The Canvas twisted, folding in on itself as Kei chose the first thread.
He stepped into the ink—and landed hard.
Dust. Fire. Screams.
Everything around him was gray. The sky cracked like static. The ground was dry, soaked with dried blood. Dead guards lay motionless. Time here… had stopped moving long ago.
> [TIMELINE: LOOP-4529-B]
[STATUS: ABANDONED.]
[KNOWN OCCUPANT: SUBJECT—SYRA.]
His heart clenched. Syra.
The girl who always believed he'd come back. The girl who once said, "Even if we forget who we are, Kei, I'll remember your heartbeat."
He remembered this version of her.
A scientist before the prison consumed her. A fighter after. A poet in the darkest moments. And… someone who loved him across realities—even if she didn't remember why.
The facility had collapsed. Walls bent like paper. Static glitched through the air.
Kei walked forward—every footstep echoing louder than it should. Time here wasn't just paused. It was frozen in grief.
And then… a cough.
A faint, almost broken one.
He ran.
Through collapsed corridors and corrupted code-halls.
And there she was.
Slumped against a wall. Pale. Half-pixelated. Her hand gripping a cracked photo of them—smiling in a world that never happened.
"Syra…" he whispered.
Her eyes opened slowly.
She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just smiled like someone seeing the sun for the first time in years.
"…I knew you'd come," she whispered.
"I always do," Kei replied, dropping beside her.
She touched his face. "You look different."
"I'm… not just me anymore. I'm the Author now."
She laughed—light, tired. "Of course you are. You were always more than just a prisoner."
Kei felt the tremble in her form. She was barely holding together.
He looked around. This timeline was collapsing. It had been on the edge for years.
> [TIMELINE DEGRADATION: 92.4%]
[FORCED END IMMINENT.]
"No," he whispered. "Not this one. Not her."
Kei raised his hand. The pen reformed in his grasp. Glowing brighter than before.
"I can fix this," he said.
But Syra held his wrist. "Don't rewrite me. Don't turn me into a better version. Just… remember me. The real me."
He froze.
Then nodded.
And instead of rewriting—he wrote a door.
A door out.
For her.
For the first time, a timeline would be left behind without being destroyed.
Syra smiled. Stood. Looked back once.
And stepped through.
As she vanished into safety, the static faded. The world sighed—released from pain.
And Kei?
He turned back toward the Canvas.
One thread healed.
Thousands more waiting.
But for the first time… the Author smiled not in power.
But in peace.