Morning in Stonefall arrived slowly.
Smoke drifted through the streets like reluctant ghosts. The city still trembled occasionally, aftershocks of the fractured seal far below. Workers were already clearing rubble, hauling stone, reinforcing cracked foundations.
People needed routine.
Routine meant survival.
Eren stood at the edge of the plaza, watching them rebuild.
His eyes burned.
Neural Pattern Stability: 36%
Foreign Residue: 7%
Seal Integrity: 26%
He had slept.
Technically.
But sleep had not been rest.
The Dream That Wasn't
In the dream, the plaza had been full.
Not with workers.
With bodies.
Stonefall's citizens lay scattered across the cobblestones like discarded dolls. Blood seeped through the cracks in the stone and ran down into the drainage channels.
Ruby stood at the center.
Alive.
Crying.
Holding Eren's severed hand.
And above her—
The sky bent.
Not clouds.
Not light.
Geometry.
Something vast folding inward like the closing of a lid.
Then the dream ended.
Except it didn't feel like a dream.
It felt like memory.
The Moment
A mason dropped a chisel.
The metal clanged against stone.
Eren blinked—
—and the plaza changed.
Workers were gone.
Blood covered the ground.
The same bodies from the dream lay scattered exactly where he remembered them.
Ruby stood in the center.
Holding his hand.
The sky warped.
The same impossible folding began overhead.
His heart slammed violently in his chest.
Neural Pattern Stability: 34%
He stepped forward—
—and everything snapped back.
The plaza was normal again.
Workers moving.
Stone scraping.
Voices shouting.
No blood.
No corpses.
Ruby was across the square speaking to a guard captain.
Alive.
Whole.
Not crying.
Eren's hands trembled.
That had not been a dream.
That had been a possibility.
Devourer Response
Inside him, the Devourer stirred uneasily.
It was still digesting the fragment of the entity.
But the process was… leaking.
The fragment's perception of time was bleeding outward.
Not as control.
Not as power.
As contamination.
Eren wasn't seeing the future.
He was seeing potential outcomes brushing against the present.
Probability echoes.
The Devourer pulsed sharply.
As if warning him.
Or begging him to stop looking.
Ruby Notices
Ruby approached, wiping dust from her gloves.
"You look worse than yesterday."
"I feel worse than yesterday."
She studied his face carefully.
"You're pale."
"Helpful diagnosis."
"I'm serious."
Her tone softened slightly.
"What's happening to you?"
He hesitated.
Because explaining it sounded insane.
But after last night—
She had seen the shadow.
So he told her.
Not everything.
But enough.
About the time slips.
The wrong shadows.
The faces.
The glimpses.
When he finished, Ruby was very quiet.
Finally she asked:
"Did you see one just now?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
Eren looked at the plaza.
Workers laughing.
Children carrying water buckets.
Normal life.
Then he answered.
"Everyone here was dead."
Ruby didn't laugh.
She didn't dismiss it.
Instead she asked the most dangerous question possible.
"Can we stop it?"
Eren didn't answer.
Because he didn't know if the vision was a warning—
Or an inevitability.
The Test
He focused on the workers again.
Trying not to see.
Trying not to look through the cracks of time.
For a while—
Nothing happened.
Then a cart rolled through the plaza.
One of the wheels wobbled.
A loose axle.
In his vision—
The wheel snapped.
The cart tipped.
Heavy stone blocks spilled forward.
Crushing two workers instantly.
Blood on cobblestones.
Reality snapped back.
The cart continued rolling normally.
The axle still loose.
Still wobbling.
The accident hadn't happened.
Yet.
Eren walked forward.
Ruby followed.
"What are you doing?"
He didn't answer.
He stepped beside the cart driver.
"Stop."
The man frowned. "What?"
"Stop the cart."
"Why?"
"Wheel's about to fail."
The driver scoffed.
But Ruby's armor and authority carried weight.
"Do it," she ordered.
The man sighed and pulled the cart to a halt.
Eren crouched beside the wheel.
One firm push.
The axle cracked.
The wheel collapsed instantly.
The driver stared.
"…Huh."
Two workers who would have died walked past them carrying tools.
Alive.
Uncrushed.
Ruby slowly turned to Eren.
"You saw it."
"Yes."
Her eyes sharpened.
"You changed it."
"Maybe."
But as he stood—
The world flickered again.
The plaza filled with bodies.
Only this time—
The dead workers were different.
The accident had been avoided.
But something else had killed them.
Reality snapped back.
Neural Pattern Stability: 32%
Foreign Residue: 9%
The Devourer writhed inside him.
This wasn't clean.
It wasn't controlled.
Every time he interfered—
The future reshaped itself.
The Realization
Ruby saw his expression change.
"What?"
Eren exhaled slowly.
"Saving them doesn't fix it."
"What do you mean?"
He looked at the living workers.
Then at the ghost of their dead bodies still lingering faintly in his mind.
"The future doesn't disappear," he said quietly.
"It… reroutes."
Ruby went pale.
Above them—
The sky looked normal.
Blue.
Clear.
But Eren could still see the faint outline of something bending there.
Waiting.
Watching possible futures like a gambler shuffling cards.
And somewhere inside him—
The swallowed fragment pulsed faintly.
Curious.
Learning.
Neural Pattern Stability: 31%
Foreign Residue: 10%
Seal Integrity: 25%
The horror wasn't coming.
It was already entangled with him.
And the more he tried to prevent it—
The more the timeline twisted.