Salem opened his eyes to a sky he didn't recognize. The color was wrong—too violet, too alive, as if the atmosphere itself were breathing. Below him, a city stretched in impossible angles, twisting like melted wax. Every building leaned differently, some floating just a foot above the streets, defying gravity with a casual shrug.
He groaned. "Not again…"
Time felt wrong. Each second dripped slowly, then leapt forward in jagged bursts, like a scratched record. Salem realized, with a sinking feeling, that he wasn't just in another timeline. He was inside someone else's memory of a timeline. Or maybe multiple memories, overlapping like transparencies.
A voice, soft and sardonic, crept into his mind.
"Oh, look who decided to wake up. You really don't learn, do you, Salem?"
"…The Writer?" Salem muttered, rubbing his temples. "I thought you were busy supervising earlier timelines."
"Supervising? Ha! I'm multitasking. Watching you fumble through chaos is my full-time job."
The city below shimmered. People walked backwards, forwards, and sideways simultaneously. Some froze mid-step, eyes wide, as if aware they were puppets in a story too big to comprehend. Others looped endlessly, retracing the same actions over and over—pouring coffee, spilling coffee, swearing, spilling coffee again.
Salem blinked. "Is this… a loop?"
"A loop? Darling, this is the buffet of loops. You'll be tasting them all."
He clenched his fists. "I don't have time to taste! I need—"
The ground beneath him shivered. Buildings stretched upward like elastic, windows flickering into other worlds: a battlefield scorched with fire, a quiet classroom where the air smelled like chalk, a hospital hallway filled with distant echoes. Salem swallowed. Each glimpse pulled at his mind, tugging him toward emotions he didn't have time to process.
"Careful," the Writer purred. "Touching too many realities at once can… fray you. Mentally, emotionally… narratively."
Salem ignored the warning and leapt. The wind tore at him, tugging with impossible force, but instead of falling, he felt the threads of time wrapping around him like a cocoon. He was neither here nor there, neither past nor future. Just… floating, suspended between the moments he had already lived and the moments yet to come.
A figure emerged from the ether: small, flickering, barely visible, but undeniably human. It was a child—Salem's child? No. His child? Or perhaps his father? The memory twisted on itself.
"Who—what are you?" Salem demanded.
"I am… the echo. The thread. The warning you didn't listen to."
Salem froze. "The echo? Warning? I don't—"
"Don't pretend you understand. You never do. That's why this is entertaining."
The child—or echo—extended a hand, and suddenly the world snapped. Salem fell through a vortex of light and shadow, memories and fragments colliding violently. He landed in a room he recognized: his own bedroom, but older, decayed, walls peeling as if time itself had forgotten this place.
A journal lay open on the desk. Scribbled inside were words he didn't remember writing:
"The children are the key. July. Remember the July Revolution. The virus. The skips. It all begins and ends here."
Salem's stomach dropped. The July Revolution. The chaos that had first fractured reality. The dead children. It had all been a seed, planted long before his first skip. He had seen the consequences, the echoes, but never the origin.
"Now you understand," the Writer whispered, this time almost gentle. "Time isn't linear. Choices aren't singular. Every action ripples outward… and backward."
Salem ran his fingers through his hair. "So… I have to go back. I have to fix it."
"Fix it? Ha! You'll try. But be warned: fixing is just another form of breaking. Every repair you attempt will fracture somewhere else. That's the beauty of Out of Order."
A sound caught his attention—a low, rhythmic ticking. Clocks lined the walls, all moving differently. Some ran backward. Others skipped entire hours in one tick. The echoes of events past, present, and future melded together into a symphony of chaos.
Salem approached one of the clocks. The hands spun violently, then froze on a date: March 2020. His heart skipped. COVID. His travels through time weren't random. He had left traces everywhere—an unknown virus carried across realities, each jump creating tiny distortions. People might think he had brought it. That he had caused it. And in some ways… he had.
"Do you feel guilty yet?" the Writer asked.
Salem scowled. "Guilty? No. Responsible? Maybe. But there's no turning back."
"Exactly. Forward. Always forward."
Another loop began to form around him, tighter, faster. Scenes of chaos flickered: children running, adults screaming, hospitals overfilled, fireworks igniting the skies. Each frame lasted only a heartbeat before collapsing into the next, faster and faster, until Salem felt himself dizzy, floating in the center of a spinning carousel of fate.
He clenched his fists, trying to anchor himself. "I… I can't lose focus. I need to—"
"Control? Ha! Focus? Precious, but futile. You're a leaf in the storm of timelines, dear Salem. But here's a hint: leaves can also cut."
The voice was teasing, almost coaxing, as if promising power and torment simultaneously. Salem narrowed his eyes, determination flaring. He didn't need the voice. He needed the threads. The echoes. The keys to untangle the mess.
The child-echo appeared again, flickering violently. "Salem… remember… the choice. One wrong step… or right step… the outcome is yours to bear… and yet not."
Salem swallowed hard. He felt the weight of countless futures pressing down on him. The loops. The skips. The deaths. The potential lives. He couldn't ignore it. He had to move forward, even if forward was chaotic, even if forward was dangerous.
"Brace yourself," the Writer murmured, almost like a dare.
The world fractured violently. Salem tumbled through broken skies and warped streets, flashes of the July Revolution, the COVID outbreak, and countless other forgotten tragedies colliding in an impossible montage. Time, space, and memory blurred into one.
And in that chaos, a single thought crystallized in his mind:
I am not finished. I will not stop. No matter how broken, no matter how fragmented… I will thread the chaos together.
Salem's eyes snapped open. The violet sky still loomed. The city still twisted. But this time, he was ready.
"Let's see how deep the rabbit hole really goes," he muttered.
And with that, he stepped forward, into the eye of the fractured storm.