I blinked several times, struggling to process my surroundings. My room—my old room—materialized around me with unsettling familiarity. Posters of forgotten games adorned the walls, their corners curling with age. The scent of mom's morning coffee wafted up from downstairs, a smell I hadn’t experienced in over a decade. It felt surreal, almost cruel, to be back here.

  My hands trembled as I reached for my phone—an ancient model I hadn’t seen since high school. The date displayed made my heart skip: March 15, 2015. Ten years before the Malekt. Before the anomalies. Before Esther’s betrayal. Before everything.

  A notification blinked on the screen: "Guild Wars 2 Patch Complete." The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had spent countless hours in virtual worlds, oblivious to how violently the real one would transform. My body felt wrong—smaller, weaker, lacking the scars etched by battles against Malekts, the wiry muscle built from endless sprints through crumbling cities, or the raw strength earned from slaying beasts three times my size. But my mind... my mind remembered everything.

  I stared at the baseball bat leaning against the wall when three notifications suddenly appeared in my field of vision:

  [Achievement Unlocked: Major Temporal Alteration]

  [Achievement Unlocked: First Awakened of the Timeline]

  [Achievement Unlocked: Elimination of a Mythic-Rank Creature (Malekt Lv. 996)]

  “Jinsu! Your breakfast is getting cold!” Mom’s voice called from downstairs—a voice I hadn’t heard since the First Wave claimed her three years ago. Or rather, seven years from now.

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  “I’m coming, Mom!” I called back, though my mind was spinning.

  As I descended the stairs, I could barely make out a few faint [links] between objects—nothing more than a silvery thread here and there. These connections, so vibrant and alive in my old world, felt fragile now, as if the timeline itself hadn’t yet awakened to its potential. It was frustrating to feel so limited after all I had accomplished, but it was a start. For now, I’d have to make do.

  The smell of breakfast and the sound of my mother’s voice pulled me sharply back to reality. Atria’s ritual had done more than save my life; it had rewritten my reality, planting me here. Somewhere in this timeline, a younger Esther was probably getting ready for school too, oblivious to the path that would transform her into both a savior and a betrayer. Evan was still just that awkward kid, years away from becoming the shield I leaned on in my darkest hours. And Atria… would her sacrifice mean we’d never meet in this world?

  I thought of the fights I had survived—the winged Malekt I had cleaved in two while its claws shredded the battlefield, the hordes I had held back alone to buy time for evacuations, the despair of knowing each triumph only delayed the inevitable. I had endured so much, but those memories were nothing compared to the opportunity in front of me. This time, I could prepare. This time, I might prevent the war from happening altogether.

  My phone buzzed, dragging me back. A text from Evan: “Dude, did you finish the history homework? Mr. Peterson’s going to kill us if we skip again.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. History homework. If only Evan knew how much history I was carrying in my head—how many futures I had to rewrite, how many people I had to save. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard before I replied: “Yeah, I got it. See you at school.”

  I glanced at the bat one last time before resting it on my shoulder. Today was the first day of my second chance. There was a war coming, even if no one but me could see it. And this time, I’d be ready. This time, I’d make sure those exploits—the battles, the losses, the sacrifices—weren’t in vain.