---
Ren's lungs burned.
Not just from the sprint—but from the impossible, incomprehensible shift in his reality. The strange armored girl—Kira—stood between two overturned lab tables like she belonged in this chaos. Like this wasn't the first time she'd stepped into someone else's hell and knew the layout by heart.
He could barely form words.
"You—who are you really?" he asked again, voice hoarse.
"I told you. Kira. Fractal Order. Your timeline just triggered a Branch Priority event," she said, voice clipped, calculating. "Meaning you've started looping—and that thing chasing you? It's an Extractor. Designed to prevent paradoxes. Which means you are now a paradox."
"…I don't understand a word of that."
Kira moved quickly—too quickly for someone in combat gear. She pressed a small prism-shaped device to the lab door, and a shimmering pulse of blue light sealed it like digital ice.
"You will."
She turned back toward him, eyes narrowing.
"You rewound time. That's not natural. That's not a skill someone just develops."
Ren backed up half a step.
"I didn't want to. It just—happened. Everything went red, and I was back at my desk—"
Kira's jaw tightened. "So it's unstable."
She took out a glowing disc from her belt and tossed it in the air. It hovered mid-space, spinning slowly. A projection bloomed out like a 3D map: layers of time spiraling outward, and at the center—a pulsing red node. Ren's name hovered above it.
> TEMPORAL OUTLIER: REN SAEKI
TRAIT: CHRONO BINDING
STATUS: UNSTABLE - CLASS U DESIGNATION
MEMORY DEGRADATION: 8%
TEMPORAL SHATTER RISK: HIGH
"…That's me?" Ren whispered.
Kira nodded once. "You're what we call a 'Fractured Core.' Someone whose time signature doesn't obey the linear structure anymore. And every time you loop? You fracture further. Too many breaks, and—"
She snapped her fingers.
Gone.
"Your body might live. But you won't."
---
Outside the lab, a sound like glass cracking echoed through the school. Then another.
Kira's eyes darted to the wall. "Damn. It's here."
Ren staggered backward. "You said you knew how to stop it—"
"I said I know what it is. Stopping it is another problem entirely. But I came prepared."
She reached behind her and pulled free a sleek baton from a magnetic lock on her back. With a flick of her wrist, it extended and split into three segments—crackling with kinetic light.
She tossed a second, smaller device at Ren.
He fumbled and caught it. A thin metallic band, like a bracelet.
"…What's this?"
"Emergency anchor. Syncs you to me. If you lose time again, it might pull you back to the right moment—might. No promises."
Before he could argue, the door shattered inward.
The Extractor's mask pierced through, half its head tilted unnaturally as if trying to hear them.
> "HOST INTERFERENCE DETECTED."
"CANDIDATE: KIRA SERA OF ORDER-07."
"ACCESS DENIED."
Kira grinned.
"Yeah? Deny this."
She charged.
---
The lab became a battlefield in seconds.
Ren hit the ground, rolling behind a counter as Kira clashed with the thing head-on. Her baton met its steel claws with a sound like thunder, each impact causing the lights to flicker like time itself flinched.
Kira moved like lightning. No hesitation. No wasted motion.
The Extractor didn't fight like a human—it predicted her, warping forward and backward in pulses. Every few seconds it blinked out, reappearing just behind her, a fraction of a second too slow to land a kill.
It was like watching time try to murder her in real time.
Ren clutched the anchor on his wrist. It glowed faintly.
And then—
The mask turned to him.
It knew.
> "PRIORITY SHIFT: HOST TERMINATION."
"Kira!" he shouted.
Too late.
The Extractor disappeared—and reappeared right in front of him.
Ren barely had time to raise his arms when—
SHATTER.
Everything broke.
---
> < SYSTEM ALERT >
Temporal Host at risk of collapse
Syncing to Anchor: [Kira Sera – ACTIVE]
Stabilization in progress…
…
---
And then—he wasn't in the lab anymore.
He was in a rooftop garden.
At dusk.
Not just a rewind—but a displacement.
He looked around wildly. Grass. Glass panels. A city skyline in ruins.
Kira stood across from him, breathing heavily, holding her baton at her side. A long scratch now ran down her face.
"Okay," she muttered, watching him steady himself. "Now we talk seriously."
She raised her eyes to his.
"You've got maybe two loops left before your mind starts forgetting who you even are. So either I train you—or you die in every future imaginable. Your call."