The words didn't just sit on the page.
They hummed.
Juno sat cross-legged in her quarters, the room lit only by the Divider's steady glow. Seth's journal rested in her lap, its pages shifting on their own, like they were alive. Like they remembered.
"There is no linear time.
Only decisions.
And the echoes they leave behind."
She ran her fingers along the page. The ink shimmered faintly, golden and alive—Chrono-tech ink, maybe, but something older. Older than the Registry. Older than the Loop.
One name kept appearing between lines, scratched faintly into the margins:
Vantheos.
She didn't recognize it. And that made her nervous.
She turned the next page and froze.
A hand-drawn sketch stared up at her: seven figures standing at the edge of a broken timeline. Their faces were shadowed, but one in the center… her posture, her weapon, even her coat—
It was her.
Beneath it, a note:
"You've been here before, Juno.
You just don't remember the price you paid."
The Divider flickered sharply beside her. A new crack ran along its surface, right where her name was etched.
Juno's heart pounded.
How long had this war really been going on?
And who the hell was Vantheos?