The world holds its breath. Not metaphorically,literally. Every gust of wind halts mid-whirl. Every shout thins into silence. Every trembling stone freezes in the instant before it falls. And at the center of that suspended, perfect stillness: Frank and the Not-Elara hang locked together, inches apart, both caught in a moment that refuses to move forward. Not a pause. Not mercy. A command. Something greater than either of them has seized the timeline and pulled its spine straight. Frank sucks in air but it doesn’t leave his lungs. It just sits there, burning. His muscles are steel bands refusing to slacken. Fire coils around his fists like living serpents, trapped mid-lunge. The being is motionless too,yet somehow aware, eyes following him even though the rest of its body obeys the frozen second. Its gaze hums with recognition. “You feel it too,” it murmurs,its voice vibrating inside his skull, bypassing time entirely. “The world isn’t stopping us. Something else is.”Frank trie

The molten sphere at the center of the ruined street pulses like a wounded star. Each beat sends ripples through the air,heat shimmering, gravity bending, light warping around it as though refusing to touch. Frank stands still. Not frozen. Not afraid. Just calculating. The being watches him with a tension that borders on terror. “Frank,don’t get closer.”“It’s reacting to me,” he murmurs. “It’s been reacting to me since it appeared.”“That’s what terrifies me.”A long crack splits down the sphere’s surface, spilling molten gold across the stone like blood from a future that shouldn’t exist. The pulse sharpens, faster, louder, synchronized with Frank’s heartbeat. The being lifts her hand. “Frank, listen carefully. That thing is not just your future,it’s the compression of every possible version of what the Root wants you to be. The part of the timeline you refused.”Frank’s jaw tightens. “I didn’t refuse anything. It just isn’t me.”Another crack. A hiss,like steam escaping from a

The sky tears wider, not like fabric, but like something alive being forced open from the other side. Frank feels it before he sees it: a cold pressure, deliberate and ancient, pushing down on his flame like a giant palm pressing against his spine. The being flinches. “Frank… this isn’t another fragment. This is,”“I know.”He doesn’t blink.and doesn't step back. His fire coils tighter inside him, winding like a blade preparing to strike. A voice seeps through the widening rift: “You destroyed the candidate.”Frank exhales slowly. “Yeah. I did.”“You rejected a replacement.”“I prefer being myself.”A low vibration ripples across the ground. “Unacceptable.”The being’s voice trembles,an extremely rare fear. “Frank,we need to move. We can’t fight whatever’s stepping through that. That’s not a parasite. That’s not a mirror. That’s,”Frank cuts her off: “Something that wants me gone.”“No,something that wants you corrected.”The tear in the sky splits fully, a vertical wound bleeding

The snap is silent. No flash. No quake. No explosion. Just a sudden, absolute shift. Frank feels it first,like gravity turning inside out. The floor isn’t beneath his feet anymore. The ceiling isn’t above him. Every direction bleeds into every other, folding space into something that shouldn’t exist. He forces his stance wide anyway, chest heaving, fire sparking violently against a reality that’s losing its shape. The Reviser stands at the center of the collapse, perfectly still perfectly balanced, perfectly wrong. Its voice echoes from everywhere and nowhere: “Begin full overwrite.”Frank shouts over the distortion, “What does that mean?!”The being beside him,Elara/not-Elara,grabs his arm, her voice breaking into two tones that don’t fully sync: “It means it’s rewriting the environment. Everything. Us. Down to thought-level.”Frank curses under his breath. “Not happening.”The Reviser lifts both hands, graceful, deliberate, and the world responds like it’s a puppet on invisib

The first sound Frank hears is nothing. No wind. No hum of static. No distant crumbling of frozen towers. Just the emptiness of a world held in suspension,  an entire city mid-breath, mid-collapse, mid-fear. He moves through it like someone walking inside a photograph. Water hangs in perfect globes around him.  A cracked billboard is frozen mid-fall. The clouds are split open but refuse to drift. His footsteps echo, even though nothing here should echo. Something’s bending itself around him.He knows why. He knows who. He follows the pull,  a gravitational instinct, a thread tugging at the base of his sternum, warm and steady and certain in a world gone cold and silent.The closer he gets, the more the city reacts to him. Shards of glass begin to tremble in the air.Streetlights flicker even though electricity isn’t moving.  Edges of buildings groan like they’re trying to finish collapsin