Elias returned to the city without falling.
There was no sensation of movement, no tearing or snapping of reality. One moment he stood in the white, facing
two impossible paths—and the next, he was standing in the middle of a street that bled hours.
But the city recoiled.
The pavement beneath his feet darkened, veins of red light retreating from him like frightened insects. The dripping
seconds slowed, then stopped altogether within a wide circle around his body.
Silence followed.
Not absence of sound.
Obedience.
Elias looked down at his hands.
They were unchanged.
Still human. Still scarred. Still shaking.
And yet—
He felt it.
A pressure behind his eyes. A subtle resistance in the air, like the world was now thicker around him, denser,
reluctant to let him pass without permission.
"Elias."
Mara's voice.
He turned.
She stood several meters away, frozen mid-step. Not paralyzed—paused. Her hair hung in the air as if caught in an
invisible current. Her eyes were locked on him, wide with terror and something dangerously close to awe.
He took a step toward her.
The world followed.
Mara moved again.
She staggered back, nearly falling.
"What did you do?" she whispered.
"I didn't mean to," Elias said automatically.
The lie tasted wrong.
Mara laughed—a short, broken sound. "You never do."
Around them, people emerged cautiously from doorways and alleys. The failed edits. The partial returns. They
stared at Elias the way animals stare at fire.
A man holding three watches dropped them.
They shattered.
Time leaked out.
Elias felt it brush against him—and then retreat.
He hadn't commanded it.
It had chosen.
"Oh no," Mara said.
She backed away.
"You anchored it," she said. "Didn't you?"
Elias shook his head. "It said I already was."
Mara's expression hardened. "Then you just agreed to stay."
The sky groaned.
A crack opened overhead, wider than before. From it spilled cascading numbers—dates, years,
lifetimes—collapsing into one another like a collapsing archive.
The city screamed.
Not in sound, but in distortion. Buildings warped. Windows replayed moments faster and faster, people aging years
in seconds inside their frames.
Mara grabbed Elias's arm.
"Listen to me carefully," she said. "Time can't erase you now. But it can still use you."
"For what?"
"To decide."
The crack widened.
A figure emerged.
Not the absence from the Catalog.
This one was precise.
It wore a human outline filled with moving text—contracts, conditions, outcomes scrolling endlessly across its body.
"The Arbiter," Mara breathed.
The figure spoke with Elias's voice.
Anchor confirmed.
Stability declining.
Human agency required.
Elias felt a tug—not physical, but moral. Every possible future brushed against him, each one demanding priority.
"Why me?" he shouted.
The Arbiter tilted its head.
Because you said no to an ending.
Images slammed into Elias's mind: entire districts reset, thousands of lives edited out to preserve billions more.
His knees buckled.
"You're asking me to choose who disappears," he said.
Correction: the Arbiter replied. You are already choosing.
Mara squeezed his arm until it hurt.
"This is why the others died," she said softly. "They remembered long enough to matter—but not long enough to
decide."
The city trembled.
Somewhere nearby, a child cried—and then looped the sound again and again.
Elias closed his eyes.
He could feel the branching paths now. Futures blooming and withering at the edge of his perception.
Time did not push him.
It waited.
Elias opened his eyes.
"Then teach me," he said.
The Arbiter smiled.
It was not a kind expression.