The city wasn't just infected—it was wrong. Salem Grey's boots crunched over shards of glass and cracked concrete that seemed to shimmer, as if the very world had been stitched together by an absent-minded tailor with shaky hands. Shadows stretched unnaturally long, then snapped back, like elastic strings pulled too far. Somewhere above, the sky flickered between dusk, midnight, and the first glow of dawn in a maddening loop.
He clenched his fists, forcing himself to breathe. The journal had been gone for hours—or maybe minutes. Time here had no allegiance to logic. Every tick of his watch felt simultaneously late and early. A static hum filled the air, vibrating against his teeth.
"Why does it always smell like burnt sugar and ozone when reality collapses?" he muttered.
A soft laughter answered him, carried on winds that shouldn't exist.
"Because chaos has a palate, darling. And you're just here for the tasting menu."
The voice belonged to no one and everyone. A flicker in the corner of his eye revealed a figure—a boy, older yet younger, both scarred and untouched, eyes the same strange gray as his own. The figure held out a hand.
"Come with me, or get lost forever in the loop."
Salem froze. He didn't trust anyone—or anything—anymore. But something in the way the air around the figure shimmered, like a memory he couldn't quite grasp, tugged at him.
"Why should I?" Salem spat. "Last time I followed someone, I nearly got erased."
"And yet you're still here," the figure whispered. "Still breaking through. Still… trying. That counts for something."
The city twisted behind him, buildings bending like rubber, streets folding back on themselves, creating impossible intersections. Time skipped in stutters: a pedestrian fell mid-step, frozen, only to continue walking in reverse; car horns sounded before the cars themselves existed. Salem's stomach churned.
"Everywhere," he muttered. "I'm everywhere at once."
"Exactly," said the figure, voice soft but with an edge that cut through the noise. "And nowhere. You've become a nexus of timelines, a fracture of yourself in infinite mirrors."
Salem gritted his teeth. Mirrors. Yes. That made sense. Not the kind on walls, but the kind that reflected himself in ways that weren't supposed to exist yet. Versions of him blinked in and out of view—older, younger, cautious, reckless. One of them shouted something he couldn't hear over the static hum of the fractured city.
Then the ground beneath him cracked, like the earth itself had been waiting for his decision. He stumbled, caught on a loose slab of concrete that hung precariously above a void that twisted like liquid glass. A drop of sweat slid down his temple.
"I don't… I don't know which way is forward."
"Forward is whatever you step into," said the figure. "Or don't. But the void doesn't wait for indecision."
Salem's breath hitched. Shadows converged, crawling along the walls, twisting into shapes that resembled faces he recognized—or thought he did. Memories, false and real, collided in a storm of color and sound. A scream echoed, but it was both his own and someone else's. Somewhere, a clock chimed, but the hour hand ran backward.
"Time is a joke," he muttered.
"And you're the punchline," the figure said, almost cheerfully.
A sudden ripple of movement caught his eye. Across the fractured street, a group of figures emerged, faces hidden beneath hoods stitched from shadows. They moved in perfect sync, but each step left a ghost behind—an echo of themselves in the past, or maybe the future. One of them raised a hand, and the world seemed to pause.
Salem's pulse spiked.
"They're… what?" he whispered.
"Hunters of the fractured," said the figure. "They erase timelines, seal gaps, and… sometimes snack on anomalies."
Salem swallowed hard.
"You mean me."
"Among others," the figure admitted. "They're coming. Faster than you think. And you have only seconds—minutes? Hours?—before they decide your timeline is expendable."
The fractured city bent violently, making the street beneath him rise like a wave, sending him stumbling toward the void again. Panic surged. He tried to grasp anything solid, but every surface flickered like a broken signal. Then the voice—the watch—resounded in his mind.
"Tick-tock, Salem. Tick-tock. Too slow."
A flash of insight hit him. The void wasn't empty—it was a corridor. A conduit through which he could slip if he moved fast enough. But it required precision, trust in instinct, and a leap of faith he wasn't sure he still possessed.
The figure stepped back.
"Go. Or stay. The void doesn't care either way."
Salem squared his shoulders. He was tired of being a pawn in this endless, chaotic game. Time travel, fractured realities, cosmic glitches, omnipotent narrators, shadow hunters—he didn't care anymore. He would act.
He sprinted toward the void. The air itself seemed to resist him, pulling him back with invisible fingers. Faces of his other selves reached out, some warning, some encouraging, all fading as quickly as they appeared. He jumped.
The void swallowed him.
Light, color, sound, and memory collapsed into a singularity. Salem's stomach flipped. He was falling through a tunnel of fractal clocks, fractured echoes, and whispers of the future. The older version of himself appeared again, silently pointing ahead, then vanished.
A voice, cold and deep, echoed through the tunnel, reverberating in every fragment of his being:
"You shouldn't have come here… Salem."
Salem's teeth clenched. His hands balled into fists.
"I didn't come. I'm going."
The tunnel split violently, threads of time snapping like broken ropes. He was hurled into multiple realities at once—one where the city burned, one where it rained violet sparks, one where everything was silent, frozen, except him.
And then, just as quickly as it had begun, the chaos stilled. Salem's feet touched solid ground. Or something like solid ground. Shadows stretched into shapes he didn't recognize, flickering with anticipation. The fractured skyline hummed, like a beast holding its breath.
A single neon sign flickered into existence above him, spelling in jagged letters:
"CHOOSE… OR BE ERASED."
Salem froze. The air around him thickened. He could feel multiple versions of himself converging, timelines bleeding into one another. The void behind him pulsed with impatient energy. The shadow hunters emerged from the periphery, circling.
And then—a whisper, barely audible:
"Next move, Salem Grey. One wrong step… and the story ends. For good."
The ground beneath him began to crack again, not just beneath his feet, but everywhere he was. The fractured timelines trembled. The city, the void, the carnival echoes, the skeletal horses—they all seemed to focus, coalescing around him.
Salem's breath caught. He glanced down. His hands were glowing faintly, filled with energy he didn't understand. The choice was his. Or was it?
"Not… my choice?" he muttered, voice barely audible.
A final flash of light consumed everything. And then… silence.
Salem opened his eyes, and he wasn't sure which timeline he was in. Or who he was anymore. A shadow moved in the corner—human, not human, or maybe both. The neon sign glowed behind it:
"GAME STARTS NOW."