Time did not break loudly.
It misaligned.
1. The First Inconsistency
Qin Mian noticed it because the ground hesitated.
She took a step forward.
The stone beneath her foot responded a fraction of a second too late—solidifying after her weight had already committed.
She stumbled.
Caught herself.
Her heart jumped.
"…That wasn't right," she murmured.
The world corrected itself immediately.
Too quickly.
As if embarrassed.
2. The Anchor Registers a Delay
Her Anchor pulsed—not in alarm, but in confusion.
The feedback loop returned data that did not line up.
Cause arrived before effect.
Response arrived before stimulus.
For a brief moment, Qin Mian felt the unsettling sensation of being out of phase with her own movement.
"…I moved," she whispered,
"but the world moved second."
That had never happened before.
3. Somewhere Else, Yin Lie Feels It First
Yin Lie screamed.
Not from pain.
From vertigo.
He was walking—he was sure of that—and then suddenly he was already standing several meters ahead, knees buckling as if his body had skipped the act of moving entirely.
"…No," he gasped.
Blood dripped from his nose onto the stone.
Time had jumped him forward.
Without permission.
4. Two Moments, One Body
He tried to breathe.
The breath came twice.
Once in his chest.
Once in his memory.
He staggered back, clutching his head.
"I didn't finish that step," he whispered.
But his body insisted that he had.
That contradiction tore at him violently.
5. Qin Mian Sees a Second Shadow
She turned sharply.
For a heartbeat, she saw herself.
Not a reflection.
Not a memory.
A version of her standing half a step behind, eyes wide, mouth slightly open—as if reacting later.
The image snapped away instantly.
Qin Mian's breath hitched.
"…That was me," she whispered.
Her Anchor flared hard.
Not stabilizing.
Rejecting.
6. The World Fails to Choose a Sequence
The fractured space around her rippled unevenly.
Some fractures healed too early.
Others reopened after already closing.
The environment was no longer agreeing on what had already happened.
The system beneath the world attempted to reconcile the discrepancy.
It failed.
7. The First True Timeline Error
Qin Mian took another step.
This time, the pain came first.
A sharp spike through her ankle.
Then—impact.
She cried out and fell.
The pain preceded the cause.
She lay on the ground, shaking.
"…The order is wrong," she said aloud.
The Anchor screamed.
8. Yin Lie Is Pulled Backward
Yin Lie blinked.
He was no longer where he had collapsed.
He was standing several seconds earlier—hands still mid-air, ice not yet shattered.
He screamed in fury and terror.
"No—no—!"
The moment snapped forward violently.
He collapsed again.
Time was rewinding and snapping forward, unable to settle.
9. The System Panics
For the first time since the hunt began, the world reacted inelegantly.
Containment vectors flickered.
Stability zones overlapped incorrectly.
Correction protocols triggered out of order.
The system was not built for this.
Time anomalies were supposed to be localized.
Contained.
Yin Lie's instability and Qin Mian's Anchor had created overlap.
10. Qin Mian Feels Him — Out of Order
She gasped suddenly.
Her chest tightened.
Not emotionally.
Temporally.
"…Lie," she whispered.
She felt him—not as presence, but as misalignment.
A wrongness.
A drag across her awareness that arrived before the thought of him.
She pressed her hand to her chest.
"…You're not where you should be."
11. The Anchor Tries to Compensate
Instinctively, her Anchor surged.
Not to stabilize the world—
but to choose a sequence.
It tried to decide which moment was real.
The strain was immense.
Her vision fractured into overlapping frames.
She screamed as conflicting realities slammed into her senses.
"Stop—!" she cried.
But the Anchor did not listen.
12. Yin Lie Sees Multiple Outcomes
Time split around him.
He saw himself:
— Falling.
— Standing.
— Reaching for Qin Mian.
— Never having met her.
All at once.
He screamed as the images tore through his mind.
"I can't hold them!" he roared.
Ice burst uncontrollably from his body, freezing moments mid-action before shattering again.
13. The World Loses Authority
The system attempted a hard correction.
A global re-sync.
For a fraction of a second, everything froze.
Then—
the freeze failed.
Reality lurched violently.
Large sections of space desynced completely.
Some areas jumped ahead.
Others lagged behind.
The world no longer shared a single "now."
14. Qin Mian Is Split
She screamed as her body moved—
and stayed.
Her left hand reacted.
Her right hand lagged.
Her thoughts fractured.
She saw two paths:
One where she remained compliant, stabilized, protected.
One where she turned back toward the instability that was Yin Lie.
Both felt equally real.
"…I can't be both," she sobbed.
15. The Anchor Makes a Partial Choice
The Anchor did something unprecedented.
It partitioned.
Part of it locked to the compliant timeline.
The other part remained connected to Yin Lie's unstable sequence.
Qin Mian screamed as the split tore through her mind.
Blood streamed from her nose and ears.
"No—no—don't—!"
But it was already done.
16. Yin Lie Feels Her Tear Away
He felt it instantly.
A sharp, ripping sensation—not physical, but existential.
"…Qin Mian?" he gasped.
The connection flickered.
Half of it remained.
Half vanished.
The loss nearly knocked him unconscious.
17. The World Freezes in Fear
For the first time, the system stopped acting.
Not calculating.
Not correcting.
Waiting.
Because it no longer knew which timeline to privilege.
Both were valid.
Both were now occupied by Qin Mian.
That was never supposed to happen.
18. End of the Chapter
When motion finally returned, the world was wrong.
Not broken.
Doubled.
Paths diverged invisibly.
Events overlapped without touching.
Qin Mian knelt on the ground, shaking, Anchor fractured but active, eyes unfocused as if seeing two realities at once.
Yin Lie lay elsewhere, screaming into empty space, feeling her both present and gone.
The world had lost its authority over sequence.
And that meant something terrifying:
From this moment on,
there was no single future.
There was no guaranteed correction.
Only branching outcomes—
all of them real,
all of them dangerous,
and none of them willing to wait
for the world to decide which one was allowed to exist.