The moment I snapped back to the present, I staggered backward, gasping for air. My lungs burned as if I had just surfaced from drowning, my heart pounding like a war drum in my chest.
I was back—standing in my apartment, the dim glow of the streetlights casting long shadows against the walls. The world around me was still. Silent. Normal.
But my mind refused to believe it.
The vision—no, the future I had seen—burned itself into my thoughts like a brand. The broken cities. The massive Gates stretching into the sky, pulsing like living things. And the creatures… Those twisted, inhuman things that poured out of them like a flood, devouring everything in sight.
I braced my hands against the kitchen counter, trying to steady myself. I had no idea how far ahead I had looked, but it didn't matter. The world was doomed. And somehow, I knew—this was because of me.
But how?
I had only just discovered my Awakening. I didn't even know how it worked, let alone how it could connect to something like that. My power let me slip between moments, peek into the past or future, but nothing I had done should have led to… that.
Unless I wasn't the only one.
The thought sent a chill down my spine.
I had Awakened before anyone else, but what if there were others? What if someone, somewhere, had the power to create the Gates? Or worse—what if the Gates were always meant to appear, and my Awakening was tied to them from the start?
I shook my head. No. That wasn't an answer I was ready for.
Instead, I focused on the only thing I could control: learning how to use this power before it was too late.
The First Test
I took a deep breath, forcing my thoughts into order. The first step was understanding my limits.
Closing my eyes, I reached for the feeling—the strange pull that had thrown me through time. It was subtle, like a second heartbeat beneath my skin, a pressure that stretched outward beyond my body.
I focused on it, willed myself to move—not through space, but through time itself.
The world blurred.
When my vision cleared, I was still standing in my kitchen—but the clock on the wall had jumped forward by five minutes.
My chest tightened. It had worked. I had moved ahead without physically moving.
But that was nothing compared to what I had done before.
I tried again. This time, I pushed harder, reaching further.
The apartment flickered out of existence, replaced by an unfamiliar version of itself. The walls were scorched, the floor cracked. Outside the window, the city skyline was broken—skyscrapers reduced to skeletal remains, fires raging in the distance.
A glimpse of the apocalypse I had seen.
I barely had time to process it before something moved in the shadows.
A low, guttural growl. The scrape of claws against tile.
I wasn't alone.
Panic surged through me, but before I could even turn around, my power snapped back, dragging me to the present like a rubber band snapping into place.
I collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath.
I had only been there for seconds. But it was enough to know one thing.
The future wasn't just waiting for me.
Something was already watching.