The world flickered.
For a breathless moment, Jae-Won thought it was another glitch in time—until he noticed the crowd around the Techring Arena had frozen, their faces half-turned, suspended mid-cheer like marionettes without strings.
He wasn't alone.
A figure walked casually across the stillness, parting the frozen bystanders like mist. A man cloaked in black synthetic armor, accented with glinting chrome strips, stepped forward. His eyes glowed a cold, unnatural blue—too precise, too aware. Unlike the other time-locked bodies, he moved freely. Deliberately.
"You're not the only one who can feel time slip, Jae-Won."
Jae-Won tensed, the Phantom Dagger humming to life in his hand. "You know who I am?"
The man smirked. "I know who you were."
The ground vibrated faintly beneath Jae-Won's boots. His instincts screamed. He scanned for anomalies, tracking his internal chrono-thread. Time wasn't just frozen—it was under someone else's control.
The man raised a gloved hand. "Before you lash out, know this. I'm not your enemy—yet. But if you keep meddling with the flow like a child in a data stream, you'll attract worse."
"Who are you?" Jae-Won asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Name's Kael. You'll remember me eventually."
Before Jae-Won could react, Kael vanished. Not phased out, not teleported—just gone. Like a skipped frame.
The world resumed. The cheer hit his ears like a thunderclap, the match announcer's voice blaring over the speakers. Jae-Won stumbled back into the timeline, heart hammering.
He didn't understand what just happened—but he knew something had changed.
---
Later that night, in the depths of Circuit Haven, Jae-Won sat alone in a borrowed room, replaying the encounter in his mind. Not just Kael's words, but the feeling—like a mirror watching back.
He tapped his chrono-band, bringing up encrypted logs. There was a spike in the temporal field—one he didn't cause. Kael had bent time around others and left no distortion. It was surgical. Clean.
"Too clean," he muttered.
There was a knock. Serin entered, eyes softer than usual.
"You glitched again?" she asked.
"Someone else did."
Her expression shifted. "That's not supposed to be possible."
Jae-Won nodded. "Exactly."
She sat beside him, offering a data scroll. "This might be connected. It's from the chrono-cache you pulled at Sub-Level 9. I decrypted a name embedded in the metadata."
Jae-Won unrolled it, eyes scanning.
"Project Maelstrom," he read aloud. Then paused. "Subject: Kael Yun."
Serin met his gaze. "We need to talk. About who you really were. And what they made us forget."
For the first time in days, Jae-Won felt the edge of a deeper truth. Not just
about his past—but about the war coming for time itself.