Kael screamed—
And the world didn't crack like glass.
It folded.
Like pages of a book closing violently. Like he was a paragraph being erased.
The sky turned inside out—not black, not white, not even color. Just absence. People around him froze. Not like statues, but like errors. Glitched shadows. Faces replaced with question marks.
He clutched his head.
Memories. Not his.
People screaming in a language he didn't know. A girl crying underwater.
And a room—red. With wires hanging from the ceiling, like vines strangling light itself.
Then—
Pulse Event: 02:14:17 triggered.
A voice. Robotic, echoing. But no speaker.
And Kael fell.
Again.
Into a street with no sound. No people. Only clocks ticking… backward.
He looked up—and saw it.
The girl.
Standing where the world ended. Her face pixelated, breaking apart in little digital flares.
"Kael… I wasn't supposed to exist."
And just like that—
Everything reset.
The room was silent.
But something was screaming.
No windows. No doors. Just four walls breathing like lungs too old to function. Vio sits in the center, his fingers twitching like they remember things he doesn't. The red notebook lies open in front of him—pages he never wrote, written in ink that bleeds.
"You shouldn't have remembered."
He jolts. The voice again. Female, familiar, not hers—but someone close. Maybe a mother? A sister? No, no… he doesn't have—
That's when the clock on his wrist stutters.
Tick.
Ti-ti-tick.
Gglllitch.
3:01
3:01
3:01
He looks down. It's been 3:01 for hours. The world around him cracks like glass under pressure. The floor ripples. The notebook shakes.
The Pulse is near.
A mirror appears on the wall. He's not in it.
Instead, it's her—the girl.
Eyes wide, mouth sewn shut with black thread, her hands pressed to the glass like she's drowning behind it.
Vio stands, his limbs heavy. Like the room is underwater.
She looks at him.
And suddenly—
He's falling.
Not down.
Sideways.
Into a street that never existed. Neon rain. Dead people walking backward. Buildings built upside down. A kid drawing Vio's face on a wall in blood, smiling.
And in the sky, instead of stars—clocks. All frozen. All broken. All watching him.
He turns around—and finds himself in a classroom.
Every student stares.
At him.
They have no eyes.
The teacher turns.
It's himself. Older. Blood down his chin. Hollow, grinning.
"You're finally ready to remember."
And then—he wakes up.
His watch is gone. The notebook blank.
But his hands?
They're covered in ink.