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transmigration

The Sideways Door

In the distant future, when the stars themselves have become familiar and the silence between galaxies is no longer feared, humanity turns its gaze toward the last unanswered question. Not the birth of suns or the death of worlds, but the quiet river that carries all things. Time. To grasp it, they build the Time Ring. It circles Earth like a silent crown of silver. It hums with power drawn from the very bones of space. Scholars praise it. Leaders boast of it. Yet none understand the shadow that coils within it. Rae Aylin is an ordinary engineer in an age of extraordinary minds. He does not thirst for glory. He walks his life with steady steps. Yet fate often chooses those who least expect it. On the day he steps into the Time Ring, the world he knows ends with a whisper. A crack forms where no crack should exist. Light folds. Space trembles. And Rae is swallowed by a fracture that should never have been opened. When he wakes, the sky above him is no sky his era has ever recorded. The land is heavy with stories long forgotten. Every breath he draws feels like it belongs to someone who lived centuries before him. His suit is broken. His tools barely respond. Only his mind remains sharp enough to keep him alive. Far away, the crew he left behind stands before an unfolding disaster. Their attempt to pull Rae back tears open truths that were buried by older hands. The Time Ring was not humanity’s first step into the river of time. It was a door built inside another door. And in the far past, on a dusty road beneath a sun that has witnessed countless ages, a man stands among the crowd. His eyes are calm. His presence is quiet, yet it stretches like an ocean without end. When he speaks to the wayward travellers, his words ripple through every moment that will ever exist. “Go back.” They hear only a warning. He speaks with understanding. For he has walked the river they only just glimpsed. He has seen its banks, its depths and its hidden currents. As Rae struggles to survive in a world that should not exist, he begins to sense that time is not an empty path. It is alive. It remembers. It hungers. And the moment he fell into it, something stirred. Now the river watches him. And once the river watches, it never looks away.
Rayleigh · 2.2k Views