Brian woke to the soft hiss of rain against the window. The kind of calm, rhythmic sound that usually made him want to roll over and sleep another hour. But something was off.
His skin prickled. The air felt… heavier, thicker—like he was underwater.
He reached for his jacket on the chair beside the bed, hand brushing empty air—until he looked down and froze.
The damn jacket was already on him.
"…Huh?" he muttered. "Okay, either I've started sleep-dressing or someone's pranking me."
The System chimed, voice smooth and cold as ever.
> [ECHO FLUX DETECTED]
[REALITY STABILITY: 95%]
[TEMPORAL OFFSET – MINOR]
Brian groaned. "Right. 'Minor.' Sure. Because jackets teleporting onto me is totally minor."
He scrubbed a hand through his hair and stood, glancing around the HQ. Everything looked… almost normal, but not quite. The lights flickered with a slight lag, and the sound of the rain came half a second later than it should've.
"Okay, this is officially weird," he muttered.
---
Downstairs, the rest of the squad was already awake—and they looked just as uneasy.
Aurora was at the counter, buttering toast—except she was already putting it on a plate before she'd even started slicing the bread.
Lyra was pacing, muttering to herself, only to realize she'd already said the same line seconds ago.
Kira's blade made that familiar metallic scrape—except now, each sound echoed twice, slightly out of rhythm.
And Selene? Her armor shimmered between two forms—her current silver gear, and another version, sleeker, darker, like it belonged to someone from a parallel timeline.
Brian stepped in, raising both hands. "Okay, show of hands—who else feels like reality's lagging?"
Aurora sighed. "The toaster just pre-burned my bread before I even put it in. That count?"
"Yeah, that counts," Brian said.
Lyra groaned. "This feels like the last time the timeline tried to eat itself."
Selene's eyes flickered pale gold. "It's not the same. This isn't decay—it's bleed. Echo bleed."
The words hit like a punch.
Brian frowned. "Echo bleed… as in, multiple versions of us overlapping? I thought the System patched that crap after the last reset."
"It was supposed to," Selene said quietly. "But now the fractures are merging instead of separating. The System's holding, but not for long."
"Holy shit," Aurora whispered. "You mean we're all slightly out of sync with ourselves?"
"Not slightly," Selene said. "Fatally."
Brian whistled. "Well, shit. That's comforting."
---
By midday, the weirdness had turned up to eleven.
A hallway in HQ vanished for three full seconds—replaced by a sleeker version of itself, glowing with black walls and pulsing neon veins. Then it snapped back like nothing had happened.
The training room filled with fog that twisted into ancient runes before dissolving.
And the mirror outside the med bay? It didn't show reflections anymore—it showed places.
Brian stopped in front of it, heart hammering. For just a second, he saw a burning city, floating towers crumbling. Two figures stood in the flames.
One looked exactly like him. The other… wasn't human.
He didn't tell the team about that one.
---
Night fell early, as if the sun didn't feel like dealing with their nonsense either.
The others went to rest. The HQ hummed quietly, the System silent except for a faint static undercurrent, like it was breathing through gritted teeth.
Brian leaned on the balcony, staring out at the flickering skyline. "Alright, System, Creator, or whoever's up there—mind explaining why my life's turning into a glitched PowerPoint slideshow?"
No answer. Just wind.
Then the System pinged again.
> [ECHO FLUX: 8% STABILITY LOSS]
[REALITY FLICKER: IMMINENT]
Brian blinked. "Wait, flicker? What the hell is—"
The world blinked.
For one breathless second, everything vanished—the city, the lights, the stars. All that remained was black static and a single glowing message hanging in the void:
> [YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.]
Then—bang.
The world slammed back like someone hit "resume" on reality itself.
Brian staggered, clutching his chest. "Oh, shit… yeah, definitely not sleep deprivation."
He yanked up his System window. "Show me the logs!"
> [ACCESS DENIED]
[PRIORITY LOCK: CREATOR SIGNATURE DETECTED]
He froze. "Creator… signature?"
The text glitched, revealing coordinates that made no sense before dissolving into static.
"Okay," he whispered. "This just went from 'weird' to 'hell-level bizarre.'"
---
He found Selene waiting for him in the hallway, her face pale and tight.
"You felt it too," she said.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "The world blinked. And the System's acting like it's seen a ghost."
Selene nodded. "The fractures aren't reopening anymore… they're merging."
Brian blinked. "Merging into what?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "A convergence point. Something's trying to pull the fragments back together—force a rewrite."
He stared. "A rewrite? As in… rewrite us?"
"Yes," Selene said. "If the merge fails, everything—our memories, our bonds, our world—gets overwritten."
Brian ran both hands through his hair and laughed shakily. "Holy… holy shit. The multiverse has trust issues."
Selene didn't even smile. "This isn't a joke, Brian. We might be standing on borrowed code."
He looked up at the flickering ceiling. "Then we find the one writing the script and shove a gun in his face."
---
Outside, unseen by any of them, tiny cracks rippled through the night sky. Glowing lines of code stitched across the stars like veins of living light.
And in one of those cracks—something stirred.
Eyes. Cold, ancient, inhuman. Watching.