The walls of the Chrono-Verse Gate didn't just store history.
They rewrote it.
Kade staggered backward, vision blurred by a storm of fractured memories. Thousands of lifetimes. Hundreds of timelines. All of them colliding inside his skull like a dam breaking open.
He heard screaming.
His own.
But not from his mouth—from a version of him that had died decades ago… in a timeline that never happened.
Marei was yelling, dragging him by the arm. "Kade, listen to me! If this sync completes, it'll override who you are!"
"No," he gasped, voice rough. "It already has."
The ground beneath them cracked—fractured hexes spreading from the seal beneath his feet. Holographic fire poured out in lines of code. Not red. Not blue. But a deep obsidian shimmer—something only seen during manual resets.
From above, the system responded again.
Catalyst: Breach Detected. Foreign Timeline Signature Present.
Subsystem Conflict: Origin Memory vs. Catalyst Continuity.
Resolution Required.
Marei slammed her hand on her interface. "What does that mean?"
Kade didn't answer. He was staring at a new figure standing within the projection.
It was him.
But not just another past version—this Kade wore a crown of broken neural wires, his eyes glowing like corrupted stars. His voice rang out, both familiar and alien.
"You should've stayed asleep."
Kade stepped forward, fists clenched. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the version of you who won."
"No version of me wins if Earth dies."
The other Kade tilted his head. "You don't get it, do you? Earth was the price. What we saved was the truth."
Before Marei could react, the projection leapt—no, manifested—and the room exploded into a dimensional rupture. Time itself cracked like glass.
Marei screamed. The AI pods around them shuddered. And in that chaos, the Catalyst surged into emergency mode.
System Lockdown Initiated. Core Timeline Shield Activated.
Error: Origin Host and Present Host cannot coexist.
The two Kades locked eyes.
One breathing. One not.
But both alive in ways that defied explanation.
Then came the whisper. Soft. Surgical. From the true system behind everything.
Would you like to eliminate the anomaly?
Kade hesitated.
This… "winner" version of himself wasn't evil. He was desperate. Burned by the same betrayals, shaped by different paths.
"What happens if I say no?" Kade asked.
Then the Reset fails.
"And if I say yes?"
Then only one of you survives.
His heart pounded.
Was this how it always ended? Killing the man he might've become?
"No," he said coldly. "This time, I break the loop."
He turned to Marei. "We run."
She didn't argue.
As the Citadel shook, Kade grabbed the Catalyst core from its cradle, and together, they vanished into the breach—carried by unstable timelines and choices not yet written.
Behind them, the system's voice echoed once more:
New Directive Unlocked: Reset the Reset.