Chapter 1: Reboot.
Kael felt the impact before he felt anything else. Metal screeched. Concrete splintered. A scream — his own or someone else's — shredded the air. Then darkness.
When he opened his eyes, the world had changed. The sky was gray, but the city around him… it was fractured. Streets looped back on themselves, curving at impossible angles. Buildings flickered, as if reality were skipping frames. A car drove past, then vanished mid-motion, reappearing a few meters back as if it had never moved at all. People walked, froze, and walked again, ignoring him entirely. The air was thick with the smell of dust and something sharper, metallic, like ozone. Time… stuttered.
Kael tried to move, but his legs felt heavy, almost detached from his mind. Every step echoed wrong, delayed. His pulse thundered in his ears. Am I… alive?
Then it appeared.
Above him, a lattice of silver light twisted in impossible angles, hovering midair like a geometric storm frozen in place. Symbols, jagged and alien, scrolled along its edges like lines of living code. His vision focused on a central node, pulsing red, as a voice — cold, mechanical, yet layered with strange harmonics — filled his mind.
SYSTEM INTERFACE
CANDIDATE: KAEL VARIN
STATUS: REGISTERED
ROLE: WORLDLINE EDITOR
OBJECTIVE: STABILIZE FRACTURED REALITY
PERMISSION: ONE TEMPORAL EDIT PER CYCLE
COST: IDENTITY THREAD
Kael blinked. His chest tightened. Candidate? Identity thread? The words echoed in his skull. He felt like a lab rat in some simulation that didn't care if he lived or died.
He tested his voice. "What… what is this?"
The lattice pulsed. Symbols shifted slightly, forming something that vaguely resembled his name. The node at the center pulsed harder, and a secondary overlay appeared:
EDIT AVAILABLE
TARGET: HUMAN — ALIVE
EFFECT: UNDO DEATH / ALTER OUTCOME
COST: IDENTITY FRAGMENT(S)
Kael's stomach twisted. A man lay a few meters away, his chest pressed against the pavement at an unnatural angle. His eyes were open, blank, staring at nothing. Time had paused around him. This was… the moment he could change. The first choice. The first cost.
He hesitated. Part of him screamed to step back. He'd always avoided responsibility. One small moment of cowardice, years ago, had already cost a life — a memory that still haunted him. Could he pay again? Could he survive this without losing himself?
Across the street, movement caught his eye. Another figure mirrored him perfectly. Same face. Same clothes. Same posture.
"Who… who are you?" Kael whispered.
"I am YOU," the other said. "But I existed before your edit. You're late to the party."
Kael's mind refused to process it. Another him? Another timeline? This… can't be real. The lattice pulsed violently, thrumming in rhythm with his heartbeat. Small nodes flickered like stars collapsing. Threads of light extended from each, as if the System was mapping the consequences in real time.
He swallowed hard. He could already feel the pull — the invisible tug at the edges of himself. The System didn't just want obedience; it demanded cost. Identity. Memory. Everything that made him him.
Kael knelt beside the man. The interface floated above the body now, a holographic overlay highlighting his pulse in dim red. Tiny warnings blinked along the sides.
WARNING: IDENTITY FRAGMENT LOSS IMMINENT
WARNING: CAUSAL REWRITES MAY CREATE ECHO
WARNING: UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES LIKELY
Kael's hands shook. His rational mind calculated outcomes. If he saved the man, the immediate effect would be simple: life preserved. But the lattice hummed darker warnings, probabilities branching in invisible directions. One ripple, a single fragment altered, could spawn a worldline echo — another him, with all the memories he'd have lost. And some echoes… might hate him.
He took a breath. He could already feel threads of himself fraying, each thought dragging a thread taut across the lattice. He had no choice but to act.
"Okay…" he murmured. "…let's try this."
Kael raised his hand. THREADS OF LIGHT wrapped around his arm, warm and tingling like living electricity. The lattice responded, folding inward like a flower closing at night. Symbols spun faster, nodes pulsing in sync with his pulse. He reached toward the red overlay hovering above the man.
Then time shivered.
Reality stretched, snapping like a taut rope. A low hum filled his ears. He saw flashes — his own reflection in a shattered window, eyes wide, another him leaning from a distant roof, and the man's chest rising faster than it should, then pausing, then rising again. Each pulse was a warning: every action has a cost. Every edit takes from you.
The man gasped, air rushing into his lungs. The lattice pulsed one final time, a surge that sent a spark of light into Kael's chest. Pain flashed behind his eyes, a tug at the edges of his identity. A memory — his favorite book from childhood, a word on the tip of his tongue — vanished. He blinked, and it was gone.
He staggered back. His reflection wavered across the street. He wasn't just looking at the man anymore. He was seeing himself — or parts of himself that no longer belonged to him. The System hummed, approving, as if tallying the fragments it had claimed.
Kael swallowed, forcing his mind to steady. He was alive. The man was alive. But something inside him had shifted. The lattice contracted, nodes blinking out one by one, leaving him in the still-broken city.
And then he heard it. The voice of his other self, softer this time, almost human.
"Every choice… costs you. Every fix… creates another me."
Kael felt the weight. This wasn't just power. It was responsibility. It was war. A war inside himself.
He looked at the city. Streets looped. Buildings shimmered. People walked in repeating patterns. The lattice, now gone, had left traces — threads in the air, subtle, glowing, as if the world itself remembered the edit.
Kael clenched his fists.
This was the start. The first edit. The first fragment lost.
And he knew… the next one would cost him more.