"What does it mean to survive when the world you return to is already dead in your memory?"
The silence after a scream is never truly quiet. It's a phantom echo, lingering just beneath your skin—vibrating, clawing. Lucas Virel stood there, in that moment between moments, blood drying on his fingertips, the weight of a future he hadn't lived pressing into the back of his skull.
He had returned.
Or rather, the world had allowed him to return.
His breaths were shallow, and his eyes locked on the mirror above his dresser. The reflection didn't match the tremor in his chest. No blood. No wounds. No cold concrete beneath his knees. Just the boy—seventeen again—wearing the same gray hoodie he'd hated back then. His lips trembled.
"Is this real?" he whispered.
The world didn't answer. It never did.
Lucas skipped school that morning. The very thought of walking into that building, seeing their faces—those who'd smiled before shoving a knife in his back—was unbearable.
He walked the city instead.
It hadn't changed. The smell of morning rain. The buzz of overhead wires. The cafe near the bus stop still advertised overpriced espresso. But beneath that familiarity was something rotten.
Every step he took felt rehearsed. Like walking on the ghost of a memory.
At the corner of Winston and Kyler Street, he froze.
Her laughter. That laugh.
Eira.
She hadn't noticed him yet. The same short hair. The same rust-colored jacket he'd bought her with stolen coins from his father's drawer. She was laughing with a friend—genuine, unaware. Alive.
Lucas's legs buckled.
How could she look so light, so free? Didn't she remember the fire? The blood? The way she'd begged him to understand before vanishing into the screams?
But she wouldn't. Not yet.
She hadn't lived it.
Only he had.
The world stuttered.
Literally.
For the briefest second, the color bled from the street, and a crack—like shattered glass on metal—rang through Lucas's skull. No one else reacted. Time surged forward again.
He blinked rapidly. "That wasn't normal…"
Then he saw him. A man across the street, wearing an old-fashioned coat, standing motionless in the middle of the crowd. His eyes were white. No pupils. No irises.
Watching.
And then—gone.
Lucas didn't even feel fear. He just whispered, "They know."
He found his way to the abandoned rooftop where he used to hang out after fights. A place where the noise of the world felt muffled, distant. The city looked cleaner from this height. Unreal.
That's when the voice came.
"You broke something."
Lucas whipped around.
The man from earlier was there—closer now. His eyes, no longer white, but obsidian mirrors. Reflecting Lucas's panic back at him.
"I… I didn't ask for this," Lucas muttered. "I just wanted to change things."
"And you did," the man said. "But the clock has no mercy. When you turn it back, it shaves the soul instead of rewinding time."
"Who are you?"
The man stepped forward, and Lucas felt his lungs tighten.
"I'm the custodian of what you've broken."
Suddenly, Lucas's body convulsed. Pain surged through his spine. His knees hit the concrete, and everything around him darkened.
He was back. There. In the fire.
Screams again. Smoke choking the air. The scent of burning flesh. His own voice echoing—
"I trusted you, Eira—WHY!?"
But this time, it was different.
She wasn't crying.
She was smiling.
A gun in her hand.
She pulled the trigger.
Lucas gasped, falling backward—back onto the rooftop, the present—or whatever this cursed version of it was.
He stared at his hands.
The blood from the vision was gone—but a fresh cut traced his left palm.
Real.
Somehow, that was real.
And worse—etched in the middle of his palm was a faint symbol. A gear. A broken gear. Like something out of a clock tower.
"This is just the beginning," the custodian said. "You asked for time. It gave you ash."
Lucas stood, eyes filled with something new.
Resolve.
He didn't want to go back again.
But he knew he would have to.
At home, the photo on his desk was different. In it, his mother wasn't smiling. Her eyes were hollow. His father was missing entirely.
A sticky note was attached to the frame.
"Every change costs someone else's truth."
Lucas crumpled it and backed away.
What if the next change erased someone else he loved?
Could he live with that?
A knock at the door.
He turned, slowly.
It was Eira.
Here. In this timeline.
Smiling.
"Hey… you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Lucas stared, unblinking.
Because he had.
And she was it.
His mouth opened, but he didn't answer.
Because behind Eira, standing in the shadowed hallway, was another version of her. Bleeding from the mouth. Eyes full of rage.
The first Eira hadn't noticed.
Time had split.
Lucas realized the clock wasn't broken.
It was bleeding.
And the echoes were catching up.
To be continued...