Chapter one

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The sand was slowly running down towards the bottom of the hourglass, some of it seeping through the cracks of different sizes that now had come to adorn it, over the many millions of years since it had been created. The day where Earth, or Terra was created. Celo Hora could still very clearly remember how it looked, when she first laid her eyes on it. Now, it a mere shadow of its once glorious self. It was almost, like it had been put aside for a very long time, in a corner forgotten, and thus having collected dust as well as deteriorated as it was not taken care of, only leaving behind the impression that it once had been a truly majestic sight. It saddened her to see it in this condition, knowing that she could do nothing about something that wasn’t created by an outside force. Let the world go its ‘natural’ course, you could say.  

 

Celo sighed from beneath the hood of her midnight blue cape, turning away from the hourglass of Terra and made her way towards the staircase that led up to the surface of Aetas. The staircase was old and worn out from the many million years of use, many of the steps slippery as well as rounded, parts of the stone steps also having giant cracks across them, leaving some places with loose stones, that you had to watch out for that you didn’t step upon them as it could result in you crashing down the steps. They would need to get the steps fixed soon, however as there were worlds that would exist much longer than Terra, the fixing of these steps were not the highest on the priority list, even if the place was desperately in need of some renovation. Celo cursed under her breath, as she stumbled over one of the numerous steps, almost dropping her glowcrystal; the only means of light she had down here. She could faintly see the outline of the door at the end of the stairs from the light granted by the glowcrystal. Neither speeding up or slowing down, she made her way towards it, being more careful than before as to where she stepped because of her previous stumbling upon the steps.

 

The door was covered with golden markings, silver making its way in on the edges of the door, many of the markings were impressive flourishes that spread about freely, as if they were a plant that had spread like wildfire all over the earth that was the door. Celo pushed open the door, leaning up against it to use her body weight as a form of help. Outside, it was nighttime in Aetas, the lampposts with glowcrystals in them illuminating the path before her that would later spread out into many other smaller and bigger paths. She turned off her own glowcrystal, not needing it any longer with the lampposts serving as light here instead. It was the 4th day of night in Aetas, Celo wished that it would, at least soon, become daytime again or maybe the time in between. The light always seemed to bring her a form of peace, joy she guessed you could say, everything seemed so peaceful, so… positive, happy, whereas the darkness only served to remind her of everything that was bad, of everything negative.

 

A gentle breeze made its way through the air, the grass around the paths, mainly in silver, swaying from it. The fresh air worked as a nice refreshment for Celo compared to the humid climate down in the hourglass room of Terra, as she walked along the path towards the center of Aetas where Creo Vita was located. Her home was located around 50 meters from the other side of Creo Vita, it was quite simple and maybe a bit small, but as she was the only tenant the house was by all means a good size, where she didn’t feel squeezed within the confines of her home and the amount of cleaning needed wasn’t much, or should she say, it wasn’t a huge area to clean that seemed so immeasurable that it completely discouraged her from cleaning it. Though to say she was a very orderly person would be a misjudgement.

 

From anywhere in Aetas, the large walls that kept the people from Nusquam abay could be seen. While the walls were heavily guarded by Watchers of Time, that did not have a world to watch over, Celo couldn’t help but think that it would be so easy for someone to break inside the walls. There hadn’t been any intruders for a very long time, in fact there had been none that had even tried to break in while Celo had lived, thus the guards had long ago stopped really paying attention and actually guarding the place instead of just spending a day there, talking with fellow Watchers of Time. None believed that anyone would dare to try and break inside the walls, and that was what made it seem so easy for Celo for someone to break in. Because no one expected it. It was only a matter of time before someone actually breached the walls. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be very soon that happened though.

 

The outline of Lacus Mundus was in the periphery of her vision now, the altar Creo Vita standing proud as Celo came closer, its columns reaching up towards the skies. She would be home soon, Celo could already hear the calling from the safe and warm confines of it, signifying the end of her day. She crossed the bridge that led to Creo Vita, continuing her way forwards and crossed the bridge on the other side of the shrine, as she had crossed many other bridges during her day. She hadn’t seen a lot of Watchers of Time as she made her way home, but she wrote it off as her being one of the last ones to retire for the day, the duty of others having already started some time ago.

 

While thinking, she had arrived in front of the door to her home, to her safe zone as she also liked to refer to it by. She fished out her keys, from one of the inside pockets in her cloak, and unlocked the door to her home, turning the knob, she went inside. Inside, she took off her cloak and threw it over her shoe shelf, bending down to take off her shoes that she proceeded to push towards the shoe shelf. She was too tired to actually place them where they belonged. Her home was sparsely decorated, not having having a lot of special or personal for that matter decorations around, opting to a more simple style. Celo exited the hallway and went inside the bathroom, where she proceeded to splash her face with water, looking up in the mirror to see if her eye bags were obvious.

 

She had raven black hair that reached halfway down her back, pale skin which instead of gaining a tan tended to get sunburned instead, when she had been in the sun for a bit too long, without any means of protection against it, light brown eyes that seemed to change colour at the periphery of the iris to green, slightly red lips, and a nose on which she had a small scar that hadn’t disappeared. How she got the scar was unbeknownst, even to her, as far as she knew it was already there when she was born a Watcher of Time.

 

Celo often wondered, if Watchers of Time once had been one of the inhabitants of the many different worlds, and when they used up their time in said world instead of travelling to Nusquam, like most souls do, they were chosen to become Watchers of Time and therefore appeared as they did at the time of their ‘death’ as humans call it, keeping all of their traits from before, physical as well as psychological. It could explain her scar, the diversity of how old Watchers of Time looked, the diversity in looks going from Watchers that looked simply like talking animals to those like Celo who could pass for being human or other humanoid creatures, but then again she could be completely wrong about her theory.

 

Celo’s eye-lids were heavy as she went out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, undressing herself the moment she made it inside her bedroom. She quickly scooted under her duvet, having already turned off the lights. Hopefully, sleep would come and take her soon.

 

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Celo woke up to the sunshine hitting her square in the face, groaning she turned over to the other side to see what the clock was. Most, Watchers from Aetas kept time with the help of an hourglass clock, its sand runned down to the bottom so slow that it was exactly 24 hours. The watch of a kind automatically turned upside down at midnight, signifying the beginning of the new day. Right now, it was barely 6 o’clock in the morning, and Celo found it tempting to just stay in bed for a few hours more. Though, she could imagine the elders wouldn’t be very happy about that decision from her side.

 

Celo opted for staying in bed for another 5 minutes before finally rolling out of bed, feeling exhausted as she went through her wardrobe to find something to wear. A pair of black loose pants, somewhat akin to humans sports pants or whatever they were meant to be, as well as a simple plain white shirt with a top underneath it was what the decision fell on. Taking the clothes, she went into the bathroom, taking a bath using one of her warmth-energy crystals to heat up the water as it hit her back. The shower didn’t take her very long, it never did either, stepping out she used a magic rune to dry herself and proceeded to get dressed. Why they hadn’t invented a rune that could magically do all cleaning too, was beyond her it would make life so much easier. She quickly put on her boots and cloak before going outside, intending to head to the pond of Terra. Celo didn’t even make it halfway to the bridge to Creo Vita before she spotted pink hair in the periphery of her vision.

 

“Morning, Cece! Heading to your world pond?” the pink haired person greeted excitedly, jumping up to give Celo a hug effectively sending Celo stumbling a few steps from the impact. The pink haired person, now revealed to be a girl, was Gaudium Liber. Gaudium Liber looked like a small girl with big pink eyes that matched her hair, a small petite button nose, as well as a small mouth, topped off with the ears and tail of a squirrel. She was the only one that called Celo, Cece as a form of endearment.

 

Gaudium Liber was usually a very positive, cheery, if slightly forgetful girl who had befriended Celo not long after Celo appeared at the shrine of Creo Vita. Celo guessed, she liked the girl so much because she reminded her of the daytime. She was bright, happy, positive, cheerful and many other things that for Celo symbolized the day. Gaudium tended to have a rosy outlook on life and always saw the good in things or people, or saw something worthy of sympathy, therefore it was especially depressing when her rosy tinted glasses were taken off. Usually, that would only happen when one of her worlds perished, or when she wanted to help someone or something but could do anything to fix said problem that something or someone had.

 

Celo nodded, having regained her balance,“Yes, I have to do the daily check-up. Don’t you like have anything you’re supposed to do, right now, Gau?” Gaudium had insisted, that Celo found a nickname for her, it had ended up with Celo simply calling her the first part of her name, not knowing what else to call her.

 

“You trying to get rid off me, Cece? If so, you’re gonna have to try a bit harder than that,” Gaudium laughed, holding one of her small hands in front of . “But anyways, not currently. Well, not as far as I know,” Gaudium said, the last part coming out more as a comment directed at herself than Celo.

 

“What? Me? Get rid of you? Even, if I tried to get rid of you, you would still be clinging to me as if your life depended on it,” Celo joked, chuckling slightly already ready to brace for the hit that would surely come, once Gaudium registered what Celo had just said.

 

“Hey! Rude,” Gaudium exclaimed, hitting Celo lightly trying her best to look offended that Celo would insinuate something like that, though bursting into a laugh shortly after that together with Celo. “You don’t mind me tagging along with you on the check-up, do you, Cece?” Gaudium questioned, looking up at Celo who towered over her. “I think, I’ll die of boredom soon, if I have to go around loitering for much longer.”

 

“Hmm, I don’t know, I’ll have to consider that, I’ll get back to you when I’ve made my decision,” she said, another exclamation of ‘hey’ as well as a punch coming from Gaudium. “Yeah, yeah sure, It’s not like you’d listen to me if I said no anyway,” she said smiling.“You know me too well,” Gaudium joked, as she and Celo crossed the second bridge already having made it over the first while talking. Gaudium continued talking with Celo, Gaudium doing the most of the talking as per usual while Celo did the listening. It was a wonder to Celo, how someone could be so cheery and completely awake in the morning, of all times to be cheery and completely awake. Celo had made a brief comment, about how the form for the month observations of Terra had taken longer than usual, when she noticed that Gaudium wasn’t besides her any longer. Turning around, she saw Gaudium frozen to the ground slightly behind her, eyes much wider than normally and her face looking slightly pale.“Um, I just remembered something important, I have to do,” Gaudium said quickly, looking behind herself shortly as she slowly started to walk backwards. “Um, I’ll have to go now, its very important. Yeah um, hope you don’t mind, sorry. Um, bye bye!” Gaudium said awkwardly, waving before running away as quickly as her legs could carry her.

Celo continued watching her until she had disappeared from the horizon, a smile plastered on Celo’s face. She shaked her head, wondering how Gaudium survived on a day to day basis with a memory like that, before turning around to continue towards the pond of Terra. She wasn’t very far away from it now, probably only 5 minutes at most. That’s when she heard it. The horn that would only be used if an intrusion happened. If someone breached the walls of Aetas.

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A/N: So just so you know, Baekhyun won't appear right away. Which should kind of be obvious, since he lives on Terra, but he should be introduced somewhere between the 2nd and 4th chapter.(Most likely the 3rd, but who knows.)

Please, comment and tell me your opinion, so I can improve the story! ^^ (Are there some major mistakes for an example, or is there something that needs to be cleared up?)

I hope you guys will enjoy the story! ^_^