Salem Grey tumbled through darkness, the fragments of time slicing past him like shards of broken mirrors. The echoing warning from the rip still burned in his mind: "EVERY TIMELINE WILL BE ACCOUNTED FOR. CHOOSE, OR BE ERASED."
He struggled to get his bearings, but the void offered no comfort. Every movement stretched into infinity, every sound duplicated itself, bouncing between realities. He could hear his own voice shouting instructions, arguing with himself, begging, and laughing—sometimes all at once.
"What the hell is happening?" Salem groaned.
A flash of light revealed the shard tether in his hand, glowing faintly. It pulsed with a rhythm not his own, beating as if the shard had a heartbeat. Somehow, he knew this was his only anchor—his connection to survival. Yet even that was fragile.
From somewhere beyond the edges of his perception, a voice whispered:
"The choice is yours, Salem. Step forward… or let the collapse consume you."
It wasn't Nexus. Not entirely. It sounded familiar, warmer… like a version of himself he used to be, before the chaos, before the skipped days, before every timeline had fractured.
Salem clenched his jaw. "Forward. Always forward."
The void began to shift. What had been infinite darkness became a corridor lined with doors—countless doors, each glowing with a color that defied logic. Each doorway hummed with potential, and each potential screamed with possibility. Some emitted screams, others laughter, some whispers in languages he didn't recognize but felt deep in his chest.
"I don't… I can't choose them all," he muttered.
"Precisely," the familiar voice whispered. "And that is why you must pick."
Salem's eyes darted across the options. One door shimmered with the glow of a city ravaged by skipped days, children missing, echoes of revolution. Another doorway twisted into a frozen landscape, snow whipping around silhouettes of himself from forgotten timelines. Yet another rippled with familiar chaos—the Clockwork Carnival, Ferris wheels spinning in impossible angles, skeletal horses prancing to a rhythm that didn't exist.
His fingers tightened around the shard tether. It vibrated violently, pulsing like it wanted him to act.
"Pick one, or all will be lost," the voice pressed.
Salem swallowed hard. "I… I can't know which is right."
"No one ever does. That's the point."
The void rippled violently, distorting time around him. Shadow hunters appeared once again, slithering through fractured realities like liquid nightmares. Their footsteps erased fragments of the corridors they touched, leaving holes in the very concept of existence. Salem dodged a lunge, the shard slicing through the nearest shadow. It screamed, but its scream split into three more screams before disappearing entirely.
"Dammit," Salem muttered. "Every choice kills something!"
"Correct," the voice said gently. "Every choice shapes everything. Survival is never free."
The shard pulsed brighter, projecting holographic glimpses of possibilities. He saw versions of himself failing, versions escaping, versions laughing at impossibility. One version held a small child—an echo of someone important from skipped days. Another carried a virus, one that could spread across timelines. Salem's stomach twisted.
"I can't… I can't do this alone."
"You're never alone," the voice said. "Even the versions you despise, even the ones that failed… they are all you. And you are all of them."
Salem took a deep breath. He understood the impossible now: he didn't have to pick just one path. He had to navigate through them, each choice a thread in a web connecting him to every timeline simultaneously. He could collapse under the weight… or he could master it.
"Then I'll do it," he said aloud. "I'll… navigate. Somehow."
Time fractured violently around him as he took a step forward. Each door warped in response, twisting, stretching, and colliding with one another. He moved through the nearest one—a city on fire, children screaming in skipped days—but before he could react, the shard pulsed and yanked him upward, tearing him out of the chaos.
He landed in a hallway of mirrors. Every reflection wasn't him—at least, not entirely. One smiled, one cried, one bled from eyes that didn't exist. The shard hovered, spinning above his palm, casting light across the glassy surfaces.
"This is… me?" he asked, voice trembling.
"You, and every possibility of you," the voice said. "Look closer. Every failure. Every triumph. Every skipped moment. They are all part of the choice you must make."
The reflections shifted, forming doors within themselves. Salem's heart raced. Each mirror-door was a path, a timeline, a potential to explore or destroy. Shadow hunters lurked, merging with reflections, trying to drag him into nonexistence. He ran, leaping from mirror to mirror, corridor to corridor, the shard tether glowing brighter with each jump.
A sudden flash revealed Nexus standing atop a floating platform in the distance.
"Impressive," Nexus called. "You're adapting. But… not fast enough."
"I don't care if you're not impressed!" Salem shouted, running faster than his body should have allowed. "I just… I can't lose anyone else!"
The shard pulsed violently, projecting another layer of reality—one where his own child—or maybe his own future self—was waiting. A path diverged from all the chaos, faint but visible, a thread of gold winding through the carnage.
"That's… that's the way," Salem whispered.
"It is… if you survive long enough to take it," Nexus said, voice dropping low. "But beware, every step closer to salvation draws something else nearer."
Shadows converged from all directions, forming walls, spikes, claws of pure nothingness. He dodged, the corridor collapsing behind him. Each reflection screamed and laughed, echoing in every direction. Time itself began to twist violently, pulling him in multiple directions.
"I… I have to keep going," he m;uttered.
He leapt toward the gold thread, shard glowing like a miniature sun in his hand. The world fractured, collapsing into a million possibilities, yet the thread held. He followed it, each step synchronized with his heartbeat, every jump slicing through chaos, and yet… something was wrong.
"Salem Grey," a voice hissed from all around. "You cannot escape what is coming."
The air thickened. The shard flared. The shadows screamed. The fractured mirrors cracked violently, and the gold thread shivered under the pressure of impossibility.
And then—a door appeared ahead. Alone, massive, and impossibly ancient. Its surface shimmered with strange runes. It radiated power, knowledge, and inevitability all at once.
"This… this is it?" Salem whispered, stepping closer.
"Not yet," Nexus's voice echoed. "But it is a choice. And one choice will break you… or define you."
Salem's fingers brushed the doorknob. The shadows lunged. The mirrors shattered. The corridor stretched into infinity. And a single line of glowing text appeared, cutting through the chaos, vibrant and terrifying:
"BEHIND THIS DOOR… LIES WHAT YOU FEAR MOST."
Salem's heart pounded. His breath caught. He knew stepping through meant facing everything: his failures, his future, the lost timelines, and perhaps the parts of himself he had been running from all along.
"I… I have to," he whispered.
He opened the door.
And the world… exploded.