Do you hear it? That tick-tocking. That eternal, maddening tick-tocking.

Time is the first enemy any of us ever faced, one I can never quite seem to beat.

In my travels across the levels of Arcadia, I’ve crossed deserts turned to glass by the harsh glare, and scaled hills that crumble faster than they rise. I’ve traded secrets with gods – or those that profess to be – who are too old to remember their own names. All chasing one lie: that I might outrun Time. What a fool I am.

But here I stand. One of twenty souls bound by some sentiment of belonging to this place, or of rebelling against its lies, and each promised a gamble at glory. Or oblivion. Twenty fighters, nineteen still hoping to outrun time, and me? I’m not just fighting for survival. I’m fighting to prove that Time can be beaten. That fate, for once, might blink first.

Look around. There are those stronger than me. Those smarter than me. Those older and wiser than me. Those with a more youthful vigour than I have. They come with friends, foes, and weapons to take down the most fearsome of enemies. Me? I carry an hourglass. It’s cracked, and it feels like half the sand has spilled with all the scrapes I’ve been in, but the stand still trickles, and time is still ticking.

I can see the smirks of derision but I wouldn’t smirk if I were you. What if I told you this hourglass I carry once belonged to Cronus himself ? What if I stole it from the ruins of a temple that aged a century every sunrise? What if I told you that with it, I’ve slowed time, stolen moments, lost hours in seconds. But each use… it costs. My bones are older than they should be. My heartbeat skips like a scratched record. I shouldn’t have many grains left. But they’ll never run out.

I’ve faced so many enemies inside and outside the ring. None of them understand – this isn’t just a fight for me. It’s a reckoning. Every second is a battlefield. Every breath a betrayal of the Reaper waiting patiently for a moment that will never come.

So, let them at me. Let all of my enemies give it all they’ve got. Every last second of experience they have between them will not be enough. I have now. This moment. This heartbeat.

And when they fall – and they will – I will stand over their fallen bodies, clutching this dying hourglass, and I will whisper the truth.

“Neither you nor I can master Time.”

But you can defy it.

That’s what it means to be a myth. Not to live forever like I’m cursed to – but to be remembered as if you had. And Lambs will etch me into the annals of Arcadian history more than anything else I’ve discovered. More than anything I ever will.

Now come, all of you. Step into the ring. Let the sands fall. Let the clocks break.

I am the eternal last second – and I will strike like midnight.