It had no name. No voice. No breath.
But it watched.
From a place between existence and decision, a thin membrane of unreality, something shaped like a boy stood in the dark. It wasn't made of flesh—more like a silhouette cut from possibility itself. It had eyes only because Eshan Vale had eyes. It had a heartbeat only because Eshan's pulse echoed through the cracks of fate.
Whenever Eshan chose something—anything, even something stupid and small—this place quivered. Air that wasn't air shivered around the silhouette, and a new line of light drew itself across the darkness.
A version of Eshan who never existed… yet always could.
Today, its world trembled more than usual.
Scenes flickered around it like shattered mirrors trying to form a whole:
Eshan laughing on a stage, lights blinding and applause roaring.
Eshan swinging a rusted pipe at a monstrous shape crawling out of a ruined street.
Eshan kneeling in a dark, empty house, shoulders shaking, hands over his face.
Eshan in a soldier's uniform soaked in someone else's blood.
Eshan with eyes that weren't human at all.
Each image burned bright for a second, then thinned and vanished, leaving only an afterimage in the dark. The silhouette watched them calmly, like a reader turning pages too quickly.
This one could have been me.
This one should have been me.
This one is trying very hard not to be me.
It tilted its head slightly, as if amused by something only it could hear. Somewhere very far away, Eshan made another choice—a small one, insignificant on its own.
The dark around the silhouette cracked.
It took a step forward.
And the membrane split.
—
Eshan Vale didn't know he was dreaming. He just knew he was falling.
There was no wind. No sensation of air. Just an endless drop through a tunnel of light and shadow, and on every side of that tunnel—him.
Thousands of versions of himself spiraled around him, suspended in scenes that had never happened.
One Eshan, hair slicked back, stood under hot stage lights, a mic in hand, confidence carved into his grin.
Another, bruised and wild-eyed, swung a metal pipe at a creature made of teeth and asphalt.
Another sat alone at a school desk in an empty classroom, smiling like he'd just heard good news.
Another knelt on the ground, hands red, expression blank as alarms wailed.
One turned, and his eyes glowed faintly—not human, not safe.
They all turned toward him at the same time.
Every Eshan in every unreal scene looked straight at the one who was falling.
His stomach twisted. "What—"
The closest version of him—a calm-eyed Eshan with a straight back and the kind of stillness Eshan never had—mouthed something. The words didn't reach him. The sound was muted, like someone speaking behind glass.
Eshan reached out instinctively, as if he could grab his own hand.
The others moved too, mouths opening in eerie synchrony.
"Wake up," they all said.
This time he heard it.
He slammed into his mattress with a jolt.
—
Eshan's eyes flew open. His heart pounded like it was trying to fight its way out of his chest. His T-shirt clung to him with cold sweat, and for a few seconds, the ceiling above his bed looked like the inside of that tunnel—full of other versions of himself looking down.
He blinked hard.
Just the old stains and a small black spider in the corner that he pretended not to see every morning.
He groaned and dragged a hand over his face. "Okay. New rule: no more late-night energy drinks. I get it."
His room greeted him with its usual mess: a desk buried under textbooks and empty snack wrappers, a cracked mirror he still hadn't replaced, a crooked poster of a game he never finished. The kind of place no one would film in unless they were doing a "before" shot.
He sat up slowly, trying to grab the dream with his mind before it slipped away. Thousands of him. All staring. All—
"Wake up," he muttered. "Yeah, yeah. I'm up."
He swung his legs off the bed, stepped on a notebook, nearly broke his ankle, and hissed. "Perfect start. Peak protagonist energy."
The dream clung to him even as he brushed his teeth and changed. Not the usual falling dream. This felt… heavier. More solid. Too detailed. But he was good at ignoring things that felt too big.
Reality, in his experience, was boring, predictable, and annoyingly persistent. Nightmares couldn't compete with unpaid bills and exams.
He grabbed his bag, half-zipped, slung it over his shoulder, and stepped out of the apartment, locking the door behind him. The hallway smelled faintly of damp walls and someone's overcooked breakfast.
The sky outside was grey and sulking when he reached the street. "You better not," he warned it quietly.
The sky, being the sky, did not care.
Rain slammed down a second later, so sudden and heavy it felt personal.
"Of course." Eshan yanked his hood up. Cold water soaked through it in seconds, sliding down the back of his neck. "Of course the universe hates me. Why not?"
He cut through the usual narrow lane on his way to school, dodging puddles that were actually small lakes and scooters that treated traffic laws as polite suggestions. The city around him was its usual chaotic self—car horns, shouting vendors, the smell of fried food and wet dust.
He pulled out his phone to check the time.
It slipped from his damp fingers, hit the ground screen-first with a pathetic slap, and the display flickered and went black.
He stared at it.
"...I didn't even drop you hard," he said, betrayed.
A cyclist zoomed past, wheel smashing through a puddle, sending a wave of muddy water straight up onto Eshan's pants.
He stood there, dripping, phone dead in his hand.
He closed his eyes. "No, really. Universe. Just say you don't want me here."
He let out a breath that was half sigh, half laugh, and bent down to pick up the phone properly.
That was when the world ended.
—
The sound came first.
A sharp, glitching tone, like a computer crashing through a loudspeaker the size of the sky. It stabbed through his ears, then sank behind his eyes.
The rain stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
Droplets hung in the air around him, mid-fall, frozen like a million little glass beads. Cars on the street halted mid-motion. A bus leaned forward as if still braking, but its wheels didn't roll. Water splashed up from a tire hung in mid-air like a photograph.
The man on the corner with an umbrella was locked in mid-step, eyes half-blinked, mouth half-open.
Everything was still.
Except him.
Eshan straightened slowly, phone forgotten in his fist. His breath echoed too loudly in the silence.
"...What," he whispered.
The grey clouds overhead inverted, turning too bright, then too dark, then snapping into a color his eyes didn't have a name for. The air vibrated, and a voice—huge, disembodied, more felt than heard—rang out from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"AUDIT: CHOICE IDENTIFIED"
The words weren't spoken in any language he knew, yet he understood them perfectly. They slammed into the air like a system notification for reality itself.
The sound shattered several windows in the nearby buildings. The fragments didn't fall. They hung, suspended, glittering.
The street under his shoes rippled like struck water.
"Okay," Eshan said, voice high and thin. "Okay. Okay. I'm still asleep. This is—this is a weird second dream. This is what I get for not uninstalling horror games, right?"
His laugh bounced back at him off the frozen world and didn't sound like a laugh at all.
The air directly in front of him split open.
It wasn't a normal crack. It was like someone drew a line in the air using a knife made of pure light, and the universe obediently opened along it. Inside was not darkness, but something deeper, less defined, like the absence of any decision.
Eshan stumbled backward, shoes slipping slightly on a puddle that no longer moved.
"NOPE," he said immediately. "Absolutely not. I'm done. Take me home. Roll credits. I'm not that curious."
Something stepped through the tear.
It was tall. Human-shaped. That was where the similarity ended.
The figure emerged fully and stood on the frozen street, head slightly lowered, as if listening for something. There were no glowing eyes, no monstrous limbs, and no horns. Just a boy.
A boy who looked like him.
Eshan's breath hitched.
Same jawline. Same hair, only tidier. Same mouth, but with a line of confidence where his usually sagged with tired sarcasm. Same eyes—no, not the same. The eyes were his, but sharpened. Focused. Alive in a way he'd never seen in the mirror.
This other Eshan's posture was straight, casual but controlled, like he knew exactly what his body could do and trusted it.
Eshan felt like he was looking at a version of himself that learned how to live life without flinching.
The figure tilted its head, studying him.
Words appeared in the space above them, not printed on anything, just existing.
"POSSIBILITY: UNLIVED #001 MATERIALIZED"
"OBJECTIVE: REPLACE ORIGINAL"
"I…" Eshan blinked. "Replace—what?"
His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted to run without him.
The pressure in his chest spiked. It felt like something under his sternum was waking up, pressing against bone.
"You're kidding," he whispered. "This is because I dropped my phone, isn't it?"
The other him didn't respond.
The figure's lips didn't move. Its eyes did, though—flicking down, up, taking him in like a scanner completing a profile.
Then it stepped forward.
The world pulsed with a single command.
"BEGIN"
The boy who wasn't him moved.
—
The first attack was simple. A straight lunge forward, hand slicing through the space where Eshan's throat had been a split-second earlier.
Eshan dodged entirely by accident. His foot slipped on the edge of a frozen puddle, his body pitched sideways, and he went down in a tangle of limbs, the figure's hand cutting through a hanging raindrop and shattering it into smaller beads that stayed in place.
He hit the ground on his shoulder, pain jolting through him. "Ow! Okay—okay—time-out, I wasn't ready—!"
No time-out came.
The other him turned smoothly, no wasted movement, and advanced again. Its face remained expressionless, only the eyes bright, intent, tracking every twitch of Eshan's muscles.
"Hold on—hold on!" Eshan scrambled backward on his hands and heels. "What happens if you hit me?! Do I die? Is this like a game? Can I respawn? Is there a tutorial I skipped—"
The figure answered with a kick.
Eshan threw his arms up, bracing, and the impact slammed into his forearms. Pain detonated up his bones, white-hot, like his arms had been used to block a car.
He flew sideways, slammed into the side of a frozen car, bounced off, and collapsed, wheezing. The car didn't budge. The raindrops around it stayed where they were.
The other him was stronger. Much stronger.
It moves like… like it's done this before, he thought, dazed. Like it's been in a thousand fights.
"This isn't fair," he gasped. "I'm losing to my own face."
The figure stalked toward him with the calm assurance of someone who'd already decided how the fight ended.
He pushed himself to his knees, teeth gritted. "I didn't choose this! I didn't choose any of this!"
The words tore out of him without thinking.
The figure stopped.
For a moment, the world was utterly silent. Not just in sound—something deeper, like even cause and effect were holding their breath.
The boy—the Possibility—tilted its head again, slowly, like a predator hearing an unexpected noise.
Its lips parted.
Its voice, when it came, wasn't echoing or monstrous. It was just his voice. Colder. Clearer.
"Wake up," it said.
The exact same words from his dream.
Eshan stared, stunned. "You—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
The Possibility's hand shot forward again, faster than the first time, aiming directly at his heart.
Something inside Eshan broke and lit up at the same time.
A jagged, crystalline sigil burst across his chest, visible through his clothes as if his ribs were made of glass and someone had lit a lamp inside. It wasn't made of light, not entirely. It looked like a crack, like a fracture spreading outward from a single point just behind his heart.
The air shook with new text.
"FRACTURE CORE: AWAKENED"
"INSTINCT TRANSFER — INITIATING"
His body moved.
Not because he decided to move, but because something else decided for him.
His feet slid into a stance he didn't know. His shoulders dropped, relaxing. His weight shifted at the perfect angle. His head tilted just enough.
He felt… calm.
The attacking hand came.
He moved around it like water.
He stepped sideways, twisting his torso slightly, letting the strike pass so close he felt the heat of it on his chest but didn't take the hit. His arm came up, palm guiding the force away with precise contact, redirecting the momentum harmlessly.
It was beautiful. Efficient. Elegant.
He had never moved like that in his life.
Everything stopped again—not the world, just them. Eshan blinked down at his own arms.
"...Did I just do that?" he whispered.
The Possibility's eyes narrowed for the first time.
There was no anger there. Just interest.
Then the dizziness hit.
The calm shattered as a wave of vertigo washed through his skull, knocking him off balance. His vision blurred at the edges. Something inside his head felt like it had been grabbed and twisted.
Memories flipped past his mind's eye like a deck of cards being thumbed through.
His mother calling him from the kitchen.
The smell of a certain perfume.
The pattern of cracks on the ceiling of his childhood room.
A stray cat he used to feed.
A small, stupid argument that led to him storming out one night.
The deck stopped.
One card vanished.
He didn't know which.
The pressure ebbed.
Eshan staggered, hand going to his temple. "Wait—wait, what was—what did you take?"
No one answered.
The sky did.
"COST PAID"
He laughed once, a sharp, disbelieving sound. "No. No, no, no. Take something else! Take my homework! Take my last math test! Take my neighbor's dog—actually no, the dog's cute, take my neighbor—"
The Possibility began walking toward him again.
He shut his mouth.
Fear wrapped cold fingers around his spine. That calm, borrowed instinct had vanished. He was back to being just Eshan Vale. Dead phone. Wet clothes. No combat skills. And something missing from his head.
He swallowed. "Look, can we… talk? Negotiate? I feel like you're the type to appreciate constructive communication."
The Possibility kept coming.
"But no, sure, let's do the whole 'murder the original' thing," he muttered, backing away step by step. "Super healthy way to handle identity issues, by the way."
The distance between them vanished quickly.
It lifted its hand again—almost lazily, like it knew he couldn't escape this time.
Eshan braced, even though bracing wouldn't help.
The hand didn't fall.
The Possibility stopped with its fingers inches from his chest, palm open over the faintly glowing fracture mark.
It held there, motionless, as if frozen again. But the world around them was still moving now—cars still held mid-roll, rain still fixed in the air. Only they had broken free of the freeze. Only this other Eshan chose to stop.
Slowly, deliberately, the Possibility lowered its hand… to its own chest.
It pressed its fingers against the exact same place, where an invisible mark would be in its body.
Then it tapped lightly.
Once.
It removed its hand and pointed at Eshan.
A silent message.
You awakened too early.
This isn't the time.
Not yet.
Understanding rose in Eshan's chest like a cold tide. This wasn't mercy. It was scheduling.
"Wait," he said, voice cracking. "What are you? What am I now?"
The Possibility watched him for one more breath. Something unreadable crossed its eyes.
Then it stepped backward into the crack in the air.
Its body dissolved into small, bright shards of unreality, like burning fragments of a photograph, and vanished beyond the tear. The rift sealed behind it with a soft, final sound, like a page being closed.
The world crashed back in.
The rain resumed falling mid-drop, hitting him all at once. The car engines roared again. Someone nearby finished their shout. A bus horn blared. A child cried. Life, rudely interrupted, snapped back into motion.
Eshan dropped to his knees.
Water soaked through his jeans and into his skin. His hands shook. His phone lay in the puddle next to him, screen dark, finally honest about how useless it was.
He sucked in a breath that felt too small for his lungs.
"What," he said softly, "the hell… was that…?"
A woman nearby shook her umbrella, annoyed at the weather. A man swore at traffic. Someone scolded a kid for stepping in water. No one screamed about the sky tearing open. No one mentioned time stopping.
No one had seen.
Apart from him and the thing that wanted to replace him, the world moved on.
The air crackled once more.
He flinched.
Words formed above him again, faint but clear.
"AUDIT COMPLETE"
"NEXT CHOICE: PENDING"
He stared up into the rain, chest aching around the new fracture mark he could still feel glowing under his skin.
Somewhere in the dark place between choices, something without a name watched him back.
Eshan Vale swallowed hard.
"…What," he whispered, "did I just wake up into?"
The rain didn't answer.
But the feeling that his life had just been stolen and handed back in a different shape stayed, heavy and undeniable, as the world—unknowing, unprepared—kept moving around him.