For a moment, Aarav felt nothing—no ground beneath his feet, no sound in his ears, no sense of time itself. The countdown voice that had echoed 10…9…8… vanished into silence. It was as if the universe had taken a deep breath and stopped.
Then pain struck.
A sharp jolt ran through his body as he hit something hard. Aarav groaned and slowly opened his eyes. Blurred lights flickered above him, shifting between blue and violet. The air felt heavy, strange, almost unreal.
"Aarav…!" a familiar voice called out.
Harsh.
Aarav turned his head and saw his friend lying a few feet away, slowly pushing himself up. His face was covered in dust, but his eyes were wide open with fear and confusion.
"Are you alive?" Harsh asked, his voice trembling.
"I think so," Aarav replied, sitting up. "Where… where are we?"
They looked around.
The place was nothing like the underground lab they had left—or any timeline they had seen before. The sky above them was not a sky at all. It was a swirling ocean of colors, with broken fragments floating in the air like shattered glass. Pieces of buildings, roads, and machines hovered silently, frozen in mid-motion.
"This doesn't look like the future," Harsh whispered. "Or the past."
Aarav's heart began to race. "The blue light… we went through it again, didn't we?"
Before Harsh could answer, a low humming sound filled the air. In the distance, something massive was moving. A circular structure—half machine, half energy—slowly rotated, glowing with symbols Aarav had never seen before.
Harsh stared at it in shock. "Is that… another time machine?"
As they stepped closer, Aarav noticed something terrifying. The symbols on the machine were flickering, unstable—just like the one that had exploded in the previous timeline.
Suddenly, a distorted voice echoed around them.
"Timeline breach detected. Travelers identified."
Aarav and Harsh froze.
"This place… it knows we're here," Aarav said quietly.
From the shadows, figures began to appear—humans, but not quite the same. Their eyes glowed faintly, and strange markings covered their arms.
One of them stepped forward and spoke slowly:
"You should not exist in this timeline."
Harsh clenched his fists. "We just want to go back. Back to our future."
The figure looked at them with cold curiosity.
"Your future is broken. And every jump you make… breaks it more."
Aarav felt a chill run down his spine.
For the first time since missing that catch on the cricket field, he realized something terrible—
Changing one match had changed everything.
And now, time itself was hunting them.
To be continued…