The sky was on fire.
Not the kind of fire born from flame and smoke, but the cold fire of a dying universe. Crimson cracks tore across the heavens, jagged lines of molten light that stretched from horizon to horizon. The clouds split apart like shattered glass, each fracture glowing with an otherworldly radiance. Through those wounds in the sky, I could glimpse impossible things—entire oceans boiling in the void, forests that stretched into infinity, shapes that writhed and twisted as if the laws of reality meant nothing.
And pouring through those rifts came the monsters.
They were not of flesh and bone, not in any way that I could understand. Their bodies bent like shadows given weight, with edges that shifted like liquid metal. Some crawled on too many legs, their bodies covered in eyes that blinked in sickening patterns. Others flew on wings made of broken starlight, each beat of their flight tearing holes in the air. And all of them screamed with hunger.
Hunger for us.
I stumbled over broken concrete, clutching my side where blood oozed through my shredded jacket. The air stank of iron and burning metal, thick smoke choking the sky. The once-great defense walls of humanity's last city lay in ruins. Tanks burned in the streets. Drones lay gutted like toys in the dust. The screams of dying soldiers echoed from every direction, cut short one by one.
My knees buckled as I tripped, and I nearly collapsed into the rubble. But my eyes locked on the massive structure ahead, and I forced myself up again.
The Rift Reactor.
It loomed in the center of the ruined city, a colossal sphere of steel and energy suspended in a skeletal frame. Cables as thick as skyscrapers connected it to generators that had already gone dark. Its surface pulsed with unstable light, flaring brighter each second like a heartbeat spiraling toward cardiac arrest. The air around it shimmered with distortion, bending light into warped spirals.
If that thing went critical, there would be nothing left of Earth.
I had no weapons. No armor. No command authority.
I was just a junior engineer who should've been evacuated with the rest of the noncombat staff. But somehow, out of all the brilliant scientists, strategists, and heroes the world had counted on, I was the one standing here, bleeding out, staring down the only machine that could save—or annihilate—what was left of us.
I laughed, a dry, broken sound. "Figures. The universe really does have a sick sense of humor."
Dragging myself closer, I slapped my blood-slicked hand against the console. Sparks jumped from the cracked screen as it flickered awake, red warning symbols screaming across the interface.
[System Failure: Containment Breach Imminent]
[Warning: Catastrophic Rift Event Approaching]
A single number glared back at me:
[00:00:29]
Twenty-nine seconds.
I gritted my teeth, forcing my hands to move even as they trembled. Panels opened with a groan, exposing twisted wires and sparking circuits. My vision blurred, but my training kicked in. This was a machine. Machines could be fixed.
"Manual override… come on…"
Every second felt like an eternity. I rerouted power, sealed breaches with trembling fingers, and forced dying subsystems to reboot. Sparks seared my skin, the smell of burning flesh rising into the smoke. My heart thundered in my chest, but my mind stayed locked on the equations, the sequences, the calculations only an engineer would know.
But the console didn't care about my determination.
[Warning: Stabilization Incomplete. Energy overload detected.]
I slammed my fist against the panel. "Damn it!"
A thunderous roar cut through the chaos.
I froze. Slowly, I turned my head toward the sound.
One of the Rift beasts had found me.
It was massive, easily the size of a tank. Its body shimmered like oil on water, a swirling mess of colors that hurt to look at. Dozens of eyes blinked across its shifting hide, each glowing like a dying sun. Its limbs were jagged, clawed, and wrong, bending at angles that made my stomach churn.
And all of those eyes were locked on me.
It let out another roar, so deep the ground quaked beneath me. Then it lunged.
I threw myself back against the console. My shaking hands didn't stop moving across the interface. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but there was nowhere to run. Behind me lay the Reactor. Ahead of me was death.
"So this is how I go, huh?" My lips curled in a bitter grin. "Not as a soldier. Not as a hero. Just some damned mechanic patching holes in the universe."
The countdown glared in my vision.
[00:00:05]
The Rift beast leapt.
And the Reactor went critical.
The world turned white.
Agony tore through me, every nerve burning as my body disintegrated from the inside out. My scream was drowned in the explosion of light, my flesh and bones unraveling into nothing. The city, the soldiers, the sky—all of it vanished into a single blinding wave.
But just as the darkness should've taken me, something else stirred.
A voice. Cold, mechanical, and absolute.
[System Booting…]
[Time Core Activation Complete.]
[Initializing Timeline Rewind.]
My body dissolved. My soul was dragged through a storm of shattered moments—faces, battles, futures that flickered in and out of existence. I glimpsed a thousand different Earths, a thousand different deaths, and myself in each of them.
Then everything snapped back.
The fire was gone.
The screams were gone.
I lay sprawled on the cold, spotless floor of a laboratory. The air smelled of disinfectant, not smoke. Bright white lights hummed overhead. Around me, scientists in pristine coats moved between consoles, their voices calm and methodical.
None of them had seen the apocalypse.
None of them knew the end I had just lived through.
My chest ached. Slowly, I lifted a trembling hand and pulled open my jacket.
There it was.
A crystal of shifting light embedded in my flesh, pulsing faintly with each beat of my heart. The Time Core.
And then, across my vision, a countdown appeared.
[Time Rift Catastrophe: 499 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes…]
My blood ran cold.
That wasn't right. In my memory, in the history I had studied, the Rift War didn't begin for another five hundred years.
But now the timer was already one year shorter.
I hadn't just been thrown back in time.
The apocalypse had moved closer.