Elara woke to a quiet she didn't recognize.
The city outside her window had always been noisy—hovercraft hum, vendors shouting, the occasional laugh echoing from the lower streets. But now there was only stillness, as if the world had taken a breath and never let it go.
She sat up slowly. The air felt wrong—thicker, heavier. When she looked toward her easel, the space shimmered faintly, like heat rising off metal.
The blank canvas she'd left there the night before was no longer blank.
It showed a half-finished painting of a man standing in a corridor of blue light. His face wasn't clear, but she knew who it was. She always did.
Her fingers trembled as she touched the paint. Still wet.
"Are you doing this?" she whispered. "Aiden?"
The name felt strange on her tongue, like something she shouldn't know.
In the lab, Aiden barely noticed the blood trickling from his nose. The Temporal Core roared like a living thing, pulses of energy flashing across the glass walls.
Kellen shouted over the noise."You have to shut it down!"
Aiden ignored him. "The merge is incomplete. If I stop now, she'll be lost in the collapse field!"
Kellen slammed a fist on the console. "She's already lost! You're merging two timelines that can't exist together! Look around you, Aiden—half the instruments think it's yesterday!"
Aiden looked. The screens flickered between time stamps—2234, 2209, then a string of broken numbers that meant nothing.
He turned back to the Core. "If the bridge can pull me in, it can pull her out."
Kellen stared at him, voice low and raw. "You're not saving her. You're making her a ghost."
Aiden didn't answer. He keyed in the coordinates by memory—her studio, the moment before the rain.
The machine screamed. The floor shook.
Elara stumbled backward as her apartment walls bent, flexing inward like a heartbeat. The air flickered between colors—white, then blue, then something she couldn't name.
Her reflection in the window looked wrong again.It moved before she did.
"Elara," it whispered.
She froze.The reflection smiled sadly. "He's trying to find you."
She pressed her palm to the glass. "Who are you?"
"Someone who remembers."
The reflection's eyes darkened. "But the world won't. It's already forgetting."
The lights dimmed. The buildings outside began to dissolve—rooftops melting into fog, streets vanishing one pixel at a time.
"No," Elara whispered, shaking her head. "No, this isn't real—"
Her reflection placed its hand against hers. "He's coming."
And then the glass cracked.
Aiden was inside the field before Kellen could stop him.
The light swallowed everything—the lab, the noise, even his own heartbeat. When the brightness faded, he stood in Elara's apartment.
Rain fell outside, but it didn't sound like rain. It sounded like static.
"Elara?" he called.
She turned from the window, her eyes wide, tears mixing with the blue light flickering across her skin.
"You came back," she whispered.
He took a step toward her. "I told you I would."
She shook her head. "You shouldn't be here. The world—it's… changing."
He looked around. The walls were fading, dissolving into thin air. Beyond them, there was nothing—just light and shadow.
"I don't care," he said. "I just wanted to see you again."
She reached out a trembling hand. "If you touch me… it'll end."
"I know."
He took another step. The floor rippled beneath him. The rain outside froze midair.
Elara's lips parted. "Why?"
"Because," he whispered, "I can't remember how to live in a world you're not in."
The air trembled. The blue light brightened until everything became white.
For a moment—just one—they touched.
And time stopped.
In the silence that followed, the lab's systems powered down one by one. The city above flickered out like a dying film reel.
Kellen stood alone in the ruins, the Core's glass cracked and empty.
No Aiden.No Elara.
Just a faint echo of rain—falling somewhere it shouldn't.