Shattered Time-Chapter 20: Fractured Echoes

Kael's heart pounded in his chest. A sharp pain drilled through his skull, as if the world itself was collapsing inside his mind. His eyes darted wildly, searching for something, anything, to hold on to. But all he found was emptiness. The darkness. The Pulse.

The world around him felt wrong. It didn't exist the way it should. It was shifting, like a distorted reflection of what he knew—shadows bled into each other, colors flickered like faulty film, and the air itself vibrated with an almost palpable unease.

"Kael..."

Her voice—a whisper—pierced the cold air. The girl. Her voice. But she wasn't supposed to be here. She was gone. The Pulse had swallowed her, hadn't it?

"Kael... Do you remember me?"

A vision flickered before him. Her face, but it wasn't the girl he loved. No, this was something else. A mirror, cracked and shattered. A distorted version of her. Her eyes, once full of warmth, were now hollow. Soulless.

"You're the reason I'm here, aren't you?"

The words sliced through him, deep and cruel. His vision wavered, warping in ways he couldn't understand. His memory, his life, everything was twisted. Nothing made sense. Everything felt false.

He fell to his knees, the weight of it all too much to bear. Was this his fault? Was the girl's suffering somehow his doing? Was he the monster? Was he the one who had destroyed everything?

"No. No, you don't understand!" Kael's voice trembled as he shouted into the abyss. But there was no answer. Just the oppressive silence of the Pulse.

The floor beneath him cracked open. The ground split like a wounded animal, dragging Kael into an abyss of darkness. He couldn't breathe. The weight of the unknown crushed him, suffocating him with questions that would never have answers.

The Pulse had him now.

It was the only thing that existed. It was the force, the truth, the reality.

Everything he had ever known was a lie. His life, his memories—they were fragments, pieces of something that wasn't meant to be. He was never meant to be.

A flash of light burned through the void, a vision so bright that it seared into his retinas. The girl's face again, but this time, she was smiling. Genuine. Warm. Alive.

"Kael... you will forget me."

The words echoed in his mind. She wasn't real. She was part of this nightmare. He had to accept that. He had to let her go.

But the Pulse refused to let him.

Suddenly, everything froze.

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The world. The girl. The darkness. Everything came to a halt as if time itself had stopped.

The cold, hollow feeling in his chest grew. It spread like poison. He couldn't breathe. His body felt like it was being crushed under the weight of a thousand unseen hands. The Pulse was choking him.

And yet, for a moment, Kael felt something. A flicker of warmth. A pulse of life.

It was the girl. She had to be.

But then the world shattered.

Again.

The world collapsed around him as the Pulse consumed him once more. But this time, something was different.

The reality he knew—his world, his timeline—was gone.

He stood alone in the void, surrounded by fragments of shattered memories. The girl was no more. The Pulse had erased her completely.

There was nothing left but him. And the unrelenting presence of the Pulse.

Kael screamed. It wasn't a cry of pain. It wasn't a cry of desperation. No, this scream was something more. It was the sound of acceptance. The final acknowledgment that he was never going to escape this. That he would never be free.

A whisper echoed from the depths of the void.

"Kael. You've been here all along."

The voice was familiar. It was her. But it wasn't.

Kael's eyes snapped open. The world around him was familiar, yet wrong. The girl stood before him, but she was not the same. Her eyes, once gentle, were now cold and distant. Unfeeling.

She looked at him with a detached expression, the darkness of the Pulse reflecting in her once-beautiful face.

"You will forget again."

Kael staggered back, his heart racing. He couldn't take it anymore. It was too much. He didn't know if this was real, or if it was just another hallucination. Another test from the Pulse. But deep inside, he knew one thing:

He was broken.

And the Pulse would never let him escape.

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End of Chapter 20.

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