02:11.

  Again.

  Kale didn’t blink. He didn’t need to—his ocular implants filtered the stutter in real-time, smoothing the jarring flicker of a recycled murder.

  But his mind felt the skip.

  The killer stood there once more, identical to the last loop: eyes wild, pistol trembling. And, just like before, Kale raised his revolver.

  Only this time, he didn’t speak.

  He watched.

  The man’s lips moved.

  “We all die at once…”

  “…but only some of us remember.”

  The same words. The same cadence.

  But a moment before the shot, something shifted. Not in the man—but in the air. A blur in the corner of Kale’s vision. A shadow watching the shadow.

  He spun toward it, revolver tracking.

  Nothing.

  Except—

  His own face.

  Just for a blink, standing at the platform’s edge. Same coat. Same scars. Same tired, cynical stare. But older. Worn. And gone in a flash.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The shot fired again.

  The man dropped.

  Echo reappeared mid-static, her form sputtering like bad reception. “There’s interference. Layered echoes. This loop is… degrading.”

  “No shit,” Kale muttered, eyes scanning the flickering crime scene. “Tell me something useful.”

  “The loop is anchored. Artificially. Someone’s holding it open from the outside.”

  Kale’s stomach twisted. Timefields didn’t anchor themselves. That kind of interference required brute-force computation—a system powerful enough to hold causality hostage.

  “ZERO,” he said quietly.

  Echo didn’t answer. That was confirmation enough.

  Kale holstered his weapon, stepping carefully over the still-twitching body. Blood pooled across the platform, but it wasn’t fresh. It had the wrong texture. Like memory. Like it belonged to a murder that happened years ago—but hadn’t happened yet.

  “This timeline’s breaking down,” Echo said. “You’ll need to extract before your neural sync decays.”

  Kale stared at the body.

  “I’m not done,” he said.

  “Kale—”

  He reached into his coat, pulled out a shard of mirrorglass—a cracked piece of retro tech he kept for personal reasons—and scanned it across the killer’s face. The shard’s surface shimmered… then glitched.

  Not one reflection.

  Three.

  One of them looked back and smiled.

  “Yeah,” Kale whispered. “Something’s very wrong.”

  A deep, low rumble echoed through the air—like thunder underwater. Reality flexed.

  And then the crime scene reset—only this time, there was no body.

  02:11.

  Victim: None.

  Killer: None.

  Temporal signature: Active.

  Echo’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Someone’s rewriting the script in real time.”

  Kale looked up.

  Above him, the neon billboards across Sector D-12 began to glitch. One by one, the ads collapsed into white text on black screens:

  > WELCOME BACK, KALE STRIX.

  LOOP 3/7.

  LET’S SEE WHO YOU REALLY ARE.

  Kale backed away, jaw tight. “Echo,” he said slowly. “Get me a trace.”

  “I already tried,” she said. “It’s… it’s coming from you.”

  Kale turned toward the distorted edge of the platform.

  And there—just visible in the fog—was a silhouette.

  Waiting.

  Wearing his coat.

  Smiling.