The jump threw me into a world that felt… wrong from the moment my boots hit the ground.
The first thing I noticed was the silence.
Not quiet.
Not still.
Silence...like the world itself had stopped breathing.
I straightened slowly, scanning my surroundings.
An empty city street stretched in both directions. Buildings stood intact but hollow, windows dark, lights dead, as though everyone vanished mid-life.
No people.
No animals.
No sound.
Even the air tasted thin, like reality itself was fading.
"This place is…"
I exhaled shakily.
"…dead."
The generator flickered weakly in my hand–its glow dimmer than ever. Stabilization: 4%.
"Hang in there," I whispered.
I moved cautiously down the street, footsteps echoing far too loudly. Every shadow looked stretched, wrong. Edges of buildings flickered like low-resolution images struggling to render.
A collapsing timeline.
I'd seen glimpses of this.
But never walked through one this close to its end.
A chill trickled down my spine.
Had V-0 done this too?
Or was this timeline already doomed?
A soft metallic scraping sound came from an alley to my right.
I jumped, heart hammering.
"Who's there?" I called instinctively, stupidly.
At first there was nothing.
Then...
A figure limped into view.
My breath froze.
It was me.
A version of me.
But barely recognizable.
Clothes torn and burned.
Skin pale, almost translucent.
Eyes sunken, ringed with fractures of red light...
like cracks in glass.
He looked… terminal.
Like the timeline's collapse was consuming him from the inside.
He collapsed against the wall, sliding down with a ragged groan.
I rushed to him. "Hey...hey! Stay with me."
He lifted his head slowly.
When he saw my face, he actually laughed –broken, breathless.
"Oh… good," he rasped. "I was hoping one of us would get here before I died."
I swallowed hard. "What happened to you?"
He coughed violently, blood – glitching like static – spattering the ground.
"Our world… wasn't supposed to fracture this early," he whispered. "But he forced it."
My chest tightened. "V-0?"
He nodded weakly.
"He came here… looking for a variance. Something he lost. Something you still have."
My pulse quickened. "What variance?"
He smiled faintly. "If I tell you everything… you won't survive long enough to use it."
"What does that mean?" I asked, frustration bubbling under fear. "What do I have that he wants?"
The dying Aren reached into his torn coat with trembling fingers.
He pulled out a small transparent capsule –shimmering with faint white particles drifting inside like dust caught in sunlight.
He pressed it into my palm.
"This," he whispered. "This is your memory. Or… a piece of it."
I stared at the capsule.
"My memory?"
He nodded.
"V-0 has been removing fragments of you across timelines. But he can't erase everything."
Another cough wracked his thin frame.
"He's afraid of what you'll remember if the anchor stabilizes."
Anchor.
That word again.
"Tell me what I am," I said, voice cracking. "Everyone keeps saying I'm an 'anchor.' What does that mean?"
The dying Aren gripped my hand with sudden intensity.
"It means you were the first version to survive the divergence event."
I froze.
"What divergence event?"
He gave a faint, broken smile.
"The one… we caused."
A shock traveled down my spine.
"No," I whispered. "No, I didn't"
"Yes," he rasped. "We did. All versions of us. We triggered the original collapse. The multiverse has been unraveling ever since."
My mind spun.
"But V-0 – he said he wants to fix the multiverse."
"He doesn't want to fix it," the dying Aren said. "He wants to control it. A single timeline. One future. His future. And he believes you're the only threat left."
"Why me?"
"Because you're still whole."
He pointed weakly at the capsule.
"You still have pieces of memory he couldn't take."
I stared at the capsule glowing faintly in my palm.
"What's inside it?"
He coughed hard, breath rattling.
"A blueprint," he whispered. "To stop him. But… you'll need all of it. All the pieces. And he's scattered them across collapsing worlds."
My throat tightened.
He didn't have much time left.
"Why did our timeline collapse?" I asked softly.
His cracked eyes lifted to mine.
"Because we built something we shouldn't have," he whispered. "Something that touched every branch. Something V-0 perfected."
"What did we build?"
His lips curved into a sad smile.
"The Multi-Memory Engine."
My heart stopped.
He continued, voice almost gone:
"It let us see into other versions of ourselves… and take their memories. But V-0 found a way to absorb us instead. He's becoming all of us. Every Aren. Every branch. Every life."
I felt sick.
"He'll keep killing versions until only he remains."
The dying Aren nodded weakly.
"You must gather the memory fragments before he does. If he becomes whole first…"
He swallowed.
"…he wins."
A tremor shook the ground. Buildings flickered - some vanishing altogether.
"No,no, stay with me," I urged, gripping his hand harder.
He squeezed weakly.
"Don't let him erase us," he whispered. "We are more than one path."
He exhaled.
...And disintegrated into white dust.
I froze, breath caught in my throat, hand still extended toward air that no longer held him.
Then the world groaned.
The timeline was collapsing.
The capsule pulsed brightly in my palm.
I shoved it into my pocket and grabbed the generator.
"Come on… hold together… just one more jump"
A fissure tore open behind me, pulling debris toward its void.
I activated the generator.
Just as the collapsing world swallowed everything around me.