Salem woke with a jolt, or maybe a dozen jolts, depending on which timeline he was actually in. His room—or what remained of it—had folded in on itself like an origami nightmare. Desk drawers hung midair, the ceiling oscillated like gelatin, and the fan spun in reverse, humming a melody that sounded suspiciously like his own heartbeat.
"Again?" he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Another day… hour… eternity?"
A faint ticking filled the air. Not from the fan, not from the clocks. From everywhere at once. The sound twisted and doubled, like someone was multiplying seconds for amusement.
"Ah, Salem," a voice purred, smooth and mocking, yet faintly familiar. "You do love punctuality… or at least, your version of it."
Salem turned sharply. A figure stood in the corner, or rather, multiple figures. Each slightly taller or shorter than him, each shadowed differently. One smiled too widely, one scowled, one… didn't seem entirely real.
"Who… what are you?" he asked.
"We are possibilities," said the figure that wore his own eyes. "You've seen drafts, echoes, fragments… now meet the parts you never chose."
The room shimmered. Walls stretched, folded, and split. The floor became transparent, revealing spinning gears beneath, enormous, intricate, and impossibly alive. The gears were not just metal—they were moments. Memories. Fates. One tooth on a gear bore his childhood, another a skipped conversation, another a future he wasn't ready to acknowledge.
Salem swallowed hard. "So… this is… a timeline?"
"Not a timeline. A kaleidoscope of timelines. Each spin affects the others. You're standing on top of the machine, and it's watching you. Tick-tock, Salem. Tick-tock."
The voice of the watch echoed behind him, even though the brass timepiece itself floated lazily near the ceiling, spinning its hands in impossible directions.
"I thought we were done with metaphors."
"You thought wrong," replied the watch, tone somewhere between exasperation and gleeful mischief.
A sudden rumble shook the room. Gear-teeth cracked, and tiny fragments of light exploded outward, forming miniature, flickering versions of Salem—some laughing, some crying, some screaming in defiance. Each projection seemed aware, and all stared at him with a silent accusation.
"Okay… I don't even know how to respond to this anymore," Salem muttered.
The figures from the corner stepped closer. With each movement, their forms flickered through different Salem-possibilities: a child clutching a broken toy, a teenager hunched over textbooks, a future version in a tattered coat with eyes that had seen too much.
"You're late," one said.
"No, early," said another.
"Wrong," said a third, "and also right."
"Shut up!" Salem shouted. "I… I can't…"
The watch clicked loudly, bouncing across the gears like a mischievous marble.
"Relax. Or not. Chaos is subjective."
Salem's vision blurred. For a second—or maybe an hour—he saw entire cities rotate like clockwork, streets folding over themselves, and people walking upside-down, their conversations spilling into other realities. Neon lights shimmered, bleeding across walls that shouldn't exist.
Then, a small brass lever appeared in the center of the floor. It hovered, unattached to anything, pulsing like it had a heartbeat. A tiny label dangled from it: Pull to spin the unseen.
"Pull it," the watch urged, voice slipping into a whisper. "Or don't. Choices are illusions here."
Salem hesitated. Something in him screamed both curiosity and fear. With a trembling hand, he reached out and yanked the lever.
The gears responded instantly. The room folded again, but this time vertically, stretching into a tunnel of light and sound. Fractured versions of himself shot past like meteors, each carrying a memory or a skipped day. He recognized the faces: friends he barely remembered, strangers he should have known, even himself in futures he couldn't yet imagine.
"Whoa. Okay. Whoa!" he yelled, holding onto a spinning gear for dear life."
"Yes, dear life," whispered the watch. "Do cherish it. For the next spin… might not let go."
A blinding flash. The kaleidoscope of Salem-fragments froze midair, gears locked in a perfect lattice. From the center of the lattice, a shadow emerged—a figure cloaked in black, face hidden, but aura unmistakable: the Observer.
"I told you… you shouldn't have meddled," the Observer said, voice like ice. "Time isn't a playground, Salem Grey. It isn't yours."
Salem swallowed. "I… I'm just trying to survive."
"Survival is temporary. Control is a myth. You're in the middle of a storm that doesn't end until… well, until it does. And sometimes, it ends badly."
The gears beneath him spun violently. The kaleidoscope fractured, some fragments shooting backward into the past, some shattering into sparks that rained like shooting stars.
The Observer stepped closer. Salem felt the temperature drop. Each step resonated through the room like a drumbeat counting down seconds he didn't have.
"Your next move," the Observer whispered, "will change more than you think. Every choice echoes. Every hesitation… haunts."
Salem glanced at the lever still floating nearby, glowing faintly. The watch spun faster, its hands blurring into ribbons of light.
"Do it," urged the watch. "Or… don't. That's also a choice. And yes, someone is keeping score."
Salem gritted his teeth. "Fine. I'll… I'll pull it again."
As his hand clasped the lever, the Observer raised an arm, and the fractured sky above them cracked open like a shattered mirror. Through the fissure, Salem glimpsed an impossible city: towering spires, floating highways, and airships buzzing with creatures from timelines he hadn't lived yet.
"That… that's… too much," he stammered.
"No such thing," the Observer replied, voice calm but cutting. "This is just the beginning."
A deafening click echoed, and suddenly—everything stopped. Gears frozen mid-spin, fragments of time suspended like snowflakes. Salem's heart pounded. The lever floated inches from his hand, vibrating as if alive.
Then, the Observer leaned closer, and a single sentence cut through the frozen chaos:
"Next time you move… you won't know who you're saving—or who you're dooming."
Salem's fingers twitched. His mind raced. And then, without warning, the frozen gears shattered into shards of pure light, the Observer vanished, and the kaleidoscope of possibilities began to collapse around him.
"What the—!" Salem shouted, voice lost among the exploding fragments.
And in the blink of an eye, he was falling. Falling through fractured time, through layers of reality that seemed stitched together with nightmares and laughter alike. Voices overlapped: warnings, riddles, jokes, echoes of himself.
The last thing Salem heard, before the world went black:
"Tick-tock, Salem… your next choice won't be yours to make."
Salem plummets through fractured timelines, and the warning hints at consequences beyond his control.