The sun rose wrong.

Jorah noticed it when the light touched the hills too early — a thin, pale gold that shimmered like glass instead of burning warm. The birdsong came half a beat late, like the world was still learning its rhythm.

He sat on a rock by the road, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The sword lay across his lap, its surface faintly reflective, its hum so quiet it could almost be mistaken for wind.

"Morning," Jorah muttered to it. "Or something pretending to be one."

The blade didn't answer, but he caught it flicker — once, faintly — like it wanted to.

He sighed. "You know, if this is what a happy ending feels like, it's terribly boring."

The new world was beautiful — unnervingly so. Villages thrived. Rivers glittered like liquid sunlight. People laughed too easily, too often. There were no monsters, no ruins, no clockwork nightmares in the sky.

It was everything Kael might've wanted — and that made Jorah uneasy.

As he walked toward the next town, he began noticing little things. A merchant's cart that never lost a wheel. A child's laugh that looped exactly the same every time. A breeze that always came from the east.

Too perfect. Too practiced.

He stopped on a bridge overlooking a slow-moving river. His reflection stared back — except it wasn't his. Just for a moment, he saw Kael's grin flash across the water, quick and bright like a spark.

"Okay, no," Jorah muttered. "You're supposed to be gone."

The river rippled. A whisper answered, low and amused.

Am I?

Jorah stumbled back. "Oh, hell no. You are not haunting me. I don't do ghost gods before breakfast."

Not a ghost, the voice said softly. A residue. A memory caught between rewrites.

"Same difference!"

The laughter that followed was unmistakably Kael's — light, infuriating, alive. It echoed through the trees like wind-chimes made of time itself.

Jorah looked at the sword, its surface now faintly pulsing with light. "You're not supposed to still be in there."

You anchored me, remember? Kael's voice replied, faint but teasing. That comes with consequences.

"Consequences?" Jorah barked a laugh. "You mean like the world glitching every five minutes?"

A pause. Then, quieter: It's not just the world.

The river shimmered — and in it, Jorah saw people flicker. Faces changed mid-smile. A woman hanging laundry became someone else for a blink, then switched back. A farmer's shadow was upside-down.

Jorah's heart thudded. "Kael… what did we actually do?"

We didn't fix time, Kael admitted. We overwrote it. You wrote me back in — but without the limits.

"That sounds bad."

It's complicated.

"Every time you say that, something explodes."

Kael chuckled faintly. Then maybe stand back.

The ground beneath the bridge trembled. The water below boiled, light bending and twisting into spirals. Jorah staggered, grabbing the railing.

From the river rose a shape — liquid and shifting, humanoid but wrong. Its face was a swirl of reflections, its eyes empty clockfaces spinning backward.

Jorah swore. "Please tell me that's not you."

Not me, Kael's voice said grimly. A remnant. What got left behind when I broke the loop.

The creature turned its head, the grinding of unseen gears echoing through the air. Its voice was a chorus of fractured whispers.

"Return the anomaly. Restore the record."

Jorah backed up. "Yeah, that's gonna be a no from me."

The remnant lunged, water splashing into vapor as it hit the stones. Jorah swung the sword on instinct — and it moved on its own, slicing through the thing like cutting through fog.

The creature screamed, splitting apart into ribbons of silver that evaporated into the air.

Then silence.

Jorah stood there, panting. "Okay… what was that?"

Kael's tone was almost admiring. You handled that well.

"I'm not flattered! That thing tried to eat me!"

They're fragments, Kael said. Echoes of the old timeline trying to correct the new one. The more stable this world becomes, the more they'll appear.

Jorah ran a hand through his hair. "So you're telling me this shiny paradise is about to be eaten by leftover time ghosts."

Pretty much.

"Fantastic." He sheathed the blade with a groan. "You couldn't just die quietly, could you?"

Where's the fun in that?

Jorah shook his head but couldn't hide the smirk tugging at his lips. "You really are impossible."

And you really should move.

"What?"

The sword pulsed once — violently. The air around Jorah shimmered, and suddenly he was no longer on the bridge.

He stumbled into a dim corridor made of mirrored glass, reflections stretching into infinity. Every surface showed different moments — him and Kael laughing, fighting, dying.

He turned slowly, unsettled. "Okay, either I hit my head or time's having another meltdown."

Kael's voice echoed all around him, calm but distant. This is the rewrite's heart. The point where all versions meet. I wasn't supposed to bring you here yet, but—

"But what?"

The reflections began to blur. Kael's figure appeared in each one, hundreds of versions of him — some smiling, others broken, one bleeding from the eyes.

Something else is trying to rewrite me, Kael said quietly. Something older.

Jorah's breath caught. "Older than a god who breaks time for fun?"

Kael's reflection met his gaze, eyes glowing faintly blue. Older than gods entirely.

The mirrors cracked. The corridor shook.

Kael's voice grew fainter. Find the anchor, Jorah. Before they do.

"Wait—who's they?!"

The light collapsed, swallowing him whole.

And when he opened his eyes, he was standing in a city that didn't exist yesterday — towers of glass, people who moved like clockwork, and above it all, a massive hourglass in the sky turning itself upside down.

Time had rewritten again.

But this time, it wasn't Kael doing it.

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