The wind whipped at Zazm's hair, sending strands of it dancing across his face. He didn't bother to brush them away, too engrossed in his thoughts.
Below, the city lights stretched out like a rumpled velvet blanket, a tapestry of deep shadows and fleeting glimmers of moonlight. The air was thin, crisp, and alive with the faintest scent of pine needles.
Zazm leaned further forward, the cold railing biting into his palms. He was perched on the precipice of the mountain, the sheer drop making his stomach lurch with a thrilling vertigo.
But the fear was quickly overshadowed by awe. The night sky was a canvas ablaze with stars, a dazzling display of celestial jewels scattered across the inky black expanse.
He traced constellations with his gaze, recognizing the familiar patterns of the hunter, the lion, and the scorpion. A shooting star, a fleeting streak of silver fire, pierced the darkness, leaving a trail of shimmering dust in its wake.
Zazm closed his eyes, savoring the moment, the silence broken only by the whisper of the wind and the distant howl of a lone wolf. Besides him stood his friend Jahanox who was also looking up the sky with him.
They both stood looking at the sky silently and none of them said a single word. Jahanox knew there must be a reason that Zazm is in such deep thoughts.
Zazm felt a profound sense of peace, a connection to something vast and eternal. In this solitary vigil atop the mountain, he felt utterly insignificant yet strangely significant at the same time, a mere speck of existence adrift in the grand cosmic ocean.
A slow smile touched his lips. The world, with its worries and its chaos, seemed a million miles away. Here, on this windswept peak, under the watchful gaze of the stars, there was only the present moment, and the quiet beauty of the night.
"Say, Nox...What would you choose?" Zazm asked Jahanox but didn't looked towards him, his gaze was still directed towards the sky.
Jahanox looked confused he got closer to the railing Zazm was leaning on, "Choose? What do you mean?"
Zazm went quite again letting the tension build between them before he finally spoke, "When I went on the spacetime fabric, my original goal was to check whether there was something wrong with the timelines or not, but..."
"But?" Jahanox shot Zazm a curious glance but Zazm didn't looked at him, he simply stared at the sky.
"But, I found a lot more than that." Zazm finally finished and turned around leaning with his back against the railing this time.
"Elaborate," Jahanox shot Zazm with a single look that demanded answers.
"Well for once the timelines aren't ruptured but they are ruptured, that's the first thing." Zazm went quiet once again letting the words sink between them.
"What? Ruptured? What do you mean?"
Zazm held up a hand, silencing him. "Not timelines… the multiverse is ruptured."
Jahanox blinked, his brow furrowing. "Aren't… aren't those the same thing?"
"That, my friend," Zazm said, a hint of weary patience in his tone, "is a misconception. A huge one."
He turned, gesturing towards the vast expanse of the valley. "Look out there. Imagine the fabric of space-time, stretching out, holding everything together.
That's the universe. It has rules, laws that govern everything within it. Think of it like a giant, intricate machine with a specific operating system."
Jahanox nodded slowly, trying to visualize what Zazm was describing. "Okay, a machine…"
"Now," Zazm continued, his eyes intense, "imagine threads or small cogs running along that fabric.
Those threads are timelines. Every single choice we make, every tiny action, creates a new thread, a new timeline. You choosing to eat breakfast this morning, or not, that created two separate timelines.
Small, subtle variations. But those variations, those timelines, exist within the same machine, within the same universe. They follow its rules."
Jahanox shifted, a flicker of understanding in his eyes. "So, like, eating a banana instead of an apple creates a new timeline, but both timelines still exist in… our universe?"
"Exactly," Zazm said, a faint smile touching his lips. "Timelines are granular, like the grains of sand on this mountain. They're built on the small, everyday choices. But a universe… it is affected by the big, tectonic shifts. The life-altering decisions."
He paused, letting the wind carry his words. "Think of it this way: what if, in another universe, you went to a different school? Or, what if you were… a girl? Or what if you didn't exist? Or what if you were the father of your father?"
Jahanox's eyes widened slightly, the sheer possibility making him momentarily dizzy. "Whoa… that's… that's a whole different reality."
"Precisely," Zazm said, his voice gaining urgency. "That's an alternate universe. A different machine, with its own set of rules. Our timelines exist within our universe, bound by its laws, a timeline can only stretch in time, if you went ahead 200 years in another timeline you would've still existed there.
The fundamental laws of physics, like the conservation of matter – matter cannot be created or destroyed – that's a rule of our universe.
Every timeline within it adheres to it. But in another universes? That law might not exist. Or it might be different. Imagine a place where humans swim through the air instead of flying."
Jahanox's mouth hung slightly open. "Swim through the air? That's… that's insane."
"But possible," Zazm stressed. "The closer a universe is to ours, the more similarities we share. The further away, the more alien it becomes.
So, a rupture in the universe… it's not just a few timelines going haywire. It's the very fabric of reality, the operating system itself, breaking down. And that," he finished, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "is a problem on a scale we can barely comprehend."
Jahanox's jaw dropped at the huge explanation he didn't knew how to reach or what to say at all that explanation. He spoke in a soft tone, his voice barely above a whisper, "What does that mean? And how is it related to multiverse?"
"It means we are royally fucked. As for multiverse it's a simple collection of all the different universes, there is a universe out there from where our universe brached." Zazm shot Jahanox with an unhinged answer. Jahanox quickly went deep into his thoughts, "But what's the reason behind your reasoning."
Zazm smiled as if he was waiting for this question, "Well as I said all timelines spread on the same spacetime fabric and I saw a rift, at first I thought it's my cue about timelines being ruptured but when I looked closely.
I went close to it and passed some threads through it but they simply disappeared meaning that rift.....
It wasn't on the timeline instead it was on the fabric itself. Imagine the timelines as veins and the fabric as skin, and the rift as a mark. The mark isn't on the veins, it's on the skin itself. So the threads didn't had anywhere else to go."
Jahanox nodded understanding Zazm's words, "So what can we do? How can we fix it? what's the reason his happened?"
Zazm raised both his arms signing Jahanox to calm down, "Chill dude Chill, you are asking way too many questions at once. But still I'll explain."
Zazm paused but this his smile turning into something more concerning and his eyes shaking something deeper, "The reason for this happening is probably an anamoly in one of the universes out there, from which our universe brached off.
In order to fix that we will have to travel to that specific universe, get rid of that anamoly, or problem or whatever. Afterwards, I'll have to remind the time back to when it all occurred only then everything can be fixed."
Jahanox felt the ground escaping from under his feets, he felt his body getting cold. He plopped on the ground with a hand on his forehead. It was all too much too take.
Jahanox looked at Zazm and asked with a concerning look, "Ok let's say we manage to do all that, how are you going to rewind the time? You can't even use that power right now."
Zazm smiled appeared once again at these words, "And that's where you're wrong, thanks to you not saving me I was able to understand the power of time."
"What does that mean?" Jahanox asked Zazm in a frustrated tone and Zazm closed and opened his eyes, Jahanox was first confused but when he looked closely his eyes shot up.
He saw that Zazm's eyes were turned completely black, his pupils,his irises gone replaced by a darkness a black so dark it seems like it would eat him.
He continued to notice Zazm as slowly a purple line appeared in his eyes and slowly started moving and an intricate design was formed in both of his eyes, that was the same mark as the one on his hand.
"Dude.... THATS SICKKK" Jahanox stood up and shouted at the top of his lungs, Zazm's eyes completely dark and in the middle was the beautiful pattern of his mark.
"This is not the best part." Saying that Zazm snapped his fingers and Jahanox looked around to see what happened but there was nothing, he tried to move but.....he couldn't.
He looked down and at his feets but he wasn't able to move any part of his body except his eyes, he looked at Zazm standing there with a smile, Zazm spoke, "I can freeze time and speed it up and even slow it down."
He snapped again freeing Nox from the time freeze, "What the?" Nox quickly looked at Zazm.
"Well... I can't exactly freeze time right now but small bits of it. What I did was use the threads to stop the time of a specific area in order to freeze the time of a huge area would require extreme level of practice.
As for how I can do it is quite simple, while falling through the rift, I saw no other options other than to create a hole through the fabric, like a tunnel that'll help me enter from one place and get out the other." Zazm explained before Nox can ask anything.
Jahanox raised a brow, "So, you simply did that? You know you aren't some protagonist in a show right?"
Zazm chuckled, "Ofcourse not, I'm not. And I didn't do it instantly it took me several days or perhaps months to do it."
Jahanox eyes narrowed at Zazm's words, "But you were only unconscious for a few hours."
"Yes, that's true for my body that is. Time works differently on different points in spacetime fabric, and I went to one of the deepest densest region.
For you....it was a few hours but in the timespan, I traveled there and got back were of several days."
Jahanox found himself speechless at Zazm's words, he wanted to say something but Zazm continued, "After jumping through the curve of black hole that limit increased drastically, it took me several days to get down.
And during all that time, I simply got the hang of teleportation." Zazm continued and put his hands on the back of his head.
"But that doesn't tell how you were able to create a portal like this." Jahanox raised a brow at Zazm's explanation.
"That's Portal.... When I fell down into the rift, the concept of time momentarily didn't existed for me. The concept of time only stays on the fabric not anywhere else.
While the rift was a hole through that fabric, time, space.... Nothing existed in that rift, it was just an endless void where my consciousness would've floated endlessly forever."
Jahanox let out a dry laugh, "You...You can't tell these things before huh?" Zazm ignored him and continued.
"During the time in rift, I don't know how many months I spent or perhaps even years. But during that time, I constantly tried different things. I couldn't see any threads since they flow on the fabric of space time.
But I didn't give up, I used myself as a guinea pig, I desperately tried to make the threads flow, just to find an opening but it was all useless the threads didn't had a place to flow, so they somewhat didn't existed.
And then I just thought of a bizarre idea, I thought that if the threads doesn't have a medium how about I use my own consciousness as a medium for them to flow.
And what do you know, it worked fine using those threads of mine, I connected their origins back to my own body and used it to rewind the time of my consioussness's threads back to when I fell in the rift."
Jahanox stood there, his face pale at the explanation, "wait wait....so you're telling me you actually spent several years in that place, how's that possible? And how can you remember everything fine then?"
Zazm acknowledged his question, "That was the reason I asked you to bring me back if I didn't wake up, I was afraid a long time will pass and I would forget everything when I would come back to this world.
And as for how I can remember everything fine is because most of my memories of the rift is something I destroyed.
Well not exactly destroyed, more like I sacrificed them. When I realized I could rewind time of those specific threads back to when I fell in the rift it'll help. But before you ask how I controlled time in a place where it didn't exist let me tell you.
The time doesn't exist because it doesn't have a medium to exist, when I used myself as a medium, the time started existing on those threads and in order to get out I used all the unimportant threads.
The threads that held the parts of where I attempted countless failures, I used those threads as a medium to create a hole and in the process those threads got destroyed then and there."
Jahanox didn't said something for a while he just stood there looking at the sky, "You know I wish you would've told me more."
Zazm smiled softened at his words, "I'm sorry but that's just how things turned out."
Jahanox leaned Infront of the railing, "You misunderstand I'm not asking for your apology, I'm simply telling you that we are together in this."
Zazm's eyes slightly widened at his words, he couldn't find the right words to respond for a while, and just a simple words came out, "I see, Thanks."
Jahanox glanced at Zazm, he didn't say anything for a while and just stared at him, "Say, Zazm how long will it take before you can control a timeline?" He asked Zazm with a skeptic look.
Zazm let out a dry chuckle, "Ha...Haha.. a few..."
"A few what?" Jahanox asked Zazm in a soft yet curious tone.
"A few decades okay? But I believe that's not our concern for now." Zazm spoke with an irritated tone and finally put his hands back in his pockets.
Jahanox turned around aswell, "You're right, our primary goal is to understand these new possibilities, rewinding the time is the last step. We haven't even started walking yet."
Zazm nodded at his words, even he knew that they have to do a lot. Zazm started thinking about what or how they can do it but he pulled out of his thoughts.
"Zazm what if we have to go to other universes, what happens to the people we left behind here?" Jahanox asked Zazm in a sad voice.
Zazm didn't said anything he simply looked at Nox and Jahanox understood what Zazm meant, his smile widened but it seemed miserable, "Is that so? In order to save the world we will have to leave everything behind."
Zazm went closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder, "You know you don't have to do i-"
Jahanox slapped Zazm's hand away from his shoulder, he knew for Zazm there wasn't anyone special here anyways. He grew up alone and leaving his family behind is nothing special or surprising for him.
Zazm was momentarily stunned at the sudden aggressive in Jahanox's attitude, "Didn't I say we're in this together...." Jahanox spoke in a frustrated tone.
Zazm tried to retort but Jahanox continued, "And besides if the universe gets destroyed where will my family live? I'll have to do it for them too." This time his voice was way sader and softer.
Zazm didn't said anything for a while and just stood quietly, Jahanox noticed the awkward silence and decided to break it, "If we took this path....would I ever get to be with my family again?"
Zazm wasn't smiling now, his eyes seemed hollow and full of pain at that question, he spoke after a while in a soft and mesmerizing tone, "After reversing the time, we will forget everything and will start our lifes from the point this rupture occured."
Jahanox smiled brightly at his words, "So for example we will start from middle school while having no memory of all these times? Well we can always make new ones."
The both let out a small laugh, before Zazm's eyes turned to those marks again, he lift his hand in the air, creating a portal. He pointed his friend towards it.
"Nox, you should go it's been 2 days. Go home and rest." Zazm said in a slow and soft voice.
Jahanox started walking towards the portal without questioning he knew Zazm was gonna sit there and ponder on his thoughts for a while that's just how he was.
"Ok the I'll see you then and don't jump from there okay?" Jahanox smirked and waved Zazm a hand. Zazm smiled at his comment and waved back.
The portal disappeared along with Jahanox and Zazm plopped down on the dusty ground, he leaned back on his hands before fully laying down, the sky was beautiful, too beautiful. He layed there looking at the moon the stars while the scent of grass filled his mind. Throughout this night Zazm was all alone with his thoughts.
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