Kael didn't sleep that night.
The hologram, the tear in the sky, Mister's nervous gaze…
All pointed to one truth:
he was crossing an invisible line.
---
The next morning, before sunlight touched the treetops, Kael accessed Level 6 of the Comandos Base.
It was a rarely used area — a storage room of forgotten equipment, incomplete records, and abandoned prototypes.
There, he found what he was looking for:
An obsolete portal mapper, capable of detecting not only LIGA-authorized portals but also temporal anomalies outside the system.
Upon activation, the map displayed something that froze Kael in place:
Dozens of "energy echoes" scattered across the planet.
Unregistered. Unauthorized.
All pulsing… simultaneously.
---
He isolated the closest one.
A faint signal in southern Spain.
Timestamp: 4021 B.C.
Without requesting clearance, without warning, Kael scheduled his departure.
He wasn't deserting.
He was… investigating.
And for the first time — without LIGA's knowledge.
---
As he activated the portal, something unusual happened:
The system voice — cold and automated — spoke words never heard before:
"You are leaving the Contracted Path."
Kael smirked.
— Sometimes, to protect time… you must step outside of it.
And he crossed.
---
Year: 4021 B.C.
Region: Southern Iberian Peninsula.
The landscape was dry, but alive.
Low mossy hills, wide slow rivers, and villages made of circular stone structures linked by ancient trails — though newly built.
There, Kael found the unexpected:
An incomplete megalithic structure, bearing the exact markings he had seen on the other's discs — and on his own.
Stones with inscriptions beyond the era's technology.
Tools hadn't yet been invented to make such carvings.
But no one was there.
Kael spent seven days in the region, observing.
He gathered samples. Copied the markings.
Before leaving, he etched one phrase into a stone:
"The Pedra was here. In silence."
---
Upon returning to Comandos Base, Mister was waiting.
Kael walked into the communication chamber, lowered his head slightly, and spoke:
— I broke the contract.
I followed something I felt needed to be understood.
And for that, I apologize.
Mister didn't move.
— What did you find?
— I don't know yet. But someone is walking through history.
Someone like me.
Mister nodded once.
— Very well. This... won't happen again, correct?
Kael met his gaze.
— Never again.
---
Days later, Kael walked once more through the trails of Brussels.
Children still called him "The Sage."
But adults… were beginning to notice.
He didn't age.
He didn't change.
It was time to disappear.
---
Kael returned to the Base and withdrew.
He would remain hidden from the village for an undefined time.
The mortals needed to forget him — so they could one day remember him as legend, not danger.
In the years that followed, his days became silence and study.
And slowly…
Brussels forgot him.
But time...
time never forgets.