Chapter 68: Paradox Pulse
The sky above shimmered unnaturally, like a cracked mirror holding back a storm. Kael-X stood atop the ruins of an old satellite array, his cloak torn, body stained with battle... but eyes still burning with purpose. The battle against the Signal Prime had shifted something — not just within the timeline, but within him.
"He's coming," whispered Umbra, materializing from Kael-X's own shadow, his tendrils curling in anticipation. "The sniper. The void-walker. The ghost of cause and effect."
"Ghostline," Kael-X muttered. "I haven't forgotten him."
"Few do," Nyx said softly, "and none live long enough to warn others."
A sudden pulse echoed through the air — not sound, but sensation. Time bent. Wind reversed mid-gust. A crow, mid-flight, froze, shattered into fragments of shadow, and then reassembled like nothing had happened.
Kael-X spun around.
There he was.
Ghostline.
He stood on a distant rooftop, his cloak blending into the horizon. A long-range rifle, sleek and matte-black, rested on his shoulder. No gleam. No sound. Just death in patience.
His mask—white with a single vertical slit—reflected nothing. Not light. Not life. Nothing.
Kael-X took a slow breath. "You gonna keep hiding back there?"
Ghostline didn't respond.
Instead, the pulse came again.
Not from the sky. Not from the earth.
From Kael-X's chest.
He staggered slightly as his vision distorted. His heartbeat synced to the pulse. One beat. One fracture in time. Two beats. Space rippled around his fingers.
"This isn't a sniper fight," Veyron said with a voice like riddles slithering through mist. "It's a paradox loop. You've been marked."
"What does that mean?" Kael-X hissed, his legs growing heavy.
"He's not aiming to kill you directly," Oblivion rumbled. "He's embedding bullets into past versions of you. Letting the effects echo forward."
Kael-X's eyes widened. He reached out—
—and his hand cracked like glass.
Not flesh. Not blood.
A moment.
One where he had once grabbed a soldier in a collapsing city.
Another fracture appeared across his shoulder. Then his ribs.
He fell to one knee.
Veyron floated in front of him, eyes glowing violet. "You've been shot in ten different timelines. The recoil is catching up."
Kael-X growled, slamming his fist into the ground. Void energy surged out in a circle, knocking back reality itself for a moment.
He stood.
Bleeding timelines, fractured essence—but still standing.
"I don't care what laws he's using," Kael-X growled. "I'll break them."
And then—
He vanished.
A pulse of black lightning surged, and Kael-X reappeared behind Ghostline, arm cocked.
Ghostline didn't flinch.
He vanished—shifting one second to the left, dodging the attack before it was thrown.
Kael-X's eyes narrowed. "He's syncing with future moments now…"
A battle not of speed—but of foresight, of calculated inevitability.
"This isn't just a fight anymore," Nyx whispered, hovering behind him. "This is a test of who writes the next second."
Ghostline finally spoke, voice warped and hollow, like static filtered through eternity.
"The only ones who escape the scope... are those already dead."
Kael-X smiled.
"I've died before."
---
Chapter 68 (Continued): Paradox Pulse
The world tilted.
Kael-X charged forward, but time snapped like a whip—Ghostline had already shifted six seconds ahead, moving through a fold Kael-X hadn't even seen form.
Another shot rang out—not from the barrel of a gun, but from a memory.
Kael-X's right shoulder burst open, blood spraying into the static wind.
"He didn't shoot that," Kael-X growled through clenched teeth. "That wound's from the day I broke into the G-9 Vault…"
"Exactly," Veyron said, floating upside down, fingers tracing lines through the air. "He's not shooting now. He's re-triggering every shot you were ever supposed to dodge."
Kael-X dropped low, dragging his hand across the ground, gathering void in a circular glyph. "Then I need to undo the path that made me who I am."
"You'll unravel yourself," Umbra warned, rising like smoke. "You'll cease to be Kael-X."
Kael-X looked back at the shadows—at the beasts who had stood by him through wars, across lifetimes.
"I don't care. If I don't end Ghostline, this ends everyone."
Then, he stepped forward—into the glyph.
Time folded.
Reality twitched.
Kael-X entered his own Echozone—a pocket of rewritten time where he could walk between his own past selves. He sprinted across a fragmented battlefield made of his memories: his first assassination… the day he stole Compound-X… the betrayal at Core City…
And there, at each junction—bullets hung in the air. Suspended. Waiting. Ghostline's work.
Kael-X roared, drawing a blade made from void itself, slicing through the suspended rounds.
Each cut rewrote the scar. Undid the blood. Rebuilt his broken body in real time.
Above, in the physical world, Ghostline's stance shifted.
His rifle began to tremble.
"He's resisting," Oblivion muttered. "Rewriting the path of the bullet mid-flight…"
Veyron grinned. "Now it's a duel of fate editors."
Kael-X re-emerged, his eyes glowing silver with void threading across his veins.
"I'm not who I was when you shot those bullets," he said, stepping through flickering light. "That version of me is gone."
Ghostline raised his rifle—
Kael-X vanished again.
When he reappeared, it was behind Ghostline—but this time, he wasn't alone.
Nyx struck from the shadows, slashing across the sniper's mask.
Umbra chained the temporal anchor Ghostline used to keep track of Kael-X's echoes.
Oblivion brought down a gravity pulse, freezing the nearby seconds.
And Veyron? He whispered something into Ghostline's ear:
"You aimed for a memory. But forgot we live in the now."
Ghostline's rifle shattered.
His body cracked, splintering into glitched time-data, scattering into wind.
Kael-X stood over the fading remains, breathing heavily.
Then he looked to the sky.
It was darker than before.
But it was clear.
For now.
Chapter 68 (Continued – Final Pulse)
As Ghostline disintegrated, the very air around them began to distort. The collapse of a temporal sniper wasn't just an execution—it was an event. Like a black hole where time once stood.
Veyron's voice echoed, laced with uncharacteristic seriousness. "The paradox residue is spreading. If we stay here, we get unmade along with the memory."
Kael-X turned, sweat and blood painting streaks down his jaw. "Then we move."
Umbra opened a tear in the shadows, but it wavered.
Nyx's form flickered beside it. "Something's wrong. This timeline's trying to hold us here."
Oblivion stepped forward, planting a massive claw into the ground. "I'll anchor a stabilizer. Get him out."
"No," Kael-X growled. "We go together."
But before he could reach for them, Veyron raised his hand.
The void shimmered. A new glyph appeared beneath Kael-X's feet.
"Forgive me," Veyron whispered, his riddle-like voice now soft. "But you're the variable that breaks this loop. We'll find you again—when the time is ready to remember you."
Kael-X's body exploded into particles of light and void, sucked backward through time and space.
He reached out, but the beasts were already vanishing, one by one—Nyx last, her glowing eyes locked with his.
Then… silence.
The battlefield disintegrated.
No sky. No ground.
Just… a blank canvas.
And then—
Kael-X gasped awake, sitting upright on a rooftop in an unfamiliar city. The skyline shimmered, neon lights piercing a thick violet fog.
No shadow beasts.
No Veyron.
Just a single phrase etched into the wall beside him—written in ancient shadow script:
"The Silence is temporary. We remember you."
Kael-X stood slowly, adjusting the frayed edges of his cloak.
He was alone.
But something in the air whispered: not for long.
Next: Chapter 69 – Beyond the Veil of Silence