Cold.
Kael's fingers twitched as he awoke face-down in the snow, coughing out static.
Not blood. Not air. Static.
The world was wrong. The snow was pixelated. The trees bent at impossible angles. The sky blinked like a broken screen. The silence screamed.
He looked at his wrist. The watch was gone. But he could still feel it.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
He stood, the wind slicing at his skin with whispers.
> "What are you running from?"
A child's voice.
Kael turned. A small boy stood nearby, wearing the same uniform. Same hoodie. Same broken glasses. Same face.
But his eyes were missing. Just glitching sockets.
> "You erased me to survive. But I remember everything."
Kael backed away. His foot landed on something. A face.
Her face.
Dozens of her. Screaming. Laughing. Crying. Glitching. Collapsing into ash.
He fell backward, choking. And then—the Pulse hit.
A violent wave of soundless energy, like a scream from the bones of the earth. It dragged him through timelines again—flashing versions of him holding a gun, holding her hand, being dissected, screaming in cells.
"YOU ARE NOT THE ORIGINAL."
The world echoed. His skin cracked like glass. His memories spilled out like corrupted files.
"You were born in the glitch. Raised by echoes. Programmed to fail."
He ran. Through empty cities. Through blackened hallways. Through burning classrooms.
Each door he opened led to another Kael. Some hanging. Some laughing manically. Some kneeling beside her corpse.
He kept running. Until he fell through himself.
And everything went still.
He landed in a mirror room. Countless reflections of himself. Each speaking a different truth.
> "You killed her." "You saved her." "You imagined her." "You are her."
Kael clutched his head. "STOP!!"
Then everything froze.
One mirror cracked. He approached. Inside was her. Sitting. Smiling. Crying.
> "I'm still here, Kael." "But you have to remember what Pulse really is."
He touched the mirror.
And it shattered.
---
Chapter 26: Pulse Revelation
Light.
But not sunlight. Something deeper. Older. Like the glow of the first moment the universe realized it existed.
Kael floated in it. Weightless. Emotionless.
Until he heard it.
> "Pulse: The memory of what never was."
It wasn't a voice. It was a sensation. A truth injected into his spine.
Kael's eyes opened. He stood in a void. Shapes drifted by—memories, not his. Realities, not his. Faces he'd never seen, names he'd never known.
He understood now.
The Pulse wasn't a weapon. It wasn't even alive.
It was a cleanup. A glitch in the narrative. A cosmic eraser.
Every time someone got too close to truth, too close to something that shouldn't be...
Pulse activated.
> "You were not chosen." "You were left behind."
Kael turned. She was there. Or something that looked like her. Except her smile was too wide. Her eyes too bright.
> "You wanted to know, didn't you?" she whispered. "What happens when you break the narrative?"
Her hands twitched like static.
> "The world ends. Not with a bang. But with a rewrite."
Kael's chest hurt. He looked down—his body was unraveling. Code, bone, memory.
> "You were never meant to live, Kael." "You're a discarded draft."
He screamed. The void folded. The Pulse fired again.
And he woke up—
—in his classroom. Uniform clean. Desk neat. Teacher calling his name.
She sat beside him. Smiling. Alive.
No one else remembered a thing.
But Kael did.
He looked at the watch. Still glitching. Still ticking.
> Pulse: Not over yet.
---
End of Chapter 26.