The Chronophage’s Gift.

Dr. Tunde Adebayo had spent his life wrestling with time. Not in a poetic or philosophical sense, but in the raw, biological reality of it. As the architect of REGEN-9, a cellular regeneration therapy, he had defied nature itself. His creation didn’t merely slow aging—it obliterated it, resetting the body entirely.

It was the ultimate renewal. Again and again.

At first, REGEN-9 seemed like a miracle. But time is not something you can cheat without consequence.

Cycle One: The First Rebirth.

Tunde hesitated to take his own treatment. He had observed its transformative effects on the ultra-wealthy—billionaires, aristocrats, visionaries. Their once-frail bodies emerged anew, their minds sharpened, their vitality restored. They became embodiments of perfection, walking proof of his genius.

“You should try it,” urged Adanna Okoro, his closest colleague and the one person who still saw the flawed man beneath his brilliance. “You made this, Tunde. Why should you be the one left behind while time saves the rest of us?”

Adanna’s words cut deep. His steady surgeon’s hands, once a symbol of his precision, had grown unsteady. Memories, once vivid, now blurred at the edges. He had spent decades watching his body rebel against him, a betrayer to his ambitions.

So he took it. And for the first time in years—perhaps decades—he felt alive. Stronger. Sharper. Limitless.

But the nights were different. When London was quiet and still, he swore he heard whispers in the shadows.


Cycle Five: The Woman in Gold.

By his fifth cycle, Tunde began to notice subtle, unnerving changes. His handwriting transformed, the letters twisting into forms unfamiliar even to himself. Foods he had cherished his entire life turned bland, their memories distant echoes. Though his intellect burned as brightly as ever, his passion for discovery had dimmed. The fire that had once consumed him was now just an ember.

And then, he began seeing her.

The woman in gold appeared only at the edges of his vision, her presence haunting yet intangible. She wore a robe that shimmered in gold and blue, an ethereal figure that seemed to ripple like water. He caught glimpses of her in reflective surfaces—mirrors, windows, even the polished instruments of his lab.

One night, as he turned off the lab’s lights, she spoke.

“You’re unraveling,” she said. Her voice was calm, yet heavy with the weight of truth. “You’ve broken the contract of time.”

He turned sharply, his heart pounding—but she was gone.

When he told Adanna, she listened carefully.

“Every cycle, your brain restructures itself,” she explained. “The neural pathways you’re rebuilding… they’re not just restoring. They’re rewriting you. Piece by piece.”

He laughed, dismissing her warning. But deep down, he felt it—the nagging sense that something in him was shifting.



Cycle Ten: The Everkin.

By his tenth cycle, Tunde no longer recognized himself. The memories of his past felt as though they belonged to another. Laughter, once an instinctive joy, now felt rehearsed. The melodies of his favorite songs stirred no emotion, only a hollow recognition of what they had once meant to him.

Meanwhile, those who had undergone REGEN-9 began to evolve into something new. Calling themselves the Everkin, they formed an exclusive society that thrived on efficiency, unburdened by nostalgia, grief, or even love. Fearless and detached, they had stripped themselves of everything that once defined humanity.

And Tunde? He was one of them. And yet… not.

He wandered among the Everkin, observing their faultless brilliance. But he felt no kinship. As he watched them move and speak with perfect precision, he felt an ache, a hollow void that REGEN-9 could not fill.

Was this what he had fought for?


Cycle Fifteen: The Price of Humanity.

Adanna, now graying and lined, had refused her second cycle. Time had etched itself into her, and Tunde found her natural beauty deeply unsettling—because he would never possess it again.

“You don’t see the world as we do anymore,” she said softly during one of their rare conversations. “You’ve lost something, Tunde. And I think, deep down, you know it.”

He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. The words caught in his throat, weighed down by a truth he could no longer ignore.

When Adanna laughed, it stirred something in him. A flicker of recognition. But his own laughter? It felt alien, a hollow mimicry of an emotion long forgotten.

The woman in gold haunted him now, not just in reflections, but in his dreams. Her warnings echoed within him, growing louder with every passing cycle.

“You are unraveling.”

For the first time in centuries, he was afraid.

Cycle Twenty: The Bargain.

He found her at the river’s edge, standing under the soft glow of moonlight. This time, she was real—no longer a phantom haunting the periphery of his life. The water shimmered, reflecting the golden hues of her robes.

“I know who you are,” he said. His voice was steady, but his hands trembled.

She nodded. “And I know what you seek.”

He had spent lifetimes defying time, but at what cost? The man he had been—the man who had loved, who had feared, who had created—was gone.

“I want to return,” he whispered. “I want to feel it again. To feel anything again.”

The woman extended her hand. The moment her fingers touched his skin, memories surged through him. Laughter and tears. Love and grief. Loss and hope. The weight of time rushed back, crashing into him like a tidal wave.

His body aged in an instant. Wrinkles deepened, his hair turned silver, and his heart—fragile yet full—beat with the rhythm of mortality.

When he turned, Adanna was there. Her eyes, filled with both wonder and recognition, met his.

“Tunde?” she whispered.

He reached for her hand, and in her touch, he felt warmth. Realness. Humanity.

For the first time in centuries, he smiled.

Epilogue: The Last Cycle.

The Everkin remained in their gleaming towers, untouched by time, their perfection a brittle illusion. Unknown to them, their reality had already begun to fray. Without the weight of time, without the bonds of mortality, they were hollow.

But Tunde and Adanna? They walked hand in hand through the streets of London, each step a quiet rebellion against eternity.

Tunde embraced the aches in his joints, the deepening lines on his hands, the fleeting nature of life itself. Time pressed upon him gently now, not as an enemy, but as a companion.

The others may live forever.

But he—

He would die to live.