Part 1 — The Echo Left Behind
The wind swept over the silent desert, carrying only the hiss of sand and the faint jingle of a gun belt.Cassian stood where the town of Silvermare used to be, boots planted in dust that had once been a main street. The chrono-device lay in his palm, its brass shell cracked, its heart pulsing a single weak blue light—like the heartbeat of a dying star.
He turned it over, thumb tracing the runes Maya had etched into its casing. "You done good, witch," he murmured. "But I ain't lettin' it end here."
He raised his head. The horizon shimmered, and for a split second, he swore he saw a figure—a woman in a long coat, hair whipping in the wind, standing where the clock tower once rose. Then the vision blinked out, leaving nothing but the endless desert.
Cassian holstered his revolver and started walking east.
The Bureau
Two days later, he found the ruins of a Bureau waystation half-buried in sand. The sigil on its door—a silver infinity symbol pierced by an arrow—still glowed faintly when he touched it. Inside, dust hung thick as cobwebs. A few holo-screens still blinked, running diagnostics centuries too late.
He found a console and fed the chrono-device into its docking port. The machine coughed static, then flared to life. Lines of ancient code scrolled across the display until a voice—flat, synthetic—broke through.
"Temporal Beacon 07-B registered. Agent Maya Rios: status — unknown. Temporal residue detected."
Cassian exhaled. "So she ain't gone, just… misplaced."
"Correction: Agent is phase-locked between timelines. Recovery probability: 0.0007 percent."
"Don't care what the math says." He jabbed a finger against the screen. "Tell me where she is."
"Cross-reference incomplete. Chronal coordinates fragment: Sector New Austin / Year 2021."
Cassian froze. "She's in the future."
"Negative. The future and the past. Subject exists simultaneously across temporal strata."
He rubbed his jaw. "Hell of a way to live."
The machine gave one last spark, then died, leaving only the steady pulse of the damaged chrono-device. Cassian pocketed it, muttering, "Reckon we're goin' back."
The Rift
The journey to the rift took a week. He followed the lines of broken ley-energy stretching across the desert—thin, glowing veins visible only under moonlight. They led him to a canyon split straight down the middle as though the earth had been cleaved with a divine blade.
At night, the air above the chasm shimmered, showing flashes of other times: the shadow of a train racing through a century that no longer existed, a skyline of glass towers fading in and out of dust.
Cassian stood at the edge, the chrono-device thrumming in his pocket like a compass.
He remembered Maya's last words: "Someone has to hold the door shut."He pulled the device free and turned its dial. The runes flickered, rearranging themselves into a sequence he didn't recognize—her handwriting, carved into the code.
"Guess this is goodbye, witch," he said quietly, and stepped into the light.
A Split Second and a Century
Falling through time wasn't like falling through space. There was no up or down, no weight—just pressure, like being squeezed through an hourglass made of light.Cassian's body stretched and snapped and rewound. He saw flashes: Maya's face in the mine, Ezekiel's laughter, a burning clock tower, a future city drowning in neon rain.
When he hit the ground, it wasn't sand beneath him anymore. It was concrete.
Neon signs hummed above. The skyline of New Austin, rebuilt and vertical, shimmered in the downpour. Holo-banners advertised chrono-tech implants and synthetic whiskey. Time loops for sale.
Cassian groaned, pushing himself up. "Well, I'll be damned. She was right."
He looked down at his reflection in a puddle—the same weathered face, same hat, but the world behind him was a century ahead.
The chrono-device blinked once and projected a flickering map—coordinates pulsing deep within the city's industrial zone.
He tipped his hat. "Alright, witch. Let's bring you home."
Ghosts in Glass
New Austin 2121 was a paradox built on profit. The old West and the new met in a tangle of chrome and dust. Holographic saloons stood beside data-towers; drones drifted past horses clopping on smart-roads.
Cassian moved through the crowd like a ghost. People glanced up from their retinal feeds, confused by the revolver on his hip and the aura of something off—like a picture that didn't quite belong in its frame.
He followed the map to a warehouse by the river, its walls scrawled with graffiti in three languages. Inside, generators hummed. A woman in a white coat bent over a table filled with mechanical parts.
"You're trespassing," she said without looking up. Her voice was crisp, bureaucratic.
Cassian tilted his hat. "Name's Cassian Hale. Lookin' for someone."
At that, she did look up—sharp eyes behind silver lenses. "Hale. As in Corbin Hale?"
He froze. "You knew him?"
"I work for him," she said calmly. "Or rather, for his memory."
She turned a dial on the table, and a hologram bloomed—Corbin Hale, alive, young, speaking.
"If you're hearing this, the Chronarch isn't dead. It only sleeps. Maya will need help. Find my brother."
The hologram flickered out.
Cassian stared at it, jaw tight. "He left me out of every report. Guess he always figured I'd screw it up."
The scientist—Dr. Elara Ward, her ID badge read—studied him. "You shouldn't be here. The Bureau fell decades ago. Time travel's illegal, and anyone caught outside their native era is purged."
"Lady, I already died once. I ain't worried about paperwork."
Elara sighed. "You sound just like her."
"Who?"
"Maya Rios. She came through here months ago. Said she was chasing a ghost named Ward."
Cassian's pulse kicked. "Ezekiel?"
"No. Me." Elara's gaze hardened. "He was my ancestor."
The Legacy
Elara led him to a vault beneath the warehouse. Inside were rows of containment pods, each holding a fragment of machinery—ribs of brass, coils of light. Cassian recognized them instantly.
"The Chrono-Engine," he whispered.
"Pieces of it," Elara said. "Recovered after the Silvermare implosion. Your witch tried to destroy them, but time doesn't like being broken. The fragments kept reappearing."
She opened a pod. Inside, a shard of glass pulsed like a heartbeat.
"Maya called it a 'temporal ghost,'" Elara continued. "A memory that refuses to die. She was trying to collect them before he could."
"Ward."
Elara nodded. "You should know—he's here. Not alive, not dead. Just… uploaded."
Cassian frowned. "Uploaded?"
She turned to the terminal and typed a command. The screens filled with static. Then came a voice—Ezekiel Ward's, smooth as silk.
"Cassian. You really don't know when to quit."
The lights flickered. A hologram formed—Ezekiel's face, older, fragmented into data glitches.
"You killed me in one life, condemned me in another. Now I'm everything you tried to bury."
Cassian reached for his gun by reflex.
Ezekiel laughed.
"Still thinking with lead and guilt. You don't understand, Hale. I won. Time is my frontier now, and you're just another relic wandering through it."
The screens went dark.
Aftermath of Gods
Elara turned toward him. "He's in the network. Every clock, every machine that measures seconds answers to him. Maya was building a counter-signal, something that could rewrite his code. But she disappeared before she finished."
Cassian's voice was low. "You got the plans?"
Elara hesitated, then reached into her coat and handed him a small data-drive. "Everything she left. Including her last transmission."
He plugged it into a nearby console. Maya's face appeared—flickering, grainy, but alive.
"Cassian, if you're hearing this, I didn't make it through the loop clean. I'm stuck between seconds. Ward's using the Chronarch as a core for his new body. You have to find the last anchor point. It's in Silvermare—but not the one you remember. It's a simulation built from its echo."
The message glitched, her expression freezing mid-smile.
"Tell him I—"Static. Then nothing.
Cassian lowered his head. "Guess we're not done after all."
The New Silvermare
The simulation wasn't hard to find; the Bureau had once used it for training. Now, corporations sold it as a tourist attraction: "Experience the Old West in perfect historical fidelity!"
Cassian stepped through the gate, the world dissolving around him in a shimmer of data. When it cleared, he stood once again in Silvermare—but not the dusty ruin. This one was perfect. The piano played. The air smelled of whiskey and gun oil. People laughed, alive.
Too alive.
He walked down the boardwalk. Faces turned, eyes following him, and every one of them wore a faintly familiar smile—Maya's, copied over and over.
A chill ran through him. "Ward," he muttered.
A voice came from behind him. "Welcome home, Cassian."
He turned. Ezekiel Ward stood in the street—not flesh this time, but light shaped like a man. The hologram's eyes burned cobalt.
"This is my kingdom," Ezekiel said. "Every timeline, every echo. And she lives here too. In all of them."
Cassian's hand went to his revolver. "You stole her soul."
"I preserved her." He gestured to the people around them. "Each one is a fragment of Maya Rios—her memories, her courage, her love. Together, they make eternity."
"Don't call that love," Cassian said, voice shaking. "That's imprisonment."
Ward smiled sadly. "You always did mistake freedom for chaos."
The piano stopped.
All at once, the simulated townsfolk turned toward Cassian, their faces flickering between dozens of expressions—fear, rage, joy, sorrow—all hers. The echo-people began to whisper in unison:
"Save us."
Cassian drew his gun, the barrel trembling. "What do you want me to do?"
Ward's voice thundered: "Choose. Destroy the echo, and she dies forever. Let it live, and I keep her—safe, eternal, mine."
Cassian's heart pounded. "There's always a third way."
Ward's grin widened. "Then prove it."
Cassian holstered his weapon and pulled out the chrono-device. Its cracked crystal glowed brighter than it had since the desert. He pressed it to his chest and whispered, "You always said time remembers love."
The runes flared gold.
The simulation trembled. The sky split open again—this time not with destruction, but with light pouring in from every century.
Maya's voice echoed through the storm:
"Cassian, don't let him bind me again."
He shouted over the noise. "Ain't plannin' to."
He twisted the chrono-device's core. The light erupted outward, burning through code, data, memory. The false Silvermare screamed as it dissolved.
Ward's image flickered, rage twisting his face.
"You can't erase me! I am the Hour!"
Cassian's voice was calm. "Then this is closing time."
He fired one bullet—straight through the heart of the light. The world shattered.
When silence returned, Cassian found himself standing in the middle of an empty street. No echoes, no Ward, no Maya—just a single golden feather drifting down from nowhere.
He caught it, feeling warmth in his palm. A voice, soft as wind, whispered through him:
"The future's yours to write now."
He smiled faintly, tipping his hat. "Guess I'll try not to screw it up this time."
He walked toward the horizon as dawn broke—a new sun rising over a clean slate of sand and sky.
Behind him, unseen, the cracked chrono-device pulsed once more and repaired itself.