I noticed it before the news did.
Not disasters. Not screams. Just hesitation.
A bus stalled mid-intersection without engine failure. A cashier paused with change hovering above a palm, eyes unfocused for half a second too long. A man on the street corrected himself mid-sentence, apologizing for something he hadn't said yet.
Latency.
Reality wasn't breaking.
It was buffering.
I stood at the balcony of the apartment, the sea below calm, obedient, unaware. The lighthouse in the distance didn't pulse tonight. It didn't need to. Its attention was enough.
Something had shifted—not forward, not backward.
Sideways.
I saw him in the glass first.
Not as a figure. As alignment.
My reflection didn't quite match my movements. When I breathed, it waited a fraction of a second before following.
"Schyper," I said.
The name tasted like acknowledgement.
"I didn't come to warn you," the reflection replied. His voice wasn't sound—it was understanding pressed directly into thought. "Warnings imply choice. You've already chosen delay."
"I chose time," I said.
He smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly.
"T ime is not neutral," Schyper said. "It invoices."
The room felt heavier—not oppressive, just… accountable.
"The Septet has not acted," he continued. "Not because they are restrained. Because consensus has not resolved."
I understood then.
"You're not stopping them," I said slowly. "You're preventing unanimity."
"I am the disagreement that persists," Schyper replied. "I exist inside causality. They exist above it. As long as I remain unresolved, action costs more than inaction."
The sea outside rippled unnaturally—waves correcting themselves mid-motion.
"And the cost?" I asked.
Schyper's reflection fractured slightly across the glass.
"Stability leaks," he said. "Not catastrophically. Subtly. Memory desyncs. Causality fatigue. Small mercies. Eventually—choice erosion."
I swallowed.
"So I'm not saving the world."
"No," Schyper said gently. "You're borrowing it."
Lucia noticed next.
Not the anomalies. The teddy.
She found it sitting upright on the couch when she'd left it on the bed. Once, she woke holding it, fingers curled like she'd been gripping something heavier.
She didn't panic.
She adapted.
That terrified me more than screams ever could.
"I don't know why," she said one evening, turning the bear over in her hands, "but when I hold it, things feel… quieter. Like the world isn't rushing me."
Schyper didn't appear.
He didn't need to.
I realized the truth with a cold clarity that felt like betrayal.
He wasn't hiding in the teddy.
He was anchoring through her.
Normalcy was the camouflage.
Griffin sensed it without knowing what it was.
He never spoke about gods or fragments or consensus. He spoke in systems.
"You're stalling," he told me in the lab, watching data crawl across screens that should've refreshed instantly. "Every structure collapses the same way—not from attack, but from hesitation."
"I'm preventing something worse," I said.
Griffin shook his head. "There's no such thing. There's only deferred collapse."
He leaned closer.
"Accelerate," he said. "Or withdraw. Systems don't survive indecision."
I chose neither.
That was my mistake.
That night, the watch vibrated.
Once.
Not activation.
Acknowledgment.
The softboard in my room adjusted on its own. One string detached—cleanly, deliberately—and fell to the floor. No replacement followed.
A vote had shifted.
Not erasure.
Not continuation.
Observation.
Schyper's voice came from nowhere and everywhere.
"They noticed the delay."
I didn't respond.
Outside, the lighthouse remained still.
Not warning.
Waiting.
The universe hadn't moved closer to ending.
It had moved closer to deciding.
The scene cuts
Andrew caught me while I was staring at the board.
Not studying it—waiting for it to change again.
"You ever notice," he said casually, leaning against the doorway, "that we haven't gone anywhere since everything stopped being normal?"
I didn't answer.
He took that as permission.
"We live next to the sea. We've got money. No one's actively hunting us. That's already better than most lives," he continued. "We could disappear for a week. Just… go."
"Go where?" I asked.
Andrew shrugged. "Anywhere without systems. Mountains. Islands. Places that don't care who you are."
I finally looked at him.
"You want a vacation," I said.
"I want proof we're still allowed to have one," he corrected. "Because if we aren't, I'd like to know before it's permanent."
There it was.
Not fear.
Boundary testing.
"I can't leave right now," I said.
Andrew studied my face—not suspicious, not disappointed. Just… measuring.
"You've been saying that since the lighthouse," he said quietly. "You don't owe me an explanation. But you do owe yourself one."
He pushed off the wall and paused at the door.
"When you decide you're done postponing things," he added, "tell me. I'll book the tickets."
He left.
The room felt smaller after.
Not because he was gone.
Because part of me had already imagined saying yes.