Salem Grey stumbled forward, the city around him breathing like a living thing. Buildings warped and stretched into impossible angles, neon lights flickering with inconsistent rhythms. The shadows of his fractured selves lingered, whispering fears and doubts, each voice overlapping like a chorus of broken echoes.
"Too late…" one whispered.
"You should have known…" another hissed.
"Run… run…" a third moaned.
He pressed his palms to his temples. "I can't… I can't keep track anymore!"
Above him, the cracked golden door floated, glowing faintly, its light pulsing like a heartbeat. The shards of the broken clock beneath him spun upward, circling him like a cyclone, each fragment reflecting versions of himself from realities he'd never lived.
"Focus, Salem," the shard whispered, dimly visible in the chaos. "The thread may be broken, but the strands still exist."
Salem looked around. Everything was fractured, every shadow, every reflection a version of him. The world seemed to test his perception of reality. He could see the July revolution streets, a memory from one timeline, colliding with the rainy skies of the skipped COVID era, and beyond that, glimpses of 1971's war-torn landscapes.
"Time is leaking," the shard said, now spinning around him like a guiding compass. "You need to stitch the strands before they collapse."
He swallowed hard. "Stitch? How am I supposed to do that?"
Before the shard could answer, a figure emerged from the fractured shadows: taller than him, with an elongated face and eyes that reflected infinite possibilities. It moved unnaturally, almost floating, and with each step, the very ground seemed to ripple.
"I am the consequence of every choice you ever refused to make," it intoned, voice echoing like metal striking glass. "And now… you must decide, Salem Grey. Will you align or fracture further?"
Salem gritted his teeth. "I don't… I don't have a choice anymore, do I?"
"Ah, but you do," the shard whispered. "Choices are illusions, but they guide threads. Even broken threads can be tied anew."
He clenched his fists, feeling the shards of his past and future pressing against his mind. One step, and he could fall into a version where he never existed. Another, and he could erase realities he hadn't even lived yet. Every path felt wrong, every choice, fatal.
"Salem…" a new whisper reached him, soft and almost comforting. He turned to see a small figure in the distance, partially obscured. A child… or perhaps a younger version of himself. "Follow me… if you can trust me."
The fractured shadows hissed and lunged, but the child's presence created a narrow corridor of stability. Salem ran, every step bouncing across floating fragments of time, memories, and alternate selves. The golden door flickered ahead, pieces of its glow splintering into threads that drifted toward him like tiny tendrils.
"You're being guided," the shard said. "But be wary. Even guidance can deceive."
Salem's breath came in ragged gasps. The air smelled of burning paper and ozone—like every skipped day, every forgotten memory, compressed into a single scent. He had to reach the door, had to grasp the strands, had to survive.
But as he neared it, the city shifted violently. Streets stretched upward, twisted, and snapped like rubber bands. The skeletal Ferris wheel he had seen before spun into view, its carriages filled with screaming echoes of himself. Each carriage rotated faster than the last, some moving backward, some forward, all out of sync with time's natural flow.
"Chaos isn't just around you," the shard warned. "It's inside you."
Salem froze. He could feel it: a tickling, insidious pressure in his mind. Memories clashed, hearts and voices overlapping. A version of his child-self screamed, a past-future lover whispered warnings, and an older, scarred Salem muttered, "You were never supposed to be here…"
"Then maybe I wasn't," Salem whispered, voice cracking. "But I'm here anyway."
He lunged forward, diving into a swirl of broken time, the golden door beckoning. The shattered Ferris wheel groaned, skeletal horses screeching as if protesting his intrusion. And then—suddenly—he landed on solid ground.
A new plane stretched before him. Not a city, not a carnival, but a vast field of floating clocks and gears, orbiting a massive void. At the center, a figure waited: tall, cloaked in shadows, its face obscured. One hand extended, golden threads flowing from its fingertips, spinning like a spider weaving its web.
"You've done well to survive this far," the figure said. "But threads are not yet tied. Every decision unmade will haunt you… and the multiverse hungers for your hesitation."
Salem clenched the golden thread in his hand, fragments of his own timeline flaring in response. "Then tell me… what do I do?"
"You choose," the figure replied. "But beware. Some choices are not yours to take. Some threads are already frayed beyond repair."
The golden door behind him shimmered, offering one final path. A whisper echoed from the void itself:
"Step through… and you may reclaim what was lost. Step back… and every reality you've touched will collapse."
Salem's heart pounded. His eyes darted across the floating clocks, the skeletal Ferris wheel in the distance, the fractured echoes of himself circling him. One step… one choice… and everything would change.
He raised a hand, trembling, toward the door.
And then, without warning, a deafening crack echoed across the void. The shadowed figure's hand shot out, striking the golden thread, severing it completely. Time convulsed. Reality splintered.
Salem fell into the void, spiraling through flashes of every world he had touched. The echoes screamed. The clocks shattered. The skeletal Ferris wheel dissolved into light. And just before the darkness swallowed him entirely, a chilling, familiar voice whispered:
"This is where your next choice… will betray you."
Silence.