Time did not fracture.
It hesitated.
Mohamed felt it first—not as pain, not as pressure, but as a subtle delay between thought and existence. His breath arrived a fraction of a second late. The sound of his heartbeat echoed twice.
Reality was buffering.
Selene grabbed his arm. "Don't move."
The world around them stuttered.
Birds froze midair. Rain hung like scattered glass. Light bent inward, folding into itself as if the universe had briefly forgotten which direction to continue.
"The Fifth Convergence," Selene whispered. "This one doesn't rewrite belief or power."
Mohamed swallowed. "Then what does it rewrite?"
Selene looked at him.
"Sequence."
They stood nowhere.
Not darkness.
Not void.
A place between moments.
Threads stretched infinitely in every direction—gold, red, black, translucent—intersecting, looping, tangling. Each thread pulsed with images: births, deaths, decisions never made, words swallowed instead of spoken.
Mohamed understood instantly.
"Timelines," he breathed.
"Causal paths," Selene corrected. "Time isn't a river. It's a negotiation."
A figure stood ahead of them.
Not Faromet.
Not Ryoto.
Someone else.
Tall. Thin. Wrapped in layered robes of white and ash. His face was calm, almost bored.
"I was wondering when you'd arrive," the man said.
Selene stiffened. "No…"
The man smiled faintly. "Yes."
She turned to Mohamed. "That's Ishraal. Keeper of Sequence. He doesn't belong to the Eclipse Order."
Ishraal tilted his head. "Not officially."
He waved his hand.
The threads rearranged.
Mohamed saw himself—hundreds of versions.
One died in Chapter 3.
One joined the Order.
One killed Faromet.
One became worse than him.
Mohamed's chest tightened.
"All possible outcomes," Ishraal said casually. "Or most of them."
Selene snapped, "This convergence isn't yours to host."
Ishraal shrugged. "Faromet disagrees."
The threads darkened.
Faromet's presence pressed in—not fully manifesting, but observing.
"Sequence is unstable," Faromet's voice echoed.
"You accelerate entropy unintentionally, Mohamed."
Mohamed stepped forward. "Because I don't control it?"
"Because you allow deviation," Faromet replied.
Ishraal laughed softly. "He's right, you know. Freedom is inefficient."
Selene clenched her jaw. "You sound like him."
"I trained under him," Ishraal replied. "Before I realized control is just delayed chaos."
He looked at Mohamed with curiosity.
"You're interesting," he said. "You don't force outcomes. You let them breathe."
Mohamed frowned. "And that scares you."
Ishraal nodded. "Terrifies me."
The test began without warning.
A thread snapped.
A city vanished.
Not destroyed.
Unchosen.
Mohamed felt the loss like a scream he wasn't allowed to hear.
"Stop!" he shouted.
Ishraal raised an eyebrow. "Why? That timeline led to extinction."
"It also led to love," Mohamed snapped. "To art. To meaning."
Ishraal sighed. "Sentimentality."
Selene stepped forward. "You can't prune reality forever."
Ishraal smiled thinly. "Watch me."
He raised his hand again.
Mohamed moved.
Not toward Ishraal.
Toward the threads.
He reached out—
And did something no one had ever done.
He refused to choose.
Instead of selecting a thread, he held multiple at once.
The space screamed.
Time convulsed.
Ishraal staggered back. "That's impossible—"
Mohamed's vision flooded with futures.
Contradictory. Paradoxical. Alive.
"You think chaos is the enemy," Mohamed said through clenched teeth.
"But it's the price of meaning."
Faromet's presence sharpened.
"You will tear reality apart."
"Maybe," Mohamed replied.
"But at least it will be real."
The threads stabilized—not into one path—
But into a braid.
Ishraal stared, shaken.
"No one… no one has ever done that."
Selene smiled faintly. "Because no one ever trusted humanity enough to let it be uncertain."
The Fifth Convergence locked into place.
The space collapsed gently.
They returned to the present.
Mohamed fell to one knee, exhausted, bleeding from the nose, ears, eyes.
Selene caught him. "You just changed the rules."
Mohamed laughed weakly. "Good."
Somewhere far beyond—
Faromet closed his eyes.
For the first time since becoming Faromet—
He did not see the future clearly.