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Opening – Divergence Begins
The World-Split Engine's activation sent a pulse of distortion through the fabric of reality. Globally, clocks began stuttering—timeshift phenomena erupted in seconds-long loops. In Tokyo, commuters found themselves retracing steps they'd already taken minutes ago. In Rome, entire coffee orders repeated mid-sentence. Reality was unspooling.
News feeds were flooded with footage of temporal fractures. A public servant in Nairobi watched herself wave from a taxi, then fade into the asphalt. A bookstore owner in Berlin saw her reflection walk out of the shop before she had even opened the shutters.
Attempts to suppress the phenomenon were frantic. Some governments deployed signal jammers toward the sky, spiking electromagnetic interference to counter disruptions. Others—rogue factions, memory cults, tech consortiums—saw it differently. They began channeling the pulses, funneling fractured memories into experimental memory storage grids, hoping to use collapse energy as a power source.
Yet citizens felt it most personally. A man in Lima relived his wedding—twice—before realizing it hadn't happened at all. A teenage girl in Vancouver found herself back in the classroom with teachers she'd forgotten. The world had become a tangle of selves – remembered, relived, and reimagined.
This was no longer an event. It was a living process — divergence.
Aiden's Split Consciousness Deepens
Inside the Vault, Aiden's body lay hooked to stabilization pulses—remnants of Selene's early interface rig. But Aiden himself was far from confined. His consciousness splintered into three distinct echoes, each tethered to one of the orbiting sigils.
The first version became a symbol of peace. Awarded demilitarized zones and asylum camps, he moved among people tapped into their pasts yet preserved their futures. Serene, focused, his Sharingan flame gentled into a soft shimmer. Local militia asked his blessing. Nations asked for treaty. He comforted, guided, healed memory wounds—without agenda.
The second version descended into dominion. He led the so-called True Archive—a militant memory cult spreading carved sigils into new recruits. His eyes blazed with ruthless purpose. Cities fell under his control through whispered truths and forced amnesia. Painful experiences were wiped; discords were overwritten. He didn't kill—he reprogrammed.
The third crushed under nothingness. He drifted through corridors of recursion, half-remembered scenes looping like fractal nightmares. He spoke in tongues he knew weren't his. He stared at faces he couldn't place. Fragments of his own past stabbed him: This isn't me. This was never me.
Through the Recall Chain, these three consciousnesses began bleeding into each other. As the lines between them blurred, Aiden's real body responded: clenched fists, whispered words, collapsed vitals.
The Vault pulsed in response. It was no longer a sanctuary—it was a crucible.
Selene's Clone Finds Node Seven
Under the shifting sands of Old Sumer—now arid and wind-carved—Selene's clone emerged from underground ruins into the Node Seven chamber. The air was thick with ancient dust and pre-chakra relics.
At the center lay Anchor Zero: a compact device etched in spirals, small enough to hold in one hand. It hummed faintly with resonance from a time before shinobi.
The clone knelt, cleansing the grime off its casing before connecting to it. Electrical circuits glowed, revealing a schematic of memory itself—synapse networks older than chakra.
Flooded into the clone's mind, flashed the so-called First Dreamer: a primordial visionary who wove memory into reality's backbone. They saw the earliest Uchiha ancestors, forging the Mirror Vault concept in a dream of infinite possibilities.
The clone's eyes flickered with this archaic awareness. It replayed the memory: pastoral fields branching into a thousand future prospects, an early Mirror Vault shimmering in the horizon of Earth's timeline.
A tear stained its cheek—something uniquely human.
"I remember before the Architect," it whispered.
Echo & Drey Reactivate the Engine's Core
In Antarctica's crystalline depths, Echo and Drey reached the heart of the World-Split Engine. The core prism radiated violet energy, warmed by latent timeline potential.
Echo placed his gloved hand on the interface shard. "Communicator node is live—but it's not chakra. It's decision resonance."
Drey studied the readings. "It's compiling unchosen paths, aborted regrets, lost futures... It's running on free will. Every time someone chose not to choose, it stored that."
Echo's fingers tightened. "So it's a fractal memory generator."
"To shut it down, it needs a self-sacrifice," Drey realized. "A sentient decision. Someone must erase a potential path—must choose to not exist."
Drey swallowed. "I'll do it."
He took a step forward, gaze firm. The prism pulsed in acknowledgement.
Two seconds later, the console flashed: REJECT — Anchor not recognized.
Echo looked at Drey. "It needs Aiden."
His words hung like storm clouds. The Engine hummed faster.
They both exhaled, staring at the glowing prism.
"There's no going back," Echo said.
Kiera's Return & Vault Breach
In Kyoto, Kiera raced through the malformed corridors surrounding the Vault. Everywhere she looked, reality flickered—ghost images of events she never lived.
At the perimeter, splinter insurgents converged. Among them, faces she knew. A version of Echo—scarred, stoic—slid forward. An older Mandara, scar-hidden, fired chakra-waves. Another Kiera, mute and bound in shackles, wept.
They spoke in low voices:
"In my timeline, this is my Vault."
"This is my Aiden."
"This is all I remember."
Each pulled a shard weapon, not just to break in—but to claim possession of his memory.
Kiera raised her weapon, breath steady. They aren't wrong, she thought. But they are not the future.
She fired a non-lethal chakra pulse into the ground. Gravel rose in columns. She yelled: "We protect all futures. No one timeline owns this!"
She advanced, shielding the Vault entrance. Each attacker staggered—deserted by their conviction or by the quake she commanded. They paused, uncertainty flickering in split memories.
Kiera stood tall. No timeline fractures here.
Cliffhanger – The Fifth Sigil Rises
Above the polarized glow of the planet, a fifth sigil began to form: unstable, inverted, carved in cyclone-light. Its shape suggested rejection rather than creation—a fractal null in the sigil pattern.
Inside the Vault, Mandara gasped, clutching his chest. Memories of past fractures bloomed across his vision.
"That's not… memory," he whispered, voice brittle. "It's a rejection."
Aiden woke in his stabilizer pod. He arched back as five overlapping voices screeched within his throat. Five versions of him screaming simultaneously in dissonance.
He gasped, gripping the edges of his cradle, eyes blurring.
"The world has stopped remembering," he managed to shout. Breath catching, pupils spinning.
He whispered in one voice, deep and clear, yet fractured:
"It's starting to forget…"
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If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my Patreon at
" https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/ "
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want.