Chapter Two: The Man Who Wasn't There
The drop point materialized around them like a memory trying to remember itself.
One moment, Mors Walk stood beneath the metallic lights of the Archive. The next, he was knee-deep in ash, boots sinking into the powdered remains of what used to be stone, wood, and maybe bone. The sky above him was amber-red, flickering as if time itself were uncertain whether to hold or collapse.
Agent Rell stumbled a step behind him, breath caught in her throat.
"This… this doesn't look like a city," she said.
"It was," Mors replied.
He bent down, scooping a handful of ash into his gloved palm. He let it run through his fingers, watching how it fell. Too slow. Delayed, like time itself was buffering.
"This isn't physical damage," he murmured. "It's narrative rot."
"Narrative—what?"
"The collapse of a timeline's internal logic," he explained. "A place can survive wars. Fire. Even erasure. But it cannot survive contradiction."
He stood, scanning the horizon. No buildings. No people. No wind. Just silence—too complete to be natural.
"There," he said.
A structure jutted from the ground half a kilometer out—shimmering faintly, like a half-loaded rendering. Not real, not unreal. Waiting to be observed into coherence.
They walked.
As they approached, the structure solidified—stone columns, shattered windows, and within it, a single chair facing away. On that chair sat a man. Still. Silent.
Rell reached for her weapon.
Mors raised a hand. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because I already know who he is."
The man in the chair turned slowly.
It was Mors.
Or someone who looked exactly like him.
But the eyes were wrong. Not cold and calculating—vacant. As if something had hollowed them out from the inside and filled them with dust.
"Mors Walk," the figure said, voice flat. "From Archive designation K-0. Iteration one-seven."
"You're a failed version," Mors said simply.
"I'm what happens when you hesitate."
Silence.
Then the seated Mors spoke again. "The lie didn't hold. The numbers didn't add up."
Mors stepped forward, slowly.
"You miscalculated?"
"No," said the seated one. "I told the truth."
That stopped him.
Behind him, Agent Rell stiffened. "Is that… bad?"
"Yes," Mors said quietly. "Truth is the most unstable structure in any timeline. It doesn't bend. It breaks."
He reached into his coat, pulled out a small device—needle-thin, glowing faintly blue.
"What are you doing?" Rell asked.
"Deleting him."
"But he's you."
Mors looked down at the man in the chair.
"No," he said. "He's what I left behind."
The device blinked once. Then silence.
Where the failed version sat, only ash remained—dispersed into the timeless wind.
Rell stared.
"You killed yourself."
"No," Mors said, already turning away. "I removed redundancy."
And they walked on.