The jump didn't slam me onto solid ground this time.
It dropped me into darkness.
Complete, suffocating darkness...thick enough that I couldn't see my own hands. My boots landed on something uneven and brittle, like shattered stone or scorched earth.
For several seconds, I just stood there, breathing slowly, adjusting to the void around me.
Then, faintly, a whisper of light flickered in the distance.
A glitchy, stuttering glow like a failing bulb.
I moved toward it.
As my eyes adjusted, the landscape took shape around me.
A wasteland.
Endless, barren, colorless.
The ground cracked and blackened, stretching out beneath a sky that wasn't a sky at all, just darkness, torn by thin streaks of red energy flickering like dying nerves.
This wasn't just another collapsing timeline.
This place had been erased long ago.
I swallowed hard.
"…Timeline Zero."
The forbidden branch.
The one V-0 originated from.
The one no divergence maps would acknowledge.
The one Aren-14 whispered about before dying.
The one I apparently helped destroy.
My chest tightened painfully.
"Why am I here?" I whispered.
The divergence generator buzzed weakly on its last breaths. Stabilization: 2%.
One jump left.
Maybe.
A faint sound drifted across the wasteland like someone dragging metal across the ground.
I tensed immediately.
"Who's there?"
Silence.
Then another scrape, closer this time.
I pivoted slowly, every muscle tight.
A figure emerged from behind a jagged boulder...hunched, limping, wrapped in torn fabric that whipped around him like burnt flags.
His face was half hidden under tangled hair, but the parts I could see...
He looked like me.
But gaunt.
Hollow-cheeked.
Skin cracked with red fissures, as though the timeline's decay had etched itself into his body.
His eyes – my eyes – glowed faintly with fractured light.
He stopped a few feet away, staring at me with a mixture that resembled relief… and dread.
"So," he rasped. "You finally made it."
My throat constricted. "Who… are you?"
A broken laugh escaped him – half humor, half agony.
"Name's complicated. Time's complicated."
He coughed violently, clutching his ribs.
"But once… I was Aren Vale."
"Another version," I murmured.
"The first version," he corrected sharply, pointing a trembling finger at me. "Don't forget that. The first."
Cold rippled down my spine.
"You're the one who survived the original divergence," he continued. "The one who triggered the fractures with me. We started the mess."
My voice came out thin. "I don't remember any of that."
"I know," he whispered. "He took it from you."
V-0.
Always V-0.
The broken Aren limped closer, studying me with raw intensity.
"You're the only version he fears," he said. "Because you didn't break. You stabilized. You lived."
He spat on the ground.
"He hates you for that."
I swallowed hard. "Why does he want to erase the other timelines?"
"He doesn't want to erase them."
His cracked lips twisted.
"He wants to absorb them."
I felt sick. "Absorb?"
He nodded.
"The Multi-Memory Engine wasn't just meant to access memories across timelines. It was meant to combine them. But it required a perfect subject – a single consciousness stable enough to survive the weight of infinite lives."
"And he thinks that's him."
"He knows it is. Because he made himself into that."
I shook my head. "How?"
Broken Aren touched the glowing fissures on his cheek. "By letting timeline decay consume him. By becoming part of the collapse."
He pointed at me again.
"And he wants you next. Because you're the missing piece. The final anchor. Without you, his merge will always fail."
My stomach dropped.
"So I'm the only thing stopping him from becoming… what? A god?"
Broken Aren laughed bitterly. "He doesn't want godhood. He wants certainty. One life. One path. No mistakes."
"And what do you want?" I whispered.
He paused.
When he spoke, his voice cracked with pain older than any version of me.
"I want the truth to survive."
He lifted a small device from the folds of his torn cloak – a data crystal half-corrupted but still glowing faintly.
My breath caught.
"Another memory fragment?"
"More than that," he whispered. "The beginning of it all. The first piece he hasn't destroyed."
He pressed it into my hand with trembling fingers.
But as soon as I touched it...
A shockwave rippled through the wasteland.
The ground cracked violently.
The sky tore open in jagged lightning.
Broken Aren collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest.
"No… no, no...he found us."
My pulse spiked. "V-0?"
"He knows you're here! He can feel the anchor stabilizing – RUN!"
A scream tore across the dark sky...not human.
Not even alive.
A breach ripped open above us, swirling with violent red and black energy.
V-0 stepped out, expression unreadable.
"You should not have come here," hesaidquietly.
Broken Aren staggered to his feet, pushing me behind him.
"Run, boy," herasped. "I'll hold him."
V-0 looked almost sympathetic.
"No. You won't."
He snapped his fingers.
Broken Aren's body convulsed, cracks spreading across his skin like shattering porcelain.
"No!" I lunged toward him...
He pushed me back with one final burst of strength.
"GO!"
His body collapsed into light, dissolving into dust.
V-0 watched him fade without expression.
"This timeline held nothing but suffering," hesaid. "I ended it long ago."
Rage exploded in me – hot, consuming, overwhelming.
"You didn't end it," I growled. "You murdered him."
V-0 met my gaze with chilling calm.
"I freed him. He was dying for years."
"I don't care."
"You will."
The ground split beneath my feet.
The divergence generator glowed violently...its last charge firing uncontrollably.
V-0 reached toward me.
"You're not ready," he said again. "But I will make you ready."
The world collapsed.
...And I was thrown into another jump.