There was no warning. No prophecy etched in data. No whisper from the codewinds between the worlds.
He came as if summoned by vengeance itself.
Kal—the future Kal—was not the boy he once was. Not the dreamer, not the soldier, not even the survivor. What emerged now from the cracked veil between servers was something colder, sharper, and infinitely more dangerous. A man carved by time like a blade that had been tempered one thousand times in fire, betrayal, and silence.
He stood at the edge of Server-19's skybridge, a silhouette against a sunless horizon. The city lay sprawled beneath him, untouched, unaware.
But not for long.
The first strike came like thunder without storm. A golden bolt screamed from his hand and shattered a tower made of glass and bloodcode. Alarms began to echo. Screams followed. And then, as always, he descended.
Every server had its own version of him—his father.Morvain.
Tall. Always tall.Black hair—obsidian strands that never moved with the wind.Eyes… hollow. As if someone had carved the pupils out and left nothing but blindness masquerading as vision. Each Morvain greeted Kal with a different expression: surprise, amusement, regret. None of them lasted long enough to finish a sentence.
He never spoke first.He never hesitated.The killings were swift. Final.
No drama.Only judgment.
Server after server. Dimension after dimension. Kal moved with relentless purpose. Like a virus programmed for retribution, yet powered by heartbreak too deep to name.
In the iron jungles of Server-32, Morvain had built an empire of steel. Kal tore it down in eight minutes.
In Server-7, Morvain had become a digital god, worshipped by millions of NPCs and sentient minds alike. Kal corrupted the mainframe with his own raw energy, watching his father fall as code dissolved around him.
In Server-41, Morvain wore priestly robes, his voice broadcast into the sky. Kal entered the cathedral mid-sermon, stepped through the fire without blinking, and struck him down on the altar.
It never changed.Not the outcome.Not the feeling.
And yet... it never felt like victory.
"You tried to kill me in my own server," Kal whispered once, kneeling in the ruins of a throne room made of bone. His voice was ragged, as if he'd forgotten how to speak gently."You failed. But you left something behind. Something worse than death."
He stood up, slowly, as golden static danced along his arms. His eyes—once vibrant with hope—now carried only the weight of remembrance. He didn't weep. He didn't shout. His rage was not loud.
It was quiet.And that made it more terrifying.
His monologues weren't confessions. They were echoes. Glimpses.Like broken reflections on a cracked mirror.
He never told the full story of his own server. But through scattered phrases and pained silences, one could almost piece it together. A father's betrayal. Multiple attempts on his life. A child hunted, outcast, shattered. Not once, but again and again, across timelines that refused to offer a safe harbor.
"He looked at me the same way they all do," Kal once said, watching another Morvain's body burn in a pool of golden sparks."Like I was a mistake... an error in their calculations."
But he was no error.He was the answer they couldn't accept.
Each server he visited fell into silence behind him. Some collapsed entirely, unable to bear the strain of his power. Others rebuilt slowly, unaware of the war that had passed through their sky.
None of that mattered to Kal.
His goal was never conquest. Never domination. He didn't care about politics, territories, ideologies. He didn't want thrones or followers. He wanted removal. Cleansing. The purging of a pattern that should've never repeated.
He wanted no child—no version of himself—to suffer at the hands of that shadow again.
"No one else should have to look into those dead eyes and see the man who gave them life."
The lightning within him had grown wilder, more primal. It no longer crackled; it roared. It obeyed him not like a tool, but like a living extension of his grief. Every strike, every burst, every golden torrent that split buildings and burned through flesh—it all screamed of the storm inside.
And that storm never rested.
By now, his name had become a myth.Whispers in the serverlines.A figure of golden thunder that blinked through time and executed gods.A ghost from the future.
Kal.
Kal the Broken.Kal the Reaper.Kal the one who should not exist.
But he did. And he was coming.
And now, in the eerie stillness of yet another server—Server Origin—he stood on a shattered rooftop, above a quiet, waiting city. The wind was too soft. The light too artificial. Something here was… different.
He narrowed his eyes. Something stirred at the edge of the code.
The rift behind him had closed, sealing the last kill.
And now...
Something else was stepping in.
The world had stilled.But it wasn't the silence of aftermath.It was the silence of interruption.
Kal noticed it immediately. The subtle bending of light. The sudden halt of digital birds mid-flight. The way particles of dust froze midair, like memories suspended in hesitation. The air no longer flowed—it waited.
Time… had stopped.
He didn't move.Didn't blink.But his jaw clenched.
A presence had entered the server.Not a threat. Not yet.But something far more calculated.
And then, out of the frozen tapestry of halted time, he stepped in—Sharp coat, crisp posture, every movement deliberate. His boots didn't make a sound. They didn't have to. His very existence hummed with a kind of authority that didn't require noise.
Michael De Monroe. The Kairum.
The man who hunted anomalies between servers. A registered agent of T.I.M.E. — not a soldier, not a savior, but something cleaner. More efficient. A man who didn't chase justice or vengeance, but balance. He didn't believe in fixing timelines. He believed in containing the damage.
This was not the Michael from Kal's own ruined future.That version had died—somewhere, sometime.This one was from the original server.The baseline.
He observed Kal with the same expression one might reserve for a glitch on a surgical table: calm, professional, mildly annoyed.
"You've been busy," he said, voice as smooth as the folds in his coat."How many is it now? Ten? Fifteen Morvains dead across the branches?"
Kal's eyes narrowed, but he didn't answer.
Michael took a few more steps forward. Around them, time was still paused—except for the two of them. The only moving pieces in a grand, frozen theater.
"You don't remember me," Michael continued, his tone dry. "We haven't met in your timeline. But I've known of you. The rogue variable. The fork in Victor's damn spoon."
The name landed like a distant thunderclap.
Victor.
Kal's fingers twitched with barely contained energy.
Michael smirked slightly, reading the shift in his stance like a scanner.
"He always did attract chaos, didn't he? You're one of his… consequences. Indirectly, of course. Traveling to the past tends to leave stains. And you, Kal, are the oil spill."
Kal finally spoke, his voice like a cracked wire.
"I don't answer to T.I.M.E."
"No," Michael replied, casually adjusting his cufflink. "You don't answer to anyone. That's the problem."
There was no malice in his words. Only precision. Michael didn't approach with hatred, nor fear. He wasn't here to fight a monster. He was here to clean up a mess.
"By protocol," he went on, "I should arrest you. Lock you in a suspended microloop until a jury of cross-server consensus decides your fate.""But given the—ah—complexity of your origins and the… delicacy of your trajectory, I might have to improvise."
"You're not taking me anywhere," Kal growled, lightning already humming faintly beneath his skin.
"See," Michael nodded, "that's the attitude Victor warned me about."
There it was again. The thread connecting it all. Victor Coleman—Kal's ghost of causality. The one who had traveled to the past and broken a hundred things just by existing out of place. Kal was a wound opened by that act, and now Michael was here to suture it shut.
"He said you'd be... unpredictable," Michael added. "He also said you wouldn't listen. That's why he never tried to stop you himself. That, and… he felt responsible."
Kal took a step forward. The temperature dropped.
"Don't talk to me about responsibility," he said, voice low and dangerous."You hunt rulebreakers. I hunt murderers. There's a difference."
Michael sighed. Not tired—measured.
"And yet, here we are, preparing to do the same thing in two very different suits."
Their eyes locked.No more exposition.No more history.
Two men. Two forces.One storm about to break.One line that couldn't be uncrossed.
Michael's fingers twitched slightly, and the very edges of time shivered.
Kal's body tensed, arcs of golden thunder licking across his arms.
They both spoke at once, voices calm, almost ceremonial:
"You're not going to walk away from this."
And then—
time cracked.
The stillness didn't last.It shattered—violently.
The rooftop exploded into motion as Kal lunged forward, the force of his movement cracking the concrete beneath his feet. A jagged trail of golden lightning followed him like a burning scar across reality. His fist, wrapped in the electric wrath of a dozen timelines, swung straight for Michael's head.
But Michael was gone.
Not dodged.Erased—from that moment in time.
Kal's punch struck nothing but air, detonating the space around it. The pressure sent shockwaves outward, windows bursting in distant towers. But Kal wasn't fazed. He turned sharply, eyes scanning. He could feel Michael's presence... seconds away, or maybe just behind.
Then came the voice.
"Try again."
Michael reappeared mid-air, three meters above Kal, walking on an invisible platform of geometric sigils. His coat didn't even flutter. With a flick of his hand, time reversed just enough to undo the shockwave Kal had created.
Then he descended.
They clashed.
Fist met palm. Energy collided with distortion. The rooftop vanished beneath them, devoured by the violence of their blows. Kal struck like thunder incarnate—wild, furious, overwhelming. His lightning wasn't a weapon. It was grief given velocity.
Michael countered with elegance—he didn't resist the storm, he redirected it. He didn't stop time, he re-threaded it. Each movement was a pivot, each dodge a rewind, each strike delivered from a moment that hadn't arrived yet.
And yet, Kal kept coming.
Every time he was pushed back, he returned faster. Stronger. Sparks danced across his arms, burning golden trails into the air. He swung both arms forward and a twin arc of lightning carved an X across the sky.
Michael stopped it mid-flight.
With a snap of his fingers, reality fractured. The lightning paused midair, froze, bent, and disintegrated like sand under glass. He raised one eyebrow, unimpressed.
"Golden thunder," Michael said flatly. "Pretty. But not precise."
Kal's eyes narrowed.
"I don't need precision," he growled. "I need you to shut up."
He slammed his palm into the ground. Lightning erupted upward, turning the rooftop into a temple of storm. The building couldn't withstand it—walls cracked, beams twisted. But Michael wasn't caught.
He was already behind Kal.
"You think pain makes you strong," Michael whispered, palm glowing with symbols of pure chronomagic. "It doesn't. It just makes you predictable."
He struck Kal in the back with a wave of compressed time. Kal staggered forward, body briefly aged a decade before correcting itself with a shock of static.
Kal whirled, fury bursting from his chest.
"You're not fighting me," he roared. "You're fighting the result of what your system created!"
He hurled a bolt that cracked the server's digital atmosphere. Michael caught it—stopped it midair—and twisted it into nothing.
They fought in the air now, dancing between moments, between realities. Time slowed. Then sped. Then shattered, like glass under the weight of paradox.
Kal struck with storms. Michael answered with silence.Kal burned. Michael blinked.
And all the while… they talked.
"Victor should've ended you," Michael muttered."He should've faced what he started."
"He ran," Kal shot back. "Like all of you do."
"You mistake chaos for cause," Michael snapped."You think being hurt gives you license to hurt everything else. That's not justice."
"It's not justice," Kal hissed."It's balance."
They slammed into each other mid-sentence. A golden punch met a glowing sigil. The impact silenced the city. And in the eye of the storm—both men breathed, chest heaving, time stuttering around them.
Then Michael tilted his head, calm returning to his voice.
And he said it.
"You're not punishing the past, Kal…You're just proving your father was right about you."
The words didn't echo.They landed.Heavy. Sharp. Surgical.
Kal didn't respond. Not at first.
His hands loosened, then clenched again. His jaw trembled—not in rage… but in restraint. The golden energy that wrapped around his arms began to shimmer erratically, flaring in unpredictable pulses. It wasn't the controlled storm of a warrior anymore.
It was something deeper.A fracture.
Michael had struck something he didn't fully understand.A scar.A scar that had never healed.
Kal's breath turned ragged. His vision blurred—not from blood, but from memories. Unwanted, uninvited. Faces. Screams. Loneliness. The cold, hollow gaze of Morvain as he reached for a boy who once begged someone to stop him.
He was right about you.
No.
He was right—
"SHUT UP!!"
The scream tore through him like thunder given voice. The rooftop cracked beneath his feet, not from force, but from sheer presence. Kal's aura exploded outward—golden lightning surging with such ferocity that the server's digital sky began to flicker.
Michael raised a hand, trying to stabilize the time layer—too late.
Kal moved faster than code could predict.
He struck.
One single, raw punch—fueled by sorrow, shame, betrayal, and the ghost of a child—slammed into Michael's chest. The agent's eyes went wide as he was hurled across the air like a ragdoll caught in a divine current.
He hit the ground hard. And stayed there.
Kal stood above him, shoulders shaking—not with triumph, but with something broken.
He looked down at the man who once spoke with calm and logic and detachment.
Now… that voice was silent.
Kal knelt slowly and reached toward Michael's side, where the Time Stone glowed faintly—like a heartbeat.
He didn't yank it.
He claimed it.
The moment his fingers wrapped around it, a wave of ancient clarity pulsed into him. He understood—somehow, instinctively—what this artifact was.
A clean stone.One-way travel.No duplication.No new server.Just one clean exit into the past.
For the first time in years, Kal's breathing steadied.
He looked down at Michael—injured, barely conscious, but still aware.
And for a second… he softened.
"You don't have to worry," Kal murmured, voice low, even calm."This one won't fracture the system. No extra timelines. No paradox clones. Just me… going home."
He tilted his head slightly, a cruel sort of smirk flickering on his lips.
"Your precious organization won't need to fill out a single form."
Michael didn't answer.
Kal rose.
He summoned a containment ring using the last reserves of the stone's energy—simple, elegant. A loop outside of time. Michael would remain there: untouched, unmoving, locked in the same moment until someone brave enough chose to open the loop.
Kal turned his back on him.
The stone responded.
A golden rift bloomed in the air before him. Not violent. Not explosive.Gentle.Like memory.Like forgiveness trying to exist.
Kal stepped into it.
And vanished.
Epilogue: The First Scar
The wind was quiet.
No server alarms. No battle cries. No screams.
Just… silence.
Kal emerged from the rift like a ghost stepping into its own haunting. The world around him was too familiar to be real. A hilltop. A sky stained with dusk. The distant hum of machines that didn't know they were watching.
He didn't have to guess what moment this was.
He knew.
There, at the base of the hill… a boy stood. Small. Shaking. Staring up at the monster that loomed before him.
Morvain.
His black hair slicked back. Eyes empty of humanity. Hand extended, voice laced with command.
"Give him to me—""Or try to stop me."
Kal didn't move. Not yet.
He watched.
He watched himself at the origin of the pain. The moment the storm was born.And now… he was here.
Not as the child.Not as the victim.But as the man who survived it all.
And this time…
He wouldn't let it happen the same way.