The dream was not his.
He stood in a field of glass, beneath a sky stitched together by broken stars. Luo Feng knelt before a shattered monument, whispering names into the wind — names of people who hadn't died yet. Names of cities that hadn't fallen. Names of futures that hadn't come to pass.
Jin Mu watched from the edge of the dream, unable to move.
Then the monument cracked.
And the stars screamed.
He woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat. The Paradox Sigil pulsed violently in his chest, reacting to the dream. It wasn't a vision. It was a warning. The timeline was unraveling.
He checked the chronometer. 3:17 AM.
The meteorite would crash in less than 48 hours.
And Luo Feng's awakening was no longer guaranteed.
Jin Mu activated his neural interface and pulled up the simulation logs. The Paradox Order had been busy. Subtle shifts in probability. Minor accidents. Delayed communications. All designed to nudge Luo Feng off his destined path.
He had to act.
But carefully.
He couldn't interfere directly. The Sigil's laws were clear: direct manipulation of key events would trigger a temporal backlash. He'd seen what that looked like — entire cities erased from existence, memories rewritten, people turned into echoes.
Instead, he chose a different path.
He would reinforce the timeline.
He slipped into the Dojo's archives, bypassing security with a whisper of causality. The records glowed with data — training logs, mission reports, psychological profiles. He found Luo Feng's file and embedded a subtle anomaly: a probability anchor. It would increase the chance of him being noticed by Babata when the meteorite arrived.
It was risky.
But it was necessary.
As he exited the archives, he felt it — a ripple in space.
Someone was watching.
He turned, and the corridor darkened. A figure stepped forward, cloaked in shifting light. Not the silver-eyed agent from before. This one was taller, older, and radiated authority.
"Jin Mu," the figure said. "Or should I call you Paradoxborn?"
He didn't answer.
"You're destabilizing the weave," the figure continued. "The Void Engine gave you power, but it did not give you permission."
Jin Mu summoned the Sigil. The air thickened. Time slowed.
But the figure didn't flinch.
"You think you're protecting Luo Feng," he said. "But you're creating echoes. Duplicates. Shadows. If you continue, the universe will fracture."
Jin Mu stepped forward. "Then help me stabilize it."
The figure smiled — a sad, tired smile.
"I can't. I'm here to erase you."
They fought.
Not with weapons, but with reality itself. Jin Mu bent probability, turning walls into corridors, time into loops. The figure countered with entropy, unraveling his constructs, collapsing his anchors.
It was a battle of philosophies.
Creation versus correction.
Hope versus inevitability.
In the end, Jin Mu was bleeding — not physically, but metaphysically. His presence flickered. His memories blurred. The figure raised a hand for the final strike.
Then — a voice.
"Stop."
Luo Feng stood at the end of the corridor, eyes wide, aura trembling.
He had seen everything.
The figure hesitated.
Jin Mu seized the moment. He triggered a paradox loop, trapping the figure in a recursive moment — a prison of his own causality.
The corridor returned to normal.
Luo Feng stepped forward. "Who are you?"
Jin Mu looked at him — really looked.
The boy was still young. Still unawakened. But the potential was there. The fire. The destiny.
"I'm no one," Jin Mu said. "Just a shadow trying to keep the light alive."
He turned and walked away, leaving Luo Feng with questions he couldn't yet answer.
But the timeline had been reinforced.
The meteorite would arrive.
Babata would awaken.