The beam stopped.
Not completely.
Just—
Paused.
Like reality itself had forgotten what it was doing.
The silence that followed wasn't relief.
It was confusion.
Even the air felt uncertain.
The girl blinked.
"It… stopped?"
Cael didn't answer.
Because he felt it.
Time—
Was unstable.
Not flowing.
Not frozen.
Hesitating.
Like a breath held too long.
His wrist burned.
He looked down.
The first counter—
Still moving.
03:12:34:58
But the second—
The one that always demanded sacrifice—
Was wrong.
00:00:03
Fractured.
Cracked like broken glass.
And between the cracks—
Something new flickered.
Not numbers.
Possibilities.
The beam above twitched.
Trying to correct itself.
Trying to remember how to erase him.
But the moment refused to continue.
And for the first time—
The watchers did not remain silent.
"Impossible," one of them said.
Their voices weren't sound.
They were pressure.
Meaning.
Weight against existence.
"He refused extraction," another observed.
"And the system did not collapse."
Far above—
The man who had been watching leaned closer.
Interest had turned to unease.
Because this—
Was never meant to happen.
Back below—
The Empire's drones faltered.
Their targeting systems recalculating.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Error.
The girl looked at him.
"What did you do?"
His answer came without certainty.
"I didn't take."
The words felt heavier than they should.
And the world responded.
The cracked counter flickered again.
Not demanding.
Not pulling.
Waiting.
A choice—
Instead of a hunger.
The beam surged—
Trying once more to finish its task.
Reality warped toward him.
And instinct screamed—
Borrow.
Run.
Survive.
But something deeper answered.
No.
And instead—
He stepped forward again.
This time—
Not to sacrifice.
But to interfere.
The moment stretched.
And his hand—
Moved.
Slow.
Impossible.
Not fast like before.
Not stolen.
Allowed.
His fingers touched the thinning air where the beam tried to exist.
And the universe—
Glitched.
Like a broken reflection.
The beam fractured.
Splitting into misaligned versions of itself.
One that had already struck.
One that hadn't yet fired.
One that never would.
All overlapping.
The drones collapsed from the contradiction.
Their systems unable to decide which reality was correct.
Above—
The watchers fell silent.
Because this wasn't theft.
It was interference.
He wasn't taking from time.
He was confusing it.
The girl stared.
"What… are you doing?"
He didn't know.
But he felt it.
Not a pull.
A resistance.
Like pushing back against a current that had always carried him.
And for the first time—
Time yielded.
The beam dissolved.
Not erased.
Not defeated.
Dismissed.
As if the future itself had decided—
Not now.
The sky cleared.
The Empire's presence retreated.
But far above—
The observer finally spoke.
"Mark him."
Not as an anomaly.
Not as an error.
But as a threat.
Because a man who steals time—
Is dangerous.
But a man who refuses it—
And still survives—
Is unpredictable.
And unpredictability—
Was the one thing fate was never designed to tolerate.