The stars above the Spiral Citadel gleamed with the soft shimmer of memory—a kind of cosmic reflection that only those attuned to time's subtle breath could truly see. From the outer balcony, Orien leaned forward on the curved silver railing, eyes fixed on a slow-drifting comet threading through the edge of Sector 19. He wasn't watching it for beauty. He was timing it.
Twenty-seven seconds between each pulse of its tail.
Each flare, each shimmer—it was precise.
Too precise.
"You're still watching the comet?" Mirra's voice broke the silence behind him. She emerged from the chamber, her long coat fluttering, datapads hovering around her like a constellation of thoughts.
Orien nodded, brushing dark curls out of his eyes. "It's… too regular. It's moving like a mechanism, not a natural object."
"We've charted it for decades," she replied, though her voice carried a hint of doubt. "It's been looping the sector since before the Expansion fell."
"Exactly," Orien said, turning to face her. "It hasn't changed. Not once."
Mirra sighed. "You're seeing loops in everything now. You've been hearing echoes too, haven't you?"
Orien didn't deny it. He couldn't.
They'd started faintly. Whispers beneath the hum of systems, old voices in newly recorded messages, overlapping shadows in live feeds. But only he seemed to notice them. Only he could feel the weight of moments repeating themselves.
He looked back toward the sky. "Something's off. The Spiral isn't flowing. It's… stuck."
Mirra's expression softened. She stepped beside him, her voice low. "Kaien felt it too, near the end. The echoes. The certainty that the story was bending back."
The name sent a familiar chill through Orien. Kaien—the man who fused the sparks and undid the Expansion. The man whose sacrifice allowed this new age of balance.
And perhaps, the man whose spark still lingered.
"He left something behind," Orien murmured.
Mirra tilted her head. "You mean his spark fragment in the Vault?"
"No. Not a spark. A question."
Silence stretched between them as the comet passed beyond the view horizon.
Below them, the Citadel's great central clock chimed, a low, harmonic ring that vibrated the very floor. The sound was meant to echo the pulse of stable time—an artificial rhythm to ground reality within the Spiral's fluctuating domains. But tonight, it rang off-key.
Only by a fraction of a note.
But Orien noticed.
Later that evening, Orien sat cross-legged in the Hall of Origins, staring up at the living mosaic of Elion's Time Map. The star-field shifted with every moment, plotting the known spirals and timelines, each pulsing with colored threads.
Tonight, a cluster near the edge had dimmed.
"Mirra," he called softly. "Look at Delta Spiral Nine."
She joined him, and her eyes narrowed. "Those aren't decaying timelines… they're missing. Like they never happened."
Orien nodded. "And the system's logs?"
Mirra summoned a data holo. Blank entries. Not corrupted—empty. As if the events were never input at all.
"I checked an hour ago," she said, brows furrowing. "They were stable. I archived a memory capsule myself."
"We're not watching collapse," Orien said. "We're watching erasure."
A deep rumble shuddered through the Citadel.
Lights flickered.
Somewhere far below, alarms chirped once and fell silent.
Mirra raised her arm, triggering the emergency channels. "Citadel Control, report. Are we under temporal siege?"
No answer.
Orien stood, heart thudding. The air felt… thick. Stagnant.
And then—
The sky turned white.
Outside the great windows, the stars flickered and vanished.
A ripple passed over the world.
And for a single breathless moment, everything stopped.
Time itself… held its breath.
When motion returned, Orien staggered.
Mirra was beside him, helping him stay upright. "What was that?"
"A dead-second," he whispered. "No forward motion. No entropy. Just… null."
They stared at each other.
And then the main chamber doors opened with a soft chime.
A figure stepped through—tall, robed in navy and gold, eyes glowing with faint spirals.
Lyra.
Her presence was gravity.
Once Kaien's ally. Now head of the Temporal Assembly. She moved with calm authority as she approached.
"You felt it too," she said simply.
Orien nodded. "It wasn't the Expansion. It was colder. Quieter."
Lyra turned toward the Map.
Her voice dropped. "The Foundational Threads are cracking."
Mirra gasped. "That's impossible. Those are the original strands—the pre-memory lines. They're immune to distortion."
Lyra shook her head. "Not immune. Just shielded. But the Pulse is stirring."
Orien's skin went cold.
"You said the Pulse was a theory. A myth. A creation myth for recursion."
"It was," Lyra replied. "Until now."
She placed a small silver sphere on the table.
A hologram burst open—a recording, old and flickering.
Kaien's voice. "If you're seeing this, it means time is no longer a river. It's circling the drain. The Pulse… it's not dead. It's dormant. And Orien—this part is for you. You are its echo. But also… its end."
Orien stumbled back. "He knew."
Lyra met his eyes. "You're not just Kaien's successor. You're its counterweight."
Mirra whispered, "The boy born in the Infinite…"
And Orien, heart racing, looked again to the comet.
Still pulsing.
Twenty-seven seconds.
Right on time.
And suddenly, that terrified him.
That night, Orien sat alone in his quarters, staring into a silent crystal.
He couldn't sleep. Couldn't stop the feeling that something ancient was watching him—not with eyes, but with timelines.
He thought of Lyra's words.
Of Kaien's sacrifice.
Of Elion's spark.
And he whispered to the dark:
"If you are what I'm meant to stop… then I need to know what you are."
From the silence came no answer.
Only the steady tick of the wall-clock.
And for the first time since the Expansion ended, it sounded wrong.