Word Count: 373

He didn’t know exactly when he acquired the power but one night, he was probably around the age of five; he woke from a recurring nightmare that he could never quite remember. He guessed that the time was around midnight. A full moon hung in the dark sky, watching an unsettlingly quiet night from its position high above the mortal world.

Tao walked to his window, shivering as his bare feet met with the cold floor. It was a spring night but the air was stiflingly still with no sign of the usual vernal breezes. The plum blossoms did not even quiver as heavy petals fluttered from expiring buds. It was then that Tao noticed that the petals were not descending from the branches, but rather were trapped in the act of blowing away in a light wind. It was almost as if Tao were looking out over a stilled world, trapped in a single second of its existence. Tao looked down at the river slithering below the small stone bridge below his chambers. Even the burbling stream was halted in its eddies and flows.

Tao’s heart was racing and he was gripping his windowsill so tightly his knuckles had turned white. He could not tell whether he was thrilled or terrified. The world had ceased spinning on its axis, leaving his as the lone entity still moving about a stopped time. He could do anything he wanted when the world was like this. This fact thrilled him. The terrifying bit was that Tao had no idea how he would return time to the way it should be. He did not know how long this frozen spell on the world would last or whether he would be trapped in this second for all of time. It then occurred to him that it could all just be a dream. Mayhaps if he just went back to sleep, he would actually wake up and the world would have righted itself.

The boy crept back to bed across the cold floor once again and clambered into bed. He closed his eyes tightly and just hoped that the next time he opened them, the zephyrs would have returned and the petals would continue on their downward journey

A/N: It's just the prologue but I hope you are interested in reading more! I'm not sure exactly what this is going to turn out like but it's going to have components from Persona 3 and a variety of other random sources.