The world around Salem shimmered like a broken mirror, fragments of reality shifting and colliding in impossible patterns. Each reflection whispered different possibilities: some where he had failed, some where he had won, and some where he didn't even exist. The edges of the city blurred, twisting into shapes that should not have been possible, and yet here they were.
Salem stumbled over a street that seemed to stretch into infinity, cobblestones melting into liquid glass beneath his feet. The air smelled faintly of ozone and burnt sugar, a strange combination that made him pause and cough. Somewhere in the distance, a faint bell tolled, each chime echoing across overlapping timelines.
"Not this again," Salem muttered, clutching his head. "Every day, every… moment… it's like I'm trapped in someone else's idea of chaos."
From the corner of his eye, he noticed movement—a crowd of silhouettes, all identical but subtly wrong. They were copies of himself, some older, some younger, some smiling while others screamed silently. Each version carried a memory, a fragment, a potential future. The sight twisted something deep inside him.
"Stop looking at me like that," he said, but no sound escaped. His voice was swallowed by the fractured air.
A sudden flash of light split the scene. The ground gave way, and he fell through what felt like layers of time itself. Each layer passed faster than the last: flashes of his childhood, the July Revolution, the pandemic-stricken streets, fractured faces he couldn't quite place. The images were jarring, overlapping, colliding with one another. He gasped for air, but the air was thick with static, almost like breathing in electricity.
Then, a voice—familiar, yet alien—echoed through the layers.
"Salem Grey. You've wandered far… too far."
He looked around, but no one was there. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. His hand reached out, touching… nothing, yet he felt it pressing back, resisting, pulling him deeper into the fracture.
"Who's there? Show yourself!"
"I am every choice you didn't make, every path you didn't take… and yet, I am also the path you will take."
The ground beneath him shuddered violently, and he realized he was standing on shifting clock hands, spinning wildly around a central axis of light. Each tick resonated with his heartbeat, and each tock felt like a memory slipping away. The world wasn't just fractured—it was alive, aware of him, testing him.
From the shadows emerged a figure draped in black, its face obscured by a mirror that reflected Salem in infinite angles. He could see every emotion—fear, anger, despair—bouncing endlessly across its surface. The figure spoke without moving its lips.
"You are not the only one trapped here. Others have come… some returned, some did not. Time is a playground, Salem, and you are both the player and the pawn."
Salem swallowed hard. "Others? Who… who's left?"
The figure tilted its head, the mirror reflecting versions of Salem he didn't recognize. "Some are lost to their timelines. Some… have become the fractures themselves."
"What do you mean, 'fractures'?"
The figure extended a hand, and suddenly Salem was surrounded by translucent threads, weaving through him, pulling at his very being. Each thread contained a memory, a choice, a consequence. The threads whispered promises and threats in equal measure, tugging him toward multiple directions at once.
"These… these are my life? My timelines?" he asked, panic rising in his chest.
"They are what you made them, and what they made of you," the figure said. "One wrong step, one hesitation, and the threads snap. You'll be unmade… rewritten… erased."
Salem staggered backward, feeling the weight of every skipped day, every forgotten memory, pressing down on him. He tried to grasp a thread, but it shifted, slipping through his fingers like liquid light.
"I can't… I can't handle all of this," he whispered.
"Ah, but you must," said the voice, now joined by a chorus of overlapping echoes—his own, yet not his. "You've been chosen. Not because you're ready, but because no one else can."
The figure stepped closer, mirror reflecting endless versions of Salem, each one screaming silently. One reached out, hand brushing against his own, eyes hollow yet pleading.
"This… this isn't fair!" Salem shouted, but the threads only tightened, pulling him forward.
The fractured sky above him cracked open, revealing glimpses of impossible landscapes: cities underwater, forests suspended in glass, stars spinning backward, and skies raining memories instead of rain. Among them, fleetingly, he saw her—someone he thought he had lost long ago—reaching for him, mouth opening, yet no sound came.
"No… don't… I can't—"
A sudden gust of wind, or maybe a ripple in time, threw him off balance. He fell backward, tumbling through threads of light, crashing into a room that didn't belong anywhere. The walls were clocks, each one ticking in a different rhythm. The floor was liquid mercury, reflecting fragments of his face.
"You've reached the threshold," the mirror figure said. "Beyond this… lies the choice you cannot avoid."
Salem's vision blurred. He felt the threads wrap around him, lifting him, turning him. Memories collided—faces he loved, faces he feared, every skipped day flashing in violent montage. The cacophony of time was deafening, and yet… oddly intoxicating.
"I… I don't know if I can—"
"You must. Or the fractures will consume everything."
And then, the mirror cracked.
A scream—his own, or was it hers?—echoed as a shard of glass flew directly toward him. It shattered the air, the fractured sky, and everything went black.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, a single, ominous line appeared, glowing across the void:
"Time has chosen. Will you?"
Salem's hand shot forward, reaching… for what, he didn't know. The threads twitched violently, pulling him toward an unknown fate, and the fractured world waited with bated breath.