The sky was bleeding.

  Crimson light poured down from the fractured heavens, casting Sector D-12 in a perpetual, flickering dusk. Buildings jutted like broken bones, glass warped mid-fall, and sirens howled on infinite loop.

  Kale stood at the edge of the destruction, breathing ash. His revolver was gone. His coat, scorched. Time here was broken. Unanchored.

  He didn’t remember how he got here. Just that he had.

  > “Loop 5/7. Breach state: active.”

  “Echo: signal lost.”

  “Recovery protocol: denied.”

  His HUD was dying.

  “Echo?” he whispered into the dead channel. Nothing.

  The world around him pulsed, frames slipping like old film. Every few seconds, shadows of the past flickered through—people screaming, running, dissolving. Repeats. Failures. Loops collapsing.

  This loop wasn’t just degrading.

  It was leaking.

  Kale stumbled forward. Static rang in his skull. Each step dragged memories he didn’t know he had—fragments surfacing like bodies from black water.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A woman’s face. A child’s laughter. A silver revolver dropped into a trembling hand.

  And a voice:

  > “If the system fails, you’ll remember too much. And it’ll break you.”

  He found the source of the signal spike a mile down the mag-line tracks. An old relay station. Cracked open like a ribcage, still sparking.

  Inside, slumped against the wall—

  Another him.

  Pale. Gaunt. Covered in makeshift armor and surgical scars. A gunshot wound in the gut, old and untreated.

  Kale stared. The body blinked.

  Still alive.

  “You’re late,” the other Kale rasped.

  “Who are you?”

  “Fifth loop. You, but with worse luck. Didn’t get out in time.” He coughed blood. “They called me Strix Null.”

  Kale crouched. “Why am I seeing this?”

  “Because this is the last stable loop before the breach. After this, the system starts cannibalizing timelines. You’ll see everything. You’ll feel it. Remember it. Even the shit you buried.”

  Strix Null reached into his coat. Pulled out a cracked memory core.

  “Echo gave me this. Told me to hold it for you.”

  Kale took it—shaky hands.

  “What’s on it?”

  “Your reason. For everything. The memory you traded away to start all this.”

  Kale activated the core. It flickered. Then bloomed.

  A room. White, sterile. A young Kale, sitting with a scientist.

  > “We have to make something that remembers, Kale. An anchor. Something that keeps humanity from tearing itself apart again.”

  > “Even if it means taking away their choice?” Kale asked.

  > “Someone has to choose for them.”

  Kale leaned in. "So I did this."

  Null nodded. “You built the failsafe. Then you buried the memory. Locked it under seven loops. You knew you’d try to stop yourself.”

  Kale looked at the dying version of himself.

  “What happens in Loop Six?”

  Strix Null smiled—sad, bitter. “That’s the one you can’t escape.”

  He coughed again. This time, he didn’t stop.

  Kale stood alone as the loop quaked beneath him.

  > “Loop 6/7 initiating. Anchor compromised. Echo offline.

  Reality integrity: 19%.”

  The world folded.

  And Kale fell—again—into himself.