The world had grown quieter—but not in peace. It was the kind of silence that came before an explosion.
Kael stood at the edge of the abandoned train station, its walls glitching like corrupted data, windows bleeding static instead of light. The Pulse hadn't returned… but something worse had taken its place.
Memories he never lived began to flash in his mind—laughing with parents who never existed, holding a diploma from a university he never attended, waking up beside someone that wasn't her. These fragments didn't belong to him. Or maybe… he didn't belong to them.
"None of this is real," Kael whispered. "And neither am I."
Behind him, the loud clang of a bell echoed—a bell that hadn't rung in decades.
He turned.
She was standing there. Her eyes hollow. Her skin slightly translucent. Not like a ghost. More like a… memory rendered in flesh. A corrupted copy of the girl he once loved. She smiled, but her face cracked like broken porcelain.
"You should've forgotten me, Kael."
He stepped back. "What… are you?"
"I'm a bookmark. In your story. I'm the page you weren't supposed to reread." She reached out, fingertips twitching unnaturally.
His watch sparked and twisted, time on its face running backward, and then forward again. The Pulse began to hum. Not loud, not painful—just there. Watching.
Kael felt the floor beneath him bend, twist, and fracture. The entire station tilted like reality itself was being rewritten.
In the shattered sky above, words appeared—red and glowing:
"File Error: Kael.exe – Memory Leak Detected."
He fell to his knees, gripping his head. Screaming—but no sound came out.
Not this again. Not the Pulse. Not the memories.
But it wasn't the Pulse this time.
It was him.
He had become the anomaly.
And somewhere deep within the cracks of reality… something else laughed.
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