Chronos

Ky opened his eyes to find himself floating in a completely empty plane of existence, one reminiscent of outer space. His body felt cold. The hair on his skin and head felt as if it were flowing through water.

The first thing that came to his mind was 'Where am I?' though even more thoughts began flooding his mind. He thought of his friends and his brother. He could still barely process that he was murdered by his own brother, though he wondered what exactly it was that Waller did to him to make him do such a thing. He knew it was Ken under that armor, but at the same time, it wasn't really Ken. Not anymore.

Besides Ky, the only other things filling up space were strange pieces of floating glass. Inside each piece of glass debris, Ky could see himself. However, it was not his reflection that he was seeing.

In one of these glass shatters, Ky saw himself and his friends sitting by a fountain at a school he did not recognize. They were each wearing brown and white uniforms, appearing as if there was nothing in the world bothering them.

Through another glass shard, he could see himself with his family, seemingly on a trip together somewhere tropical. He and Ken were still kids, running along the beach as their parents followed behind them.

There were hundreds of these glass shards, all showing Ky at different stages of his life. Some of these were recognizable memories of his, whereas some seemed as if they were memories of a completely different version of himself...

'Are these... Alternate timelines?' Ky thought. Having studied both theories and fictional stories that spoke of time travel, Ky was quick to figure out exactly what it was that he was seeing.

"Precisely." A voice spoke, sounding both masculine and feminine at the same time, almost as if there were two voices speaking at once.

Ky turned his head to see a humanoid floating alongside him with their hands behind their head. Their skin was ethereal, looking as if it were completely made of light. "You're the first visitor I've had here in a while. The last two were this married couple named Kelly and Karson Thatcher."

"Those are my parents! Where are they now!?"

"The afterlife of course." The deity spoke with an oddly casual cadence, almost as if they and Ky were friends; they didn't seem godly in the least.

"Is this not the afterlife?"

"No, sir. We are in the Chronosphere. Think of it as... hmm.. The realm of time. I'm the god of this realm, Chronos. I watch over those with time-warping abilities like yours. My job is to make sure you don't ruin the very, very fragile thread of time. Once a lucky shmuck with the ability to warp time itself dies, they visit this place before being sent off to the afterlife. However... you are an oddity, Ky Thatcher. I'm not here to send you to the afterlife."

"What do you mean? Am I going to... Hell?" Ky asked with wide eyes.

"No! Oh, God, no!" Chronos laughed, grabbing Ky by the shoulder before turning Ky's body to look into a shard of glass. "See that over there. That's your timeline. Notice anything strange."

Ky and Chronos looked through a glass shard as time was constantly reversing from the point where Ky seemingly died. "The moment you died, your corpse started to reverse time. I've never seen anything like this before. Since you are alive, I cannot send you to the afterlife. Once this oddity ends, I will send your soul back to your body."

"So... I'm immortal?" Ky sounded devastated upon coming to this realization. Though to many, immortality may sound like awesome news, Ky saw it as a curse more than anything. "So when I'm old and die of natural causes, then what?"

"Don't worry, you aren't immortal. Your soul simply refused to die here. As I said, this is new to me, but the soul is very powerful Ky. The soul is the you that pilots that flesh mech you call a body. Even when your body dies, your soul still lives. Since you have the power to reverse time, your soul did just that and revived your body. Though I assume there are likely drawbacks to this..."

"So as long as I have the will to live, I won't die?"

"This is just my theory, but yes. I've been watching you, Ky Thatcher. You really love your friends and brother. That must be why your soul refused to die. You want to save them, don't you?"

Ky nodded as he looked through the glass shard. He and his friends were at the arcade, moments after they took their group photo.

Ky's posthumous time reversal was starting to slow down, moving at the rate time usually moved, just in reverse. "Looks like something is happening. I think your soul has chosen a place to reenter your body. I guess I'll see ya later, Ky Thatcher. I'm sure it's only a matter of time." 

Chronos laughed, but Ky simply looked at them with indifferent eyes. "Get it?  Time? You mortals are no fun."

In an instant, Ky found himself sitting with his friends inside the photo booth and the camera flashed. With eyes slightly enlarged, Ky looked around at all of his friends's faces, shocked to see that they were all alive once again.

Tears started to well up in his eyes, but he held them back from falling. It was right then that he made yet another realization. He was overwhelmed by dread, knowing that within the next hour, he and his friends would all be dead. This feeling was something that didn't need to be shared.

'I can't ruin these moments for them.'

Ky was going to keep this all a secret from his friends. Even though Xiao could read minds, he'd do his best to hide it from her as well. This pain, these feelings of dread, were his and his alone. The rest of the Dark Angels didn't deserve it.

As for his new ability, he didn't know much about it. All he knew was that his soul would not die until it was ready to do so...

He called it 'Undying Will'.