Hajin pressed Stolen Moment’s activation stud before the decree reached his core. The watch accepted a conscious command while the surrounding formation held its exact shape.
Personal time folded around his body. Blood withdrew beneath unbroken skin, torn rib tissue closed, and the mana spent during that narrow window returned to his pathways.
The battlefield did not move. Both feet remained on Didi’s protected line, the divine blade stayed in his right hand, the demonic blade stayed in his left, and Aegis still faced the Crowned Avatar’s weapon.
Ferra’s pin remained bent inside the incarnation seam, and Loccy continued carrying the foundation mass.
Didi’s boundary held the same ten paces, and the external decree stayed written across the Court law.
[Stolen Moment Activated]
[Personal rewind: 3 seconds]
[External state affected: None]
[Cooldown: 24 hours]
For the returned interval, Hajin’s fingers remembered unburned pathways and his ribs carried no open cut. The blade still occupied the same line before Aegis, and the pressure against his shoulder remained the pressure of the present.
Vella felt the difference through the Spirit bond, and the body had become briefly whole without receiving a drop of healing, while her hands still held the memory of the command trying to split the tissue.
"The watch gives us a clean body without giving us a clean battlefield, and I can map the healthy vessels only until the order returns."
Hajin kept his breath shallow as the healed ribs did not grant a new stance, and the half-kneel remained the position he had chosen before the relic recognized his command.
Aria fixed the before-and-after images beside the same blade angle, pin position, and frost boundary. The two pictures differed only where Stolen Moment had authority to reach.
One clean heartbeat separated the before from the after. Vella felt Hajin’s closed tissue through their Spirit bond and withheld healing, while Aria sampled the command across the old Resonance tattoo.
Phase Lock caught the decree’s frequency during the restored condition of Hajin’s shoulder pathways. The external order remained unchanged, and white-gold words found the same ribs when personal time released him.
The wound reopened along its original line. Blood crossed his armor, the command retained its target definition, and no enemy position or external action repeated with the body.
White-gold text entered the old cut without searching for a new address. The external decree remembered the subject, while Hajin’s restored tissue became the same place it had been ordered to open.
The first blood drop struck the floor where the earlier drops already waited. Nothing around him moved to match the rewind, and Ferra’s timer lost another count during the body-only change.
"The battlefield kept its damage and its positions, and the order needed no second attack to find the wound it already owned."
Hajin tightened Phase Lock around the frequency, and the technique gave him a readable circuit, though every breath through the reopened ribs pulled against the restored shoulder.
"The rewind fulfilled three seconds of personal history, and the order remained outside the watch waiting for its subject."
Hajin held Phase Lock around the returning frequency, and the technique slowed the command enough for Vella to suppress blood loss, though the scarred tissue remained open beneath the armor.
"Your body closed inside the watch, and the decree reopened the same place without changing its wording or source."
Vella’s gold stayed beside the wound rather than entering it. She placed direct Spirit pressure over the surrounding vessels and kept the blood from reaching his waist.
"The sample is stable, but the wound remains active, and ordinary healing would feed the order a second time."
Ferra’s incarnation pin reached the end of its operational interval as the timer continued through Hajin’s rewind, and the team heard each count without losing a second to the relic.
"Boundary closing, and the pin remains inside until the Wedge ejects it or crushes the seam around it."
Incarnation Wedge collapsed around the finite metal, and the pin deformed and left one measurable scar across the Court boundary before pressure threw it toward Didi’s line.
Ferra caught the piece with insulated tongs. Breaker’s Lever remained outside the closing law, and the melted point could not hold another full seam.
Its surviving maker mark preserved the connection between the pin and the decree.
The ejected metal struck Didi’s frost boundary and stopped at the measured distance. Ferra did not let it roll beneath the shell, and the sealed sample beside it remained outside the foreign command.
"The watch did not change the pin’s timer, and the sample carries the only physical trace we can compare after the seam closes."
Aria placed the scar, the maker mark, and the reopened wound in one record. The matching pulse did not prove who built the avatar, though it established how the decree entered Hajin’s body.
"The pin has one useful scar left, and its edge confirms the incarnation boundary entered Hajin’s body."
The safe release direction stayed partially open after Crossed Resonance wounded the boundary. Hajin kept Phase Lock active, accepting the mana cost while the returning decree consumed the small gain Stolen Moment had restored.
No earlier injury vanished as the shoulder remained damaged from prying open the law, the split brace stayed outside the rewind, and the watch did not restore any reserve spent before its three-second window.
"Cooldown locked until tomorrow, and no second activation is available during this battle."
The notice reached every specialist through the shared panel as Loccy shifted her burden without asking Hajin to spend another Ring, Ferra secured the pin, and Juna kept the sky route clear while the party’s safest retreat disappeared.
Eirwen’s captains confirmed that the receiving reservoir remained empty, and their report left the formation unchanged, though it gave the King one less reason to redirect pressure toward the damaged line.
The Crowned Avatar attacked with the same white-gold blade, and Hajin stored the demonic Growth blade to reinforce Aegis with his left hand, then retrieved it after the strike passed.
That trade interrupted Crossed Resonance availability, so the weapon remained singular inside inventory while Hajin refused to pretend one hand could occupy both a shield grip and a cutting path.
Didi held the blood shield while the decree reopened beneath Hajin’s armor. "True Bearer cannot reject the order while Dominion defines Hajin as the direct subject, and my standing can freeze only the royal route."
Her frost tightened around the royal blood without crossing the sampled frequency. The effort drew a sharp breath from Didi, and one Shard dimmed before she forced it back into the boundary.
"The royal route is still separate, and I will hold it while you decide whether the frequency can become a weapon against the source."
"The sampled circuit belongs to me, and the external frequency still needs my body before it can be suppressed."
Silver frost redirected toward the royal shield, and Didi isolated herself and her brother inside one frozen blood boundary, reducing city discharge while retaliation pushed through her four Shards.
"I will give the King room to pin the shell, and the protected line must remain clear while you hold that frequency."
Loccy shifted the foundation burden when the Court boundary contracted as Ferra preserved civilian supports beyond the palace, Rumi and Nari kept the mountain direction marked, and Juna held Daybreak Path around the open sky route.
Vella wrapped a mundane pressure bandage around Hajin’s ribs, and the support compressed surrounding muscles without touching contaminated blood, becoming protection rather than a cure.
"This bandage holds blood outside the order, and it does not close the tissue beneath it."
"Enough support keeps the body functional, and the frequency gives us a path toward the source."
Ferra lifted the sealed pin beside the sample cut from the wound’s edge. Both surfaces answered with the same white-gold pulse, and Aria preserved the match without allowing the command to travel through the record.
"Dominion grammar matches the pin mark, and the boundary entered the flesh through that incarnation connection."
The Crowned Avatar struck again as Hajin stored the demonic blade, braced Aegis, and retrieved the weapon after the physical force passed.
The movement cost time, but it kept the damaged shoulder from carrying another full crossing.
Hajin felt the difference Stolen Moment had created. Ribs that had closed now tore along the same line, while the room kept every fallen drop, every position, and every enemy action.
The watch face went dark inside his palm, and no second press answered, leaving the silence in its housing as a limit the formation could not negotiate.
"The safest escape has a twenty-four-hour cooldown, and the body must survive the rest of this fight without another personal rewind."
Didi held her frost steady as the King pinned the rising shell, the empty reservoir remained unchanged, and no redirected discharge reached the protected line.
Hajin closed his fingers around the sampled relic housing as the decree still spoke through the wound, the pin mark supplied its frequency, and Stolen Moment had removed the only reset they could safely use.