The sun had barely come up and Damian already felt like crap.
Snow was coming down hard, the kind that just keeps going until everything looks dead. The wind wasn't doing much, just blowing cold air that felt like getting slapped.
His boots hit the frozen sidewalk with little cracks that sounded too loud in the silence. Nobody else was stupid enough to be out here. Smart of them.
Each breath hurt. Not the cold he'd dealt with worse. This was something else. Like something had crawled into his chest and was tearing him up from inside.
He kept his head down, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
Didn't limp, didn't stumble, why would he.
But his damn shadow was dragging behind him like it was fucking drunk.
He saw it in a store window. Grimy glass, mostly covered in ice. His reflection looked normal enough. But yet the shadow still followed him? Still smiling that same twisted grin from the last timeline.
Damian's stomach turned he did not stop, nor looked back.
What was the point? He thought.
The thing was already lurking in his head.
The monastery was stuck in some shitty forest south of Prague. Thirty kilometers of trees and bad choices. The whole place had collapsed during the first Surge not because monsters wrecked it, but because the ground just ate it. Like it didn't want it there anymore.
Nobody came looking for it, it was too far out, too quiet, easy for someone to forget about it.
In the last timeline, he'd never made this trip. Not until way later, when rumors started spreading through the survivor networks. Something about an artifact. Something that didn't belong.
Yakov found it first.
C-tier decent hunter. Nothing special, but he got the job done, he was pretty greedy maybe that destroyed him? He came back different, though people said he wasn't in really good condition. Like someone had reached into his skull and rearranged the furniture.
Week later, half of Eastern Europe was a smoking crater. Because of him.
Damian knew all this. Had seen the footage. Had counted the bodies.
He was walking toward it anyway like a moron.
Because apparently he hadn't learned shit.
By the time he got to the trees, his legs hurt like hell and the sun was up higher, making everything look sick and yellow. Crows flew off, loud as fuck, he was exhausted from all the things that had happend.
There were no System alerts yet. But Damian noticed the air felt thick and weird. Like walking through soup made of dread.
He adjusted his pack heavier than it should be, full of supplies he'd probably wont use and ducked under a fallen tree. The mud underneath had frozen into jagged ridges that tried to twist his ankle with every step.
The ruins showed up looking like total shit.
Broken stone walls buried in dirt and ice. A bell tower that just gave up and fell over. The whole place looked like it had been through hell twice.
But something else was hanging around. Something that made the quiet feel... occupied.
Damian stopped at what used to be a gate. Iron bars twisted into shapes that made his eyes water.
His chest started throbbing.
The System woke up.
[Caution: Artifact Threadline Detected]
[Trace Level: 7%]
[Warning: Thread Interference Active]
"Fuck," he muttered, tasting bile.
Threadline. Not just some cursed junk, a bridge. Between what happened before and what was happening now. Between him and whatever had been watching him die over and over, probably taking notes.
He stepped through anyway, because he was an idiot.
The inside was even worse. His footsteps bounced around weird, like something was copying them a beat later. Gross paintings on the walls. Broken pews everywhere.
It felt like every shadow moved when he wasn't looking directly at it.
The chamber was down a spiral staircase that went way too deep. Walls covered in prayers written with an ancient text nobody remembered how to read anymore.
Round room. Wide as a small church, quiet as a grave.
In the center, a stone altar cracked right down the middle like someone had taken an axe to it.
And floating above it—
The thing.
Black as the space between stars, even reflective like oil. Not just sitting there, but existing with this presence that made his bones ache like it was meant to be there. Alive in the worst possible way.
Damian stared at it. His hands were already shaking.
This was what twisted Yakov's brain until he thought burning cities was a mercy.
This was what showed him exactly how fragile everything really was, and here he was, about to touch the fucking thing like a damn idiot.
He took a step forward.
The System lost its mind.
[ERROR: Timeline Breach]
[User Not Registered for Thread Sync]
[External Entity Detection: ACTIVE]
The air cracked, with that his vision went all fuzzy, static crawling through his thoughts like bugs. The mark on his chest, the one he tried not to think about started burning.
It wasn't pain, it was recognition it gave him like it actually knew him like it had actually been waiting for him.
He took another step.
The floor split under his boot with a sound like breaking bones.
The thing rippled, it shifted, like it had woke up.
Then it spoke without speaking. Just slid into his head like oil through cracks.
Ah.
Like it was pleased to see an old friend.
So it's you again. Earlier this time.
Rage hit him like a freight train, not pure fear, white-hot fury. With all the deaths, all the failures, all the people he couldn't save staring at him from the corners of his memory.
"You remember me, you little piece of shit?"
Silence.
But Damian could feel it smiling.
He lunged forward and grabbed it.
Everything broke.
Pain that he couldn't define in words, like every cell in his body decided to file for divorce at the same time. His thoughts scattered like glass. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, his eyes, he hit the stone floor hard enough to see stars, clawing at the ground while reality screamed into his ears.
Images flooded in:
Cities burning in languages he'd never heard. Timelines spinning like broken records. Faces dying in ways that made him want to puke. A crown made of thorns. A throne built from bones. A shadow with his face, laughing while everything burned.
Then nothing, it all went complete silent.
He gasped, coughed up blood that tasted like pennies, and slowly lifted his head.
The altar was empty.
No.
The whole damn thing was inside him now.
"Fuck me," he muttured in rage.
The mark on his chest had spread like it had spilled ink, creeping over his ribs in patterns that hurt to look at. His skin felt too small, like it was trying to hold something bigger than it was made for.
The System chimed, cheerful as ever like it was damn mocking him.
[Ability Acquired: Threadwalker]
[Synchronization: 12%]
[Stability: Degrading]
[Ability Effect: Grants limited access to collapsed timelines. Allows traversal across localized thread ruptures, perception of alternate outcomes, and interaction with residual echoes. WARNING: Risk of identity bleed and temporal instability increases with use.]
His hands wouldn't stop shaking, with his vision kept going in and out.
[External Presence Linked]
[Monitoring...]
Damian wiped the blood from his mouth and stared at the new notification like it might bite. He didn't get Shadow Step back. Didn't get any of the skills he knew how to use, how to trust.
Just this... thing. Threadwalker.
Still—
"At least I've got something," he muttered.
Not the safest nor stable, probably gonna kill him after he uses it.
But it was his now.
Then a voice, a real after all this time, old and patient and familiar in a way that made his skin crawl.
"You shouldn't have come so early, Damian Voss."
He spun around, there was nothing there.
Still waiting around, watching, still smiling like an annoying figure.
[User: Damian Voss]
Level: 7
STR: +8 | DEX: +9 | INT: +11 | PER: +7
Passive: ??? – (Active)
Ability: Threadwalker - (Corrupted)
Next Global Event: ???
Time Until System Surge: 90 Hours
System Status: Thread Interference Present