Kael's body hit the floor of his apartment like a stone dropped into still water.
His apartment. The one that had burned down during the third wave of integration monsters. The one where he'd lived alone, broke and desperate, working double shifts at a warehouse job that barely covered rent. Sunlight streamed through windows he hadn't seen in a decade, illuminating furniture he'd forgotten he owned.
The digital clock on his nightstand read 2:31 PM, March 15th. The day before the merge. The day before everything went to hell.
His hands shook as he pushed himself upright. The same hands that had grown callused from years of combat, that had learned to kill without hesitation, that had trusted Dorian enough to let him get close with a blade. But these hands looked different now, softer, and unmarked by scars.
"What the hell…" His voice cracked like a teenager's. Everything about his body felt wrong, like wearing clothes three sizes too small. His muscles had no memory of the thousands of battles he'd fought. His reflexes, honed by years of life-or-death encounters, felt sluggish and uncertain.
But his mind remembered everything.
Dorian's face as the blade slid home. The Shard of Dominion's golden light. The casual way his best friend had wiped blood from the knife. "You're weak."
Rage built in his chest like molten metal. His vision blurred red at the edges, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to tear something apart with his bare hands. Ten years of friendship. Ten years of trust. All of it built on lies.
The rage felt good. It felt clean. But rage without direction was just self-destruction, and Kael had learned better than that in his years since the merge. He forced his breathing to slow, his pulse to be steady, and his mind to calculate instead of simply burning.
If he was really back, if this wasn't some dying hallucination or Nexus-induced fever dream, then he had advantages Dorian could never imagine. He knew which factions would rise and fall. He knew which dungeons held the best loot, which skills synergized, which alliances would hold and which would shatter. Most importantly, he knew exactly who Dorian was beneath the mask of friendship.
The apartment's landline rang, shrill and insistent. Kael stared at it for three rings before answering.
"Kael? Dude, you sound weird." Dorian's voice, young and familiar, sent ice through his veins. "You watching the news? They're saying some kind of energy storm is building over the city. Looks pretty wild."
The same conversation they'd had in the original timeline. Dorian had called, excited about the strange weather patterns that preceded the merge. They'd made plans to meet at Pike Place Market, grab lunch, maybe catch a movie if the storms didn't hit. Just two friends with nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon.
"Yeah," Kael managed. "Wild."
"You okay? You sound like you just woke up."
"Something like that."
In the original timeline, Kael had been eager to meet up. He'd been lonely, working a dead-end job with no real friends except for Dorian. The merge had seemed like salvation at first, adventure, purpose, the chance to matter. He'd thrown himself into the Nexus system with desperate enthusiasm, grateful for Dorian's guidance and partnership.
This time, he knew better.
"Listen," Dorian continued, "want to meet up early? I've got a weird feeling about these storms. Like something big is about to happen."
"Something big," Kael repeated slowly. Dorian had always been perceptive, but this felt different. In the original timeline, his friend had seemed just as surprised by the merge as everyone else. But now, listening carefully, Kael caught something else in his voice,anticipation and excitement. Like someone waiting for a show to begin.
Had Dorian known? Had he known from the very beginning?
"Yeah, you know? Like… like everything's about to change." Dorian's laugh sounded forced. "Crazy, right? Anyway, want to meet at our usual spot?"
Their usual spot. The coffee shop three blocks from Pike Place, where they'd sit for hours talking about nothing. Where Dorian would ask casual questions about Kael's dreams, his fears, his goals. Questions that had seemed like friendship but now felt like reconnaissance.
"Sure," Kael said. "Give me an hour."
"Cool. See you soon, brother."
The line went dead. Kael set the phone down with careful precision, afraid that if he moved too quickly he might crush it in his grip.
Brother. Dorian had called him that from the very beginning, even before the merge. A word that meant loyalty, trust, family. A word that had gotten him killed.
Kael walked to his bathroom and stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror. Young face, soft with baby fat. No scars from the Crimson Depths. No burn marks from the Siege of New Vancouver. No hard lines etched by years of violence. He looked innocent. Exactly like the kind of person who would trust a smiling face and a helping hand.
But behind his eyes, something cold and patient had taken root.
He had twenty-four hours before the merge. Twenty-four hours to prepare for a war. Twenty-four hours to make sure that when the world ended again, he would be the one holding the knife.
The Nexus interface flickered into existence at the edge of his vision, translucent blue text scrolling across empty air. But the words were wrong, fragments and glitches that made no sense:
[System initialization… ERROR]
[Temporal anomaly detected…]
[Recalibrating…]
[Welcome, anomaly.]
Kael smiled for the first time since waking up. Even broken, even corrupted, the system recognized what he was. What he'd become.
Not a player, not a victim but an anomaly.
And anomalies, by definition, broke the rules.