At first, he thought they were memories — muffled, drifting echoes of voices he recognized. But the longer he listened, the more they sharpened. They weren't drifting from his mind. They were bleeding in from outside the half-second.
He heard Rhea screaming orders through static.
He heard the iron groan of the Skybreaker engines.
He heard an impact — metal, sharp, panicked — followed by someone shouting his name.
Those weren't memories.
Those were events happening somewhere beyond this fractured sliver of reality.
Cain looked at his hands, expecting them to tremble. Instead, the motion took on a delayed smear before locking into place again. The realm was trying to hold him still. Trying to convince him he was part of the frozen moment.
He wasn't.
