The first time it happened, Aiden thought it was a hallucination.
He had fallen asleep in the lab chair again, the monitors whispering with faint static. The data log still showed Elara's last projection frame—her face turned toward the camera, eyes glassy with fear and recognition.
He blinked.
And then she was there.
Not the echo version, not a hologram. Just… there.Standing a few meters away, in the soft blue light of the Temporal Core, barefoot and confused.
She looked around, her hair still damp as if she'd walked through rain.
Aiden's breath caught in his throat. "Elara?"
She flinched. Her gaze snapped toward him."You," she whispered, stepping back. "You're real?"
He tried to stand, but his legs felt like paper. "How—how are you here?"
"I don't know." Her voice was trembling, soft. "I was painting, and then everything folded—like someone turned the world inside out. And then I heard you say my name."
"I didn't," Aiden said, but his voice was already breaking.
The sensors screamed across the monitors.Temporal crosspoint breach. Unauthorized entity detected.
Kellen's voice came through the comms, panicked:"Aiden, do not move! There's a displacement anomaly right on top of you!"
But Aiden couldn't look away.Elara was fading—edges blurring like light through smoke.
"Wait!" he shouted. "Don't go!"
She reached for him instinctively, and for a second—the smallest, impossible second—he felt the warmth of her hand against his.
And then she was gone.
Just static.
Aiden collapsed to his knees. The machines dimmed to a hum.His hand still felt warm.
Kellen found him staring at the monitors, silent.
"You made contact," Kellen said quietly. "Didn't you?"
Aiden didn't answer.
Kellen rubbed his temples. "You've broken the temporal membrane. That wasn't an observation anymore—it was an exchange."
Aiden's voice came out hollow. "She's alive."
"She was alive," Kellen corrected. "Now she's both. Past and present. You've tied her timeline into yours. If she continues to exist here—if she remembers you—then both of you will unravel."
Aiden turned toward him, eyes sharp. "Then I'll find a way to stop it."
Kellen's voice cracked. "You can't fix time, Aiden! You can only feed it. And it always takes something in return."
In her apartment, Elara sat by the window, wrapped in a blanket, trembling.
The painting she'd made—the one of him—was gone. The canvas was blank, wiped clean as if it had never existed.
But her hand still felt warm.
She opened her palm. A faint shimmer of blue light flickered there, like a heartbeat.
And somewhere deep inside her mind, a voice whispered—not from the world, but from memory.
"Don't forget me."
She closed her eyes, whispering back into the quiet,"I couldn't, even if I tried."
Outside, the rain fell harder. Each drop left tiny rings of light on the glass—circles that shimmered, then vanished.
And for just a second, her reflection smiled before she did.