Elias Ward was eight years old the first time it happened.
He was walking home from school with his mother, the sun low in the sky, painting golden streaks across the sidewalk. She held his hand loosely, distracted by a phone call, when suddenly he yanked her backward—hard. She stumbled and scolded him just as a silver sedan ran a red light, flying through the crosswalk with a blast of wind and squealing tires.
The world froze. Then chaos.
People shouted. The car disappeared. His mother stared down at him in disbelief, her face pale.
"How did you know? she asked.
"I… I saw it, Elias whispered, heart pounding.
It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a guess. It was a flash—like a memory, except it hadn't' happened yet.
As he grew older, the flashes came more frequently. At first, they were small: a glass tipping before it spilled, a teacher calling on him before her mouth moved. He stopped calling them coincidences around age eleven.By seventeen, he could use them. He'd win debates by predicting arguments. Avoid fights by stepping aside just before punches were thrown. He saved a girl from breaking her arm in gym class. Stopped a man from being mugged in a gas station parking lot.
Each time, it started the same way: a stillness in his chest, then a burst of possibility. A vision, short but sharp. And then a choice.
He called it *The Glimpse*.
But it wasn't until his mid-twenties that things shifted. The Glimpses changed. No longer just previews—they were now *branching*. Forks in time. He didn't just see what would happen. He saw what *could* happen.
Multiple outcomes, layered over each other like reflections in broken glass. The more he used the ability, the stronger it became—and the heavier it felt
By thirty, Elias was exhausted. Living with the constant pressure of decision, the haunting sense that every small choice carried hidden consequences, wore on him like armor rusting from the inside.
He stopped intervening.
Stopped helping.
Until that morning at the crosswalk, when a baby in a stroller rolled too close to the curb and The Glimpse screamed back into his mind—louder and clearer than ever before.
This time, it wasn't just one path.
It was three.
And time waited for him to choose.
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