Time didn't wait. It fractured.
Eron Vale landed hard against a neon-lit wall, skidding across rain-slick pavement in a blur of static. The moment he touched the temporal shard, the world had snapped like a whip—and now he was somewhere between then and now, surrounded by flickers of déjà vu and electric rainfall.
The alley pulsed with a dull hum. Above, holographic billboards flickered: WANTED – Eron Vale: Time-Traitor. Approach with Caution.
He spat blood. "Guess I'm back where it all started."
Twelve years ago. Neo-Bastion City. Before the chrono-core. Before Ari. Before the Council made him their tool.
But this wasn't just time travel. The shard didn't send him back as he was—it had anchored him inside his younger self.
He flexed his fingers.
No chrono-core. No enhancements. Just the instincts of a veteran hero shoved into a twenty-one-year-old dropout with a chip on his shoulder.
"Perfect," he muttered.
A voice echoed down the alley. "That's him! Vale!"
Two enforcers rounded the corner, plasma rifles raised. Eron's eyes narrowed. He didn't have his powers—but he had his experience.
He dove forward, sliding under a garbage drone, grabbed a loose pipe from the ground and—crack—took the first enforcer out at the knees. The second fired, but Eron rolled behind a vent tower and whipped the pipe like a javelin. The rifle clattered to the ground, and a moment later, so did the soldier.
He stepped over the bodies, breathing hard.
"You'll want to move faster next time," a voice purred.
Eron spun.
There she was.
The woman from the crater. The masked figure with the impossible shard—only now, she wore street leathers, her violet cloak swapped for a longcoat lined with subdermal circuitry.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
She pulled off her mask. The sight knocked the breath from his chest.
"Ari?"
But it wasn't her. Not quite. The face was older, scarred across one cheek. Her eyes held the same light—but colder, sharper.
"I go by Kest now," she said. "And you're not the only one who failed."
He backed away. "You died."
"In your loop, maybe. But I jumped—further than I should have. I've been waiting for you to catch up."
Eron's mind reeled. "So… this is a second chance?"
She shook her head. "No. It's a correction. You were never meant to follow the Council's rules. You were meant to break them."
She handed him a device—a gauntlet bristling with temporal conduits and pulse regulators. The prototype chrono-core.
"It's not stable," she said. "But you'll figure it out. Like you always do."
Eron slipped it on. The hum of dormant power returned like a ghost sighing against his skin.
And with it, something else: a surge of memory. Not just his. Others'. Hundreds of timelines—each one where he made a different choice, won a different battle, lost a different piece of himself.
He gasped. "This shouldn't be possible."
Kest smiled. "Welcome to the war behind the timeline."
Suddenly, a shockwave split the sky. From the upper levels of the city, beams of anti-time energy lashed down, tearing through buildings. Screams echoed as alarms flared.
Kest turned grim. "They've found us."
Eron looked down at his shaking hands.
Once, he thought failure meant the end.
Now, it was the beginning.
"I'm done following scripts," he said, flexing the gauntlet. "Let's write our own future."
Kest nodded. "Then we start by erasing the Council's first victory—before it ever happens."
They vanished into the storm, two ghosts in time—rewriting history, one second at a time.