The map burned in my pocket, an ever-present reminder of the twisted path that lay ahead. Elias and I had been walking for hours, the sun low in the sky, its dim light casting long shadows across the ruined landscape. The air was thick with tension, and every step felt heavier, as if the ground beneath our feet was sinking deeper into the chaos.
The Faded had become more aggressive. They were everywhere—lurking in the shadows, stumbling through the streets, their eyes vacant but relentless. Their groans, once distant, now seemed to echo off the cracked buildings, drawing closer with every passing second. It was like they were following us, tracking our movements, closing in.
"Where are we headed next?" I asked Elias, my voice hoarse from hours of walking. My feet ached, my mind was fraying at the edges, and the air tasted like decay. But I couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when there was still a chance to fix it all.
Elias didn’t answer immediately. His jaw was set, his eyes scanning the horizon, but his mind seemed to be somewhere far away, lost in a memory I couldn’t place.
Finally, he spoke, his voice quieter than usual. “There’s a place on the map. The next location. It’s... a laboratory. A research facility.”
I frowned. “Another one? We’ve been to enough of those already.”
He didn’t look at me, his gaze still fixed on the distance. “This one’s different.”
I could feel his words hang in the air, like a storm cloud waiting to break. “Different how?” I pressed, but he just shook his head, as if the answer was too dangerous to say aloud.
For a moment, we walked in silence. The only sound was the shuffle of our feet and the distant groans of the Faded. But there was something in the air—a shift. The tension was palpable, and I could feel the weight of the silence pressing down on us.
Then, as we turned a corner, the first one appeared.
A Faded, its twisted form stumbling into view from behind a half-collapsed wall. It wasn’t like the others. This one had a different energy about it, a sense of purpose. It moved faster, more deliberately.
I froze, my hand instinctively reaching for the knife at my side. Elias, too, had stopped. But instead of drawing a weapon, he just stood there, his eyes fixed on the creature with an unreadable expression.
And then, without warning, the Faded lunged.
I reacted on instinct. My knife flashed in the air, the blade sinking deep into its chest, but the creature barely flinched. It was as if it didn’t even feel the blow.
“Liora, move!” Elias shouted, pulling me back just in time as another Faded appeared, and then another. They were everywhere now—surrounding us.
I could hear them coming from all directions, their footsteps heavy and deliberate. There was no way out. No escape. We were trapped.
I fought back, slashing at the creatures, my knife slicing through their flesh, but it didn’t seem to matter. Every time one fell, another took its place.
I was running on pure adrenaline now. My body was exhausted, my movements sluggish, but I kept fighting, pushing through the haze of panic.
Then, I saw him.
Elias, his face pale, his eyes wide with fear, was backing up against the wall. One of the Faded had him pinned, its claws digging into his shoulder as it tried to drag him to the ground.
I screamed, charging toward him, but my legs gave out beneath me. I stumbled, falling to the ground, my knife slipping from my hand. Panic flooded my chest as I scrambled to get back on my feet, but it was too late. The Faded were closing in.
And then, just as I thought we were done for, Elias did something that made my heart stop.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, silver device. It was unlike anything I had seen before—smooth, circular, with strange symbols etched into its surface.
He pressed a button.
And in that moment, everything changed.
The world seemed to flicker, the air vibrating with a low hum, as if the very fabric of reality was being torn apart. The Faded froze, their twisted bodies locking in place as if time itself had come to a halt.
Elias grabbed my arm, yanking me toward him. “We don’t have much time,” he said, his voice strained. “This device can only hold them off for a few minutes. We need to move.”
I barely had time to process what was happening before he was dragging me forward, running through the sea of frozen Faded, their faces contorted in unnatural stillness.
“What is this?” I gasped, my mind racing. “What’s happening?”
“This is the Chronos device,” Elias explained, his breath heavy. “It’s not just a weapon—it’s a temporal anchor. It can freeze time, slow it down... but it’s not perfect. And it won’t last long.”
My mind reeled. A temporal anchor? Was this part of the project? Was this what the Chronos experiment had become? A device that could control time itself?
We reached a building, its door hanging off its hinges, and Elias yanked it open. “This is it,” he said, urgency in his voice. “The lab’s in here.”
But as we stepped inside, the temperature dropped sharply, and I felt a cold chill seep into my bones. The room was dark, the only light coming from the flickering, dying bulbs overhead. The walls were covered in faded papers and strange equations, like remnants of a world that no longer existed.
I could feel the weight of something ancient in the air—something alive, just waiting to be unleashed.
“This is where it all started,” Elias murmured. “The Chronos project.”
But before I could ask what he meant, I heard a noise—a low, rumbling growl.
I whipped around, my heart pounding as I searched the room. And there, standing in the doorway, was a figure I never thought I’d see again.
Zane.
But this time, he wasn’t alone.
Behind him, a group of Faded appeared, their eyes vacant but their movements controlled. They weren’t like the others. These were... different. They were organized.
“Liora,” Zane said, his voice low and cold. “You’re too late.”
Elias stepped in front of me, his body tense, ready for a fight. But Zane’s eyes flicked toward him, and there was something in that gaze—something I couldn’t quite place—that made Elias hesitate.
“Zane,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “What’s happening? Why are you doing this?”
Zane’s lips twisted into a smile, but it wasn’t a smile at all. It was a grimace, full of regret and something darker.
“The world you know... it’s already gone. There’s nothing left but what we make of it now.” His eyes turned to the device in Elias’s hand. “And you can’t stop it. You can’t fix it.”
I felt the cold weight of his words settle in my chest. My throat tightened. The device. The project. The Faded.
Everything I had tried to outrun was catching up with me.
Elias tightened his grip on the device, his gaze hardening. “I’m not going to let you finish this, Zane.”
Zane’s eyes darkened. “Then you’ll have to kill me.”
And just like that, I realized—this was the moment. This was the crossroads where everything would change.
Zane was no longer the man I knew.
And this time, I didn’t know if we could survive what was coming.
With a flick of his wrist, the room around us seemed to flicker, like a malfunctioning light. Time—our time—was slipping away, faster than I could process.
And then, Zane smiled again.
But this time, it wasn’t at all comforting.
“Good luck,” he said, and in that instant, everything went black.
The darkness came like a flood. One second, I was standing in the abandoned laboratory, staring at Zane and the Faded around him, my breath coming fast, my heart hammering in my chest. The next, everything was swallowed up by an inky blackness that seemed to press in from all sides, suffocating me.
My ears rang with silence, a thick, oppressive silence that smothered all thought. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. I reached out, my hands trembling, trying to find something, anything, to hold onto, but there was nothing.
Was this it?
The thought crossed my mind like a whisper on the edge of a dream. Had we failed? Was this the end? I didn’t know how long I stood there in the darkness, frozen in place, but every passing second felt like an eternity. My body screamed for movement, for air, for something to break the suffocating weight pressing down on me.
And then—just as quickly as the darkness had come—it vanished.
The world rushed back in, a sharp contrast to the stillness. I sucked in a breath, my lungs aching as they filled with air. My eyes snapped open, only to be met with a scene so bizarre it almost made me dizzy.
We weren’t in the lab anymore.
Instead, we stood on the edge of a vast, open field. The ground was covered in a layer of thick, wet fog that curled around our feet like a living thing. The sky above us was a strange mix of twilight colors—pale purple and deep red, with no sun, just a cold, unnatural light that seemed to emanate from nowhere.
Elias was beside me, his eyes wide, his expression one of shock. His fingers were still curled tightly around the Chronos device, as if it was the only thing holding him together.
“What the hell just happened?” I whispered, my voice barely audible in the thick air.
Elias didn’t answer right away. His gaze was fixed on something in the distance—something that made his face pale, his jaw tighten.
“Where are we?” I asked, my heart racing as I followed his gaze.
A figure stood in the distance, a shadow against the swirling mist. At first, I thought it was another Faded, but as the fog shifted, the shape became clearer. It was a person. A man, standing alone in the center of the field, his face obscured by the heavy cloak he wore.
But it wasn’t his appearance that made me stop dead in my tracks—it was the strange sensation that hit me as soon as I saw him.
I know him.
The realization hit me like a punch to the gut. My stomach twisted with a sense of recognition so strong it was like my body was betraying me, forcing me to remember things I didn’t want to know.
“Who is that?” I asked, my voice hoarse, my throat tight.
Elias’s grip on the device tightened, and his eyes flicked back to me. His expression was unreadable, but there was a flicker of something—fear? Guilt?
“Stay close,” he said, his voice low, urgent. “Don’t trust anyone here.”
I wanted to ask what he meant, but the words caught in my throat as the figure began to move. Slowly at first, then faster, until he was walking toward us, his footsteps deliberate, measured, like he knew exactly where he was going.
The fog parted as he neared, revealing more of his face. And when I saw him—when I saw those familiar, cold eyes staring back at me—a chill ran down my spine.
Zane.
It couldn’t be. This wasn’t possible. But there he was, standing before us as if nothing had changed, as if he hadn’t just been standing in the lab, surrounded by the Faded. His expression was as unreadable as always, but there was something else in his eyes now—something darker, more dangerous.
“You’re... dead,” I whispered, the words slipping from my lips before I could stop them.
Zane’s lips curled into a faint smile, but it wasn’t the kind of smile I remembered. It was a smile laced with something twisted, something far removed from the man I once knew.
“That’s what you think,” he said, his voice a low, calm whisper, as if we were discussing something trivial. “But you don’t know everything, do you, Liora?”
I took a step back, my heart hammering. Every instinct in my body was screaming for me to run, to get away from him, but I couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t move. It was like the ground had frozen beneath me.
“How... how are you here?” Elias demanded, stepping in front of me protectively. His grip on the device tightened even more, the muscles in his arms straining.
Zane didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he glanced at Elias with something like amusement in his eyes before turning his gaze back to me.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said, trying to steady my voice. The fog around us seemed to press in tighter, almost suffocating. “You’re dead. We saw you—”
“No,” Zane interrupted, shaking his head slowly. “You saw what I allowed you to see.”
Elias shifted beside me, his posture tense. “What the hell does that mean?”
Zane didn’t answer. Instead, he took another step closer, and the air around him seemed to grow colder. I could feel the weight of his presence like a dark cloud hovering over us, threatening to swallow everything.
“Liora,” he said, his voice softer now, almost... gentle. “You’re more than just a survivor. You’re the key.”
The words hit me like a slap. My stomach dropped, and I took another step back, but Zane was too fast. Before I could react, he reached out, grabbing my wrist with cold fingers.
The moment his hand touched me, a jolt of electricity shot through my body, and I gasped, my knees nearly giving out from the shock. My mind flooded with images—flashes of memories that weren’t mine.
A lab. A bright white light. Machines humming. People... people I didn’t recognize, their faces twisted with fear.
And then... him.
A figure standing at the edge of the lab, his face obscured by shadows. But I knew who it was.
Me.
“Stop it!” I screamed, trying to pull away, but Zane’s grip tightened, his fingers digging into my skin.
“You can’t run from it,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “You’ve been part of this from the very beginning.”
Everything inside me screamed to break free, but the visions didn’t stop. My head was spinning, the memories crashing into me like waves, one after another, until I couldn’t tell where the past ended and the present began.
“I didn’t do this,” I whispered, barely able to speak through the torrent of images in my mind. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Zane’s eyes darkened, his grip finally loosening. But his words struck me like a final blow.
“You already know what you did. You just don’t want to remember.”
I stumbled backward, finally free of his grasp, my mind reeling, my body shaking. The fog thickened around us, the world beginning to shift once more.
“Run,” Elias’s voice broke through the haze, snapping me out of the fog. “Liora, run!”
I turned to see Elias pushing me forward, his eyes filled with panic. But the world around us was already changing again.
And in that moment, as the ground beneath us trembled and the fog churned with the sounds of something deep beneath, I realized that nothing—nothing—was what it seemed.
Zane’s voice followed us, lingering like a dark whisper in the air.
“You can’t escape the past. It’s already caught up with you.”
And just as I felt my legs give way beneath me, as everything around me blurred into nothingness, the world froze again.
And then—nothing.
The silence was deafening.