing his presence.
He dove downward and landed in the middle of a dense, isolated wilderness—an off-limits region of the past filled with enormous ancient trees that ordinary humans had never touched.
THUD.
His feet touched the wet earth, sending a faint tremor through the trees.
'A few months until you're born... and twenty years for you to grow,' Chronos thought as he curled his small body among the roots of the enormous trees.
He slowly closed his eyes. The journey to reverse time had drained most of his strength.
'I'll sleep here for twenty years,' he decided as his consciousness began to fade. 'After that, I'll go find you again... and ask you everything.'
Time in that past rolled on in the silence of the forest.
One year... three years... five years...
Chronos's dragon body was slowly concealed by green moss and fallen leaves piling over his stone-gold scales. He blended into the ancient forest landscape like an ancient statue forgotten by time.
Until the ninth year...
CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.
The sound of scraping branches and hurried little footsteps shattered the silence of the forbidden region.
They were not the footsteps of mounted soldiers. Nor were they those of hunters pursuing a wild beast. The footsteps were light and irregular, filled with the innocence of a small child.
Chronos's eyelids lifted ever so slightly.
An uninvited guest had trespassed into his domain.
A little girl emerged from behind the dense bushes. She was perhaps only eight or nine years old. Her outer dress was dirty with earth, her golden hair slightly disheveled beneath a layer of dry leaves, and she was panting from running.
Yet there was no fear on her little face.
Instead, when the little girl spotted the house-sized dragon lying among the tree roots, her eyes lit up. A powerful sense of familiarity suddenly pierced Chronos's chest.
SRAAK!
Chronos immediately activated his soul vision. And sure enough—a thin, transparent white line stretched between them, connecting the dragon's heart directly to the little girl's chest.
This was the same woman from the mountaintop. In her small form, in the past.
Chronos froze where he was. He did not move a single inch, stunned that the woman had somehow gotten lost and found him nine years early in the middle of this remote forest. Only his golden pupils moved slowly, following the little girl's every movement.
"Found you!" the little girl cried in a bright, clear voice.
A cheerful laugh escaped her tiny lips. Without hesitation, without the slightest fear of the ancient predator before her, the little girl ran closer.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
She leaped over a fallen tree root, ran her small body straight into Chronos's scaly snout, and wrapped both tiny arms around the dragon's nose.
"Haha! What kind of creature is this? You're so cold!" the girl laughed as she hugged Chronos's face tightly.
Chronos held back his hot breath so it would not burn the child's frail body. The dragon's mind filled with bewilderment.
'Even when she was little, when we first met...' Chronos thought awkwardly. 'She wasn't afraid of me at all. Did she get lost? Why is she only laughing?'
Yet Chronos's thoughts abruptly stopped when the little girl released her embrace, patted the golden scales on his cheek, and looked up directly into his enormous pupils.
"Hey," the little girl called in an irresistibly adorable, innocent tone. "What kind of creature are you, anyway? Why are you lying alone in this creepy forest?"
Chronos felt a faint jolt inside his heart.
She spoke. Her voice was clear, rumbling softly through the forest's silence.
The enormous dragon exhaled slowly, sending the leaves around him drifting gently to the ground. For the first time in his life, Chronos decided to respond to the human before him.
'I am a dragon,' Chronos's voice echoed directly inside the little girl's head through telepathy—a voice old and heavy, yet filled with caution. 'And my name... is Chronos.'
The little girl blinked twice, looking startled as the unfamiliar voice echoed inside her mind. But the fear lasted only a second before her face was once again adorned with a broad smile.
"A dragon? No dragon is gold like this!" the little girl giggled, thoroughly unconvinced by the ancient creature's claim. "But your name is cool! Chronos!"
The little girl patted Chronos's dragon chest once more with her tiny, warm hand.
"Then starting today, I'm going to call you Uncle Chronos!"