The tunnel was silent now—no echoes, no tremors, just the heavy breathing of two people running on instinct and fear. Theo leaned against the crumbling wall, wiping sweat from his brow. His hand trembled, not from exertion, but from what he had seen. What he had felt.
Nova sat across from him, her back to the wall, legs curled beneath her, cloak pulled tight around her shoulders. Her eyes were distant, glowing faintly with the residual glow of her Seer-sight.
"We're clear for now," she said softly. "The Seer's path is tangled. She's hesitating."
Theo nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. No more running. That's what he'd told himself. And yet here they were—buried under miles of steel and stone, hiding like ghosts in a world that didn't know them.
"Why did she say that?" Theo finally asked. "Anchors drown too."
Nova looked up, gaze searching. "Because they do. Most of them, anyway."
"You knew others?"
She hesitated. Then nodded. "Not personally. But my order—the Seer's Circle—we recorded legends. Warnings. People who tried to alter the fate-lines too often. They started losing themselves. Not all at once. Slowly. Like memory erosion. Emotions disconnect first. Then people's names. Then whole histories."
Theo felt his stomach twist. "Like thread rot."
"Exactly." She leaned forward. "Your thread is… different. It's not fraying. It's weaving itself tighter. The more you interfere, the more it anchors around you. But that's not necessarily a good thing."
Theo glanced at his hand. No glowing mark, no power visible. But he felt it now. Always there—like a second pulse beneath his skin.
"I can't tell what's me and what's memory anymore," he admitted.
Nova scooted closer, lowering her voice. "Then you need something to hold onto. Someone. Otherwise, you'll forget what you're even trying to save."
Their eyes met.
Theo nodded slowly, not trusting himself to speak.
Then came the sound: a faint hiss, followed by a hum of power.
Nova tensed. "Warden tech. Close."
They both rose quickly. Theo stepped forward, cautious. Around the bend, a shimmer of violet flickered along the tunnel wall—an active projection line. He recognized the pattern: a Warden scry-beacon.
Nova whispered, "It's not just a tracker. It's a recall tether. They're marking paths they've erased."
Theo's breath caught. "Why?"
"To reset them later."
He realized the trap. "They're planning a full sector collapse. Wipe this entire thread clean."
"That means Ayen and Rell—"
"They won't make it out unless we stop the tether chain."
Theo moved fast, scanning the projection line. It pulsed once, then split into branching paths—an active temporal weave.
Nova said, "There's a core junction nearby. Probably set up on a transit nexus. If we overload it—"
"We give this timeline a heartbeat again," Theo finished.
They ran.
---
On the surface, Ayen's lungs burned.
The firestorm hadn't reached them yet, but the sky above the Crown District was changing. Clouds spun counter to the wind, and lightning laced the edges of warped towers.
Rell staggered beside her, clutching the last relay module in his arms.
"We need to move!" he shouted.
"No," Ayen snapped, dragging him behind the carcass of a shattered mag-car. "We can't outrun them, but we can outsmart them."
Rell looked pale. "Do you have a plan?"
"No." She checked her weapon's charge. "But I know how to buy time."
Behind them, a shimmer announced the Seer's arrival.
The Warden Seer wasn't what Rell had expected. She looked human, but her presence felt wrong. Her skin shimmered like static, her eyes pure white, and her steps left threads of fractal memory floating behind.
"You touched the Anchor," she said, voice like echoes through a canyon.
Ayen raised her weapon. "Back off."
The Seer tilted her head. "You're irrelevant. He is not."
And then she moved—impossibly fast.
Ayen barely got a shot off before she was knocked back. Pain bloomed in her shoulder, but she rolled with the fall, gritting her teeth. "Rell! Run!"
He didn't.
Instead, Rell did the unthinkable—he slammed the relay module into the Warden's path and activated every failsafe he'd ever coded. The device exploded in a burst of EMP and raw thread disruption, throwing the Seer off balance.
Ayen scrambled up. "What did you just do?"
"Gambled," Rell said, panting.
And for a brief moment, the Seer flickered—her form struggling to stabilize.
A window. Just enough time.
---
Back underground, Theo and Nova reached the core junction.
A pillar of light stood in the center of a circular chamber, threads twisting around it like vines. Theo didn't hesitate. He stepped into the field and reached for the core.
Nova shouted, "Your thread—Theo, be careful!"
"I'm done being careful," he said.
He touched the core.
And something answered.
Not a voice, not an image—but presence. The core recognized him not as an intruder, but as a counterpart.
A mirror.
A new string coiled into the junction, golden and raw.
[ANCHOR SYNCHRONIZED]
[LOCKING TEMPORAL NODE]
[OVERRIDE: MANUAL]
[WARNING: PERSONALITY DEGRADATION RISK – HIGH]
Nova reached him just as his body began to glow.
Theo's voice was distant. "I see them… all of them. The loops. The ones that didn't work."
"Then choose this one," Nova said fiercely. "Hold this one in place."
He nodded.
And the pillar pulsed.
The sky above Silver Crown snapped like glass. Time halted—and then surged outward, anchoring to the present moment. The Warden recall path shattered in the storm of feedback.
Ayen and Rell looked up from the wreckage a
s the Seer vanished into thread-light.
Below, Theo collapsed into Nova's arms.
But this time, the world held still.
Just for a moment.