The next morning, the world was wrong.
Not broken.Not destroyed.Just… wrong.
On Milo's walk to the café, he saw a man arguing with himself—except both versions of him were real, standing two feet apart, shouting contradictions.
A woman was walking her dog twice—one slightly ahead, one slightly behind, each holding a leash attached to the same dog.
Cars honked at a stoplight that flickered between red and green every second, never settling.
Milo stood frozen on the sidewalk.
The city wasn't splitting.
Time was.
Futures overlapping, breaking their boundaries, bleeding into the present.
The Eclipse Blend's fault.His fault.
The café's door appeared the moment he turned the corner—too fast, too eager, the glow brighter than yesterday.It wanted him inside.
Milo stepped through the door, and Yara's face instantly tightened.
"You saw them, didn't you?" she asked.
"People doubled," Milo said. "Timelines bleeding. How do we stop this?"
"We can't," Yara said. "Not yet."
The cold brew tower hissed behind them.The Eclipse Blend swirled violently, like a storm trapped in glass.
Milo stared at it."It's alive."
"It's reactive," Yara corrected."It responds to possibility. And right now, you're the strongest possibility in the room."
Milo stepped back from the tower.
"What do we do?" he whispered.
"First," Yara said, "we look at your ledger."
Milo tensed. "What if I don't want to?"
"You don't have to," she said. "But the universe might not wait for your permission."
The ledger room was louder today—pages fluttering, spines rattling, ink dripping from margins like spilled time.
Milo's ledger sat open on the table.
Empty.
Completely blank.
No past.No future.Just untouched pages, glowing faintly.
Yara exhaled shakily."This is worse than I thought."
"What does it mean?" Milo asked.
"It means," Yara said, "your fate hasn't stalled."
She turned the blank page.
"And it hasn't broken."
She turned another.
"It's rewriting itself every second."
Milo stared at his empty ledger, dread coiling low in his gut.
"Why is that bad?" he asked.
Yara closed the book with a trembling hand.
"Because the universe is trying to write you," she whispered, "and failing."
The café lights went out.
All of them.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Then—
A single knock echoed through the café.
The voice that followed slid through the darkness like a shadow with teeth.
"Milo."