Two years.
That's how long it took to turn my curse into something I could control.
At first, it was nothing but instinct—a desperate reaction to danger, a glitch I couldn't predict. Time would snap forward or drag me back without warning, leaving me disoriented and powerless. But over time, I learned. I adapted. I made time itself my weapon.
Now, I no longer skipped through time by accident. Now, I chose when and where to go.
Mastering the Unseen
It started small. I needed to test how far I could push my ability, how much I could manipulate without tearing myself apart. So I began with one-hour skips—jumping forward while working out, letting my body suffer through the strain while I skipped past the pain. I'd run until my legs gave out, then jump forward to when my muscles had healed, skipping past the exhaustion entirely.
But raw strength meant nothing without control.
So I started refining my skill. Conversations replayed in my mind, decisions weighed and tested. If I said the wrong thing, I'd jump back an hour and try again. If I wasted too much time on something, I rewound and did it better. Even in fights—if I lost, if I was too slow, if I took a hit I shouldn't have—I went back and tried again.
Time became my personal training ground, a loop of endless trial and error. Every mistake was erased. Every failure became a lesson. I lived, failed, and relived again—until I was perfect.
But there were rules. Rules I had to learn the hard way.
First, I could only rewind my own timeline. I couldn't change history, couldn't prevent tragedies, couldn't stop the inevitable. The world moved forward whether I did or not.
Second, the further I looked into the future, the less stable it became. Time was like rippling water—the deeper I peered, the more distorted things became. I could see outlines, possibilities, but nothing was ever certain.
And the third rule—the one that kept me awake at night—was simple. Something was always watching.
I didn't know what it was, only that every time I pushed too far forward, every time I tried to see too much, I felt it. A presence just beyond my vision, waiting. Watching.
I never stayed long enough to find out what it was.
For two years, I honed my ability in secret. No one knew what I could do. No one knew what I had seen. And through all of it, one question never left my mind—why had I Awakened before everyone else?
The answer came on the day the world changed.
The Gates Open
It started like any other day. I had just finished my morning routine—pushing my body to its limits, skipping forward past the pain, rewinding when I made a mistake. To everyone else, I was just another person, another face in the crowd.
Then the sky cracked open.
A sound like tearing metal split the air, a deep, bone-rattling vibration that sent people collapsing to their knees. The city trembled as something impossible ripped through reality itself.
I looked up just in time to see it—the first Gate.
A massive tear in the sky, pulsing with an eerie, shifting glow. The space inside it warped and twisted, a swirling abyss that seemed to stretch forever. And then, they came through.
Monsters.
They spilled out like a flood, grotesque creatures with too many limbs, eyes that burned like molten gold. Some towered over buildings, their bodies twisting unnaturally as they crawled forward. Others were smaller, faster, darting through the streets with terrifying speed.
People screamed. They ran. Some tried to fight, but bullets barely slowed the creatures down. Chaos erupted in an instant, the city turning into a battlefield.
And then it happened—people started Awakening.
At first, it was subtle. A man raised his hand, and fire roared to life in his palm. A woman, cornered by a beast, moved faster than the eye could track, her body flickering like a ghost. Others followed—lightning crackled through the air, the ground trembled as power surged through the newly Awakened.
Humanity wasn't defenseless anymore.
They fought back.
I watched as the first wave of Awakened took on the creatures, raw power unleashed in every direction. Some were clumsy, their abilities new and unfamiliar. Others moved with terrifying instinct, as if they had been waiting for this moment their whole lives.
But no matter how powerful they were, it wasn't enough.
The monsters kept coming. The Gates wouldn't stop opening.
And as I stood there, watching the world descend into chaos, I realized something chilling.
This was exactly how it started in the future I had seen.
The end had begun.