The mirror hesitated, as if aware of the burden it held.
A ripple of static crawled across the glass, distorting his reflection into waves of fractured light before it cleared again. Kael leaned closer, his breath misting the surface. The face staring back was still his—older, sleepless, eyes sunken beneath the weight of nights that refused to end. Every morning, it took longer for his reflection to appear, and he feared that the day, even the mirror, might forget him.
He touched the sink. Cold porcelain. Real—for now.
Outside, rain whispered through the city's steel canyons. Neon bled through the blinds, washing the counter in shades of electric blue and tired amber. Far below, sirens wound through the streets like distant equations trying to solve themselves. He loved that sound; it made the world measurable, something he could still prove existed.
02:17 A.M.
The phone vibrated.
He didn't flinch. The gesture was now a ritual motion without surprise. Resignation filled his chest as he reached for it, thumb hovering over accept—hoping for answers, expecting repetition.
Static first. Soft, tidal, almost human. Then came his own voice—older, rasped, filtered through distance and exhaustion.
"Don't fall asleep tonight."
Click.
No greeting. No record. The log would already be gone; the system erased anomalies faster these days.
Kael exhaled and pressed record on the handheld beside the kettle. His tone was calm, clinical—the voice of a man trying to document his own fading existence.
"Entry 314. Identical transmission. Temporal offset consistent. Reflection delay—two-point-one seconds. Cognitive clarity: moderate."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. The fog was thicker tonight, creeping through his skull like wet static. Names slipped away like smoke; even the taste of his coffee felt uncertain.
He remembered travelling back—knew when and how. The coordinates, the field compression, the shattering light that pulled him through. He knew the mechanics, but the why—the reason behind the reason—was blurring. Faces, laughter, maybe a promise. Whatever he'd changed was now erasing the memory of why he'd done it.
He opened his black notebook. The page edges were fading, words dissolving where ink met paper. The pen stuttered when he tried to write the date.
"You win again," he murmured.
From the kitchen window, the skyline pulsed—one tower's lights flickering just out of sync with the rest. He used to work there. Used to. The HR database no longer recognised his name. Neither did his own keycard, though the scratches on its surface matched the shape of his thumb.
He stared at the dark glass.
"You can't erase a decision. Only the man who made it."
The phone buzzed again. Same number. Same impossible pattern.
Static. Breathing. Then—beneath his older voice—a second whisper, faint as if spoken from the edge of a dream.
"If you forget why you did it… You'll vanish faster."
Kael froze.
That line had never come before.
He replayed it in his mind, syllable by syllable, until the meaning hit: the timeline wasn't deleting him at random. It was reclaiming purpose. The motive for his jump was the tether keeping him here.
He turned the recorder back on, voice trembling slightly.
"Entry 315. Message variation detected. Possible correlation between causal motive and persistence of identity. Must verify."
Thunder rolled across the city. The mirror shimmered; for a heartbeat, his reflection's lips moved after his own.
He stepped closer. His reflection smiled. He didn't.
"Not yet," he whispered.
The mirror fogged, then cleared, showing only himself again—though he couldn't remember if the scar on his jaw had always been that long.
He set the recorder on the counter. Its red light blinked in rhythm with the storm.
He walked into the living room. Old blueprints of the time capsule sprawled across the floor, marked with equations rewritten so many times the paper looked like bone. Half the symbols no longer made sense to him. His mind filled in the blanks out of instinct—reflexes left over from a man who used to understand everything.
A file sat open on his monitor. "PROJECT GOLIATH—DECOMMISSIONED." Below it, fragments of correspondence he didn't remember sending. Messages from himself. Drafts signed with versions of his name that belonged to different years.
A small laugh escaped his throat. "You're running out of me to write with."
His coffee had gone cold, forming a thin film that reflected the blue neon from the blinds. The same blue as the portal light. The same blue that burned his retina when he first crossed.
He closed his eyes and saw it again—the field chamber vibrating, alarms screaming, the last voice he heard shouting, "You're too early, Kael! Not this cycle!"
And then silence.
He had landed two days before the incident that would fracture the continuum. Two days to change everything. Two days to ruin himself.
But what had he changed? What could justify unmaking his own timeline?
His hands trembled. He opened the notebook again, desperate, flipping through fading pages until one line caught his eye—half-erased, barely visible.
"Save her, even if it means losing yourself."
He stared at the words. The ink bled outward, dissolving into the paper as he watched.
Her. Who was she?
He gripped the page, fingers whitening. The letters vanished completely, leaving only faint grooves where the pen had pressed down.
The air in the apartment grew heavier. The hum of the city dimmed, replaced by a sound that wasn't thunder. A pulse. A frequency. The kind that came before a temporal echo.
Kael turned toward the mirror. It was vibrating now, faintly, as if it too were receiving a signal.
Then—his voice again. Not from the phone this time, but from every surface in the room.
"Kael. If you're hearing this, it means I've failed again."
The reflection spoke. The lips matched the words this time.
"Don't trust the calls. They're not me anymore."
The lights flickered. The signal warped into a scream of static before vanishing.
Kael stumbled back, hand clutching his chest. The air smelled of ozone and burnt dust.
He looked at the mirror—nothing but his own pale face staring back.
His breathing steadied, slow and deliberate. He reached for the recorder.
"Entry 316. Systemic interference is escalating. Possible breach between temporal layers. Attempting counter-trace through residual signature."
He stopped. For a moment, he could hear a heartbeat—but he wasn't sure whose it was.
He turned off the recorder. The storm outside had weakened to drizzle. Neon reflections rippled like ghosts across the puddles below.
He walked back to the mirror. His reflection stood perfectly still.
"If I stop hearing them," he whispered, "it means the version that remembers why has finally gone."
He pressed his hand against the cold glass. For a brief second, the mirror pressed back.
The rain deepened. Somewhere inside the storm, a signal waited to be found.
And Kael, half-forgotten by time, began to listen.