Paris – 13:15 p.m. – February 10, 2027
Raien opened the window, as if the air itself could explain what was happening.
The stillness outside was deceiving—
the calm before the inexplicable.
In his hand, he still held the notebook, its pages pulsing as if they were living skin.
The next page was blank…
Until something wrote itself before his eyes, as if the ink flowed from his very being.
"If you are reading this, the countdown has begun.
The third hour is not a time… it's a choice."
Raien staggered back, his foot hitting the chair, and he fell.
But the pain did not rise.
What rose was another memory—one that didn't belong to him.
"Where am I? Who is this child?"
A child screams in a narrow tunnel…
The call of his name did not come from outside. It came from within him, as if time itself were screaming inside him.
Unknown Location – Cognitive Assembly Center – Time: The Third Hour
The entity sat before a wall of screens.
Each screen showed a different version of Raien—
One walking through a desert, another dying in an explosion, a third smiling at a wedding that never took place.
"Version seven has begun internal collapse… but not because of error."
Another figure appeared—faceless, as though time had erased its features.
"Then what caused it?"
"Hope."
Paris – 13:17 p.m.
Lima opened the door, but did not move.
Her eyes were fixed in the void, searching for something not seen, but felt.
"Mama?" one of the children asked in a quiet voice, as if the sound feared the space.
But she did not respond.
Her heart knew—time no longer moved as it used to.
Raien was drifting—not physically, but as if his very existence were being pulled from the fabric of time.
Inside Raien's Mind – Location: Unmeasurable – The Third Hour
He found himself inside the mirror.
Not in front of it—inside it, trapped within the cold glass.
He saw himself staring back—
But the other version was no longer human. It was fractured, lost, with burning eyes and a deep scar on its face.
"I chose wrong… over and over."
"I… haven't chosen anything yet."
"That's why you'll be the one to choose when the third hour strikes."
Cave in Georgia – 13:20 p.m.
Niko closed the book.
He no longer needed to read it.
The words had memorized him, as if his mind had become the text itself.
But what lay inside him was greater than ink.
He looked at the wall,
Where a circle was drawn in dried blood.
In its center:
A real human eye, wide open. Unblinking. Staring at him, merciless.
Paris – 13:21 p.m.
In the room, Raien finally stood.
But it was not as someone searching for answers.
It was as someone who had understood the true question.
"What if I wasn't the one who was broken…
But the one written to break others?"
The final page of the notebook turned.
"When the third hour strikes…
The first to awaken will rise."
In a distant place, a small screen flickered…
Showing his face,
But it was not him.
Question for the reader:
❓ If time gave you a second version of yourself—
Would you confront it? Or would you run away? Or surrender to what you know about yourself?