Maybe a pocket active item that rewinds time, but only like for 5 seconds rather than a glowing hour glass type item?

Here's my idea for Inverted Chronos:

The timer counts up instead of down, but as the time ticks up, he gets slower and weaker and the enemies get stronger (think Risk of Rain). Every interval is a threshold that you can't go back from, but you can stave off the inevitable by using a new consumable; Borrowed Time.

Borrowed Time is a consumable similar to the holy card that will remove time from the clock but turn one enemy into a Champion (either a random one or a special new one)

An alternative would be that you could have a pocket item that lets him trade pickups and consumables for rollbacks. pressing CTRL cycles through which pickup it eats.

A taint chronos could have a timer that instead ticks upward when the player isn't in a room with enemies, and as it gets higher, Chronos' stats very slowly decrease, and hits become more lethal! to them. To combat this, items like glowing hour glass and the time bonus from enemies are more significant. (Obviously the time bonuses would have to be negative)

or maybe instead of stronger bonuses, an active item that stops the timer for a while depending on how many enemies have been killed since last activation