The cabin no longer felt the same.
The air, once warm from the fireplace, now carried a strange weight. As if the walls were listening… or remembering too much.
Sera was flipping through the journal again, pausing on words that hadn't been there before.
"Ryouhei… this is changing. The pages are rewriting themselves."
I leaned in. Where there had once been a meaningless sketch, there was now a silhouette: a figure seated on a throne made of broken clocks.
Beneath it, a phrase: "The cycle does not fear chaos. It fears the witness."
—
We stepped outside. The forest had changed too. The mist had shapes. Voices whispered without using words.
We had only walked a few steps when the ground beneath my feet cracked like glass.
And then I saw it.
A rift. Not in the earth, but in the air.
Like a fracture in an invisible screen.
I crouched, touching it with my fingertips. It hurt—like remembering something you haven't lived yet.
—
"Do you hear that?" Sera asked.
"The murmuring?"
"No. They're saying your name."
—
The rift widened slightly.
And for a brief moment, I saw something.
Another version of myself, in a different setting, different clothes… a different choice.
Killing someone. Smiling.
I recoiled, heart pounding in my throat.
"Is that a possibility?"
"That was you," Sera whispered. "In another branch."
—
I looked again. The rift remained.
And now, in its reflection, Sera had no eyes. Only stars spinning in their place.