Aeon Kairos woke up in the morning, like usual.
Except there was no voice of Aeon Kairos 331 telling him to hurry up.
Aeon Kairos stepped outside his house, like usual.
Except the street was empty.
No Aeon Kairos 921 pulling at his arm.No Aeon Kairos 555 shouting across the walkway.
Aeon Kairos walked toward the school, like usual.
Except every window was dark.Except every clock had stopped.Except the silence followed him like it knew his name.
Aeon Kairos turned down another road, like unusual.
There was no reason to walk the old path. The routine was gone.
The wind carried nothing—no sound, no warmth. The buildings stood perfect and untouched, but hollow, like stage props waiting for actors who would never step into the scene again.
His breath felt too loud.
He realized he was the only sound left.
Aeon was incredibly scared.
He didn't know he had this kind of strength.
He had always hated being a dime a dozen among his people, but he still had his friends.
But now they were all gone.
He still loved his parents.
But now they were all gone.
He wished more than anything that he could undo his actions.
But now it was too late.
Unfortunately for Aeon, the timeline is not exactly something you can treat so lightly, and besides, he knew deep in his heart that if he tried to undo it, he would surely die.
Which brought him the question, "How did I do that?"
Aeon's thoughts stumbled over themselves. The Absolute he'd always felt—his steady thread of moments—was gone. Not broken, not stretched.
Just… missing.
He sat down on the cold stone steps of the deserted street, hugging his knees. His orange eyes scanned the still skyline, waiting for something, anything, to move.
But the silence didn't end.
How did I do that?
The thought looped over and over. It didn't feel like a question—it felt like a sentence. A weight.
He had moved moments before. He had moved hundreds of them. But this…
This wasn't like shuffling seconds.
This was like tearing a hole in the book and pulling the end into the middle.
Aeon was incredibly scared.
He was glad he was free, but full of self loathing.
He wouldn't have minded if reality decided to implode right then and there.
The silence was so total it felt like it might.
Every step he took echoed too loudly, not in the air, but in something beneath it—like sound was spilling into a place that shouldn't have been there at all.
He paused.
The air felt… thinner, but heavier.
Not wind. Not gravity. Not anything.
It was like the world itself had shifted a fraction of a degree out of place, and now everything in it—including him—was being quietly pulled somewhere else.
And that somewhere else was cold.
Not cold like snow. Cold like subtraction. Like everything warm, bright, or alive had been taken away until only the absolute zero of existence remained.
Aeon's chest tightened. His feet kept moving, but it felt less like he was walking and more like he was being drawn forward.
That was when he noticed it.
At the edges of his vision, there were fractures in the air. Not cracks, not light—just faint, bending distortions, like reality was rippling away from whatever was just outside his sight.
The pull grew stronger.
And in that pull, for the very first time, Aeon felt it.
Not a place. Not a force. Not even a dimension.
Just a space that existed when everything else was gone.
It wasn't empty. It was absolute.
And somehow, he knew:
This was where he had reached when he had moved too much.
This was the place that had answered him when nothing else could.
This was where the moment of destruction had come from.
"Welcome back"
The words didn't sound—they arrived.
Not in his ears. Not even in his thoughts. They pressed against his mind like a hand on glass, as if something on the other side was waiting for him to answer.
Aeon froze.
His eyes darted around the empty horizon of his dead world, but there was nothing. No voice. No figure. No movement.
Only the pull.
Only that cold.
"Welcome back."
This time the words came closer, and his pulse spiked.
Somehow, He felt the impact of the words, but they were not really there.
It wasn't a greeting. It was a fact. A statement from something that had been expecting him far longer than he had known how to be afraid.
And that was just too much for Aeon.
The composure he'd held his entire life—gone in an instant. His breath came fast, erratic, his chest tightening like it wanted to cave in. His legs gave out, and he crumpled to the ground with a sound he didn't recognize as his own voice.
His hands dug into the dirt, trembling so hard his knuckles burned. He was choking on air, his throat closing up, tears streaming down his face before he even realized they were there. His stomach twisted violently—he doubled over, gasping, dry-heaving until the sobs overpowered it.
He didn't just cry.He howled.
Ugly, broken, uncontrolled. The sound bounced off the dead, empty world and came back to him louder, until it felt like the silence itself was mocking him.
He punched the ground. Again. Again. The skin of his knuckles tore, but there was no one left to stop him. No one left to tell him to breathe.
No one left at all.
Because he had killed all of them.
And he stayed there—collapsed, shaking, gasping—until there was nothing left in him but the hollow ache of exhaustion.
***
When Aeon finally rose, his breath came slow. His movements were unhurried. The wild panic was gone—not smothered, but folded away, like a dangerous tool hidden at the bottom of a drawer.
His orange eyes were calm again. That same gentle, distant calm the others would someday see and think was simply who he was.
But the truth was quieter. He wasn't calm because he felt safe.
He was calm because he was empty.
And so, Aeon walked.
Not hurried.
Not lost.
Just drifting.
Like a memory of someone who used to live here.
The streets stretched on, each one lined with perfectly repeating houses. The silence didn't press anymore—it felt like it was walking with him.
And in that silence, something waited.
The shimmer at the edge of the city wasn't just light on air. It had weight, a sense of stillness that hummed in his bones.
The hyperspace gate.
Aeon didn't question how it was here. He didn't ask who built it. He simply stepped closer, as if he'd always meant to.
Like the calm surface of water before you fall in.