Chapter 1: The Ripple
Scene 1: The Ordinary Brokenness
Kael sat hunched at his desk, bathed in the flickering glow of his second-hand monitor. His thumb scrolled through feeds that never seemed to change: viral videos, meaningless arguments, ads that tried to sell him what he didn't want. He had lived in the city for 19 years, and the routine felt like a constant hum, like the drone of a broken engine that refused to quit.
The window beside him revealed the endless stretch of streetlights below. Cars honked, people rushed by, all of them with lives that seemed to move at different speeds. Kael's gaze drifted, his eyes half-lidded, catching nothing of significance. Everything was predictable.
But today, he felt something stirring, a glitch in the matrix. A strange discomfort prickled the back of his neck, like his body was reacting to something unseen.
His phone buzzed. An alert. A low battery message. He picked it up with a sigh and clicked it off—just as a wave of sound hit his ears.
It wasn't a ringtone. It was a hum. Low, almost imperceptible, but it crawled under his skin. He rubbed his temples. Maybe he hadn't slept well.
He glanced back at the screen, his eyes wandering to a news clip about a traffic accident that had just been reported. The image was familiar. It showed a red car speeding past a crosswalk, then slamming into a lamppost. He was sure he had seen this exact scene before.
The hum in his ears grew louder. He blinked, shaking his head. The screen flickered—and he saw something. The bus that passed by his building just moments ago—a bus he'd seen hundreds of times before—reversed, a full stop-and-roll, like it was playing backwards.
Kael's heart skipped. His stomach twisted in confusion. He moved to the window, eyes wide, heart racing. He looked down at the street.
The bus was still there, but now, it was normal.
"What the hell?" he muttered to himself. He pressed his palms to the glass, trying to shake off the feeling that the world was suddenly slightly off-kilter.
Scene 2: A Glimpse into Time
The hum faded as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Kael staring blankly out at the street. He shook his head again and turned back to his desk, trying to refocus. But the feeling lingered.
He reached for his coffee cup, its ceramic cool against his fingers. He stared at it for a second, then tilted it toward his lips. He was about to drink, but something strange happened.
The weight of the cup felt wrong.
It felt exactly how it would feel in his hand an hour from now—like he was reliving a small moment from the future. As his fingers gripped the ceramic, the smoothness, the heat—it was all too familiar. He pulled the cup away and froze, his heart pounding in his chest.
He was no longer holding a cup in the present. For a moment, he was holding it in the future, the cup as real and solid as if it were already part of his timeline.
The ringing in his ears returned, louder this time. A burst of cold washed over him. His mind raced to make sense of it.
I've been here before.
No. He hadn't. This wasn't déjà vu. This wasn't some fleeting memory. This was different. He had just seen it. He had known what the cup would feel like before his fingers ever touched it.
"What the hell is happening to me?" Kael whispered to himself. He shook his head again, but the ringing didn't stop. It only grew.
Scene 3: The First Leap
Kael couldn't sit still. Something inside him was screaming for answers. The noise in his head grew into a dull roar, drowning out everything else. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing the edge of the desk to steady himself. He needed to get out of this room, out of his mind.
The door slammed open, and Kael bolted out into the hall of his building, breath short, pulse thudding in his ears.
The stairwell seemed to stretch forever, an endless climb. Every step felt like it was dragging him deeper into the unknown. He stopped halfway down, panting, as the faint hum in his ears reached a crescendo. A low-frequency vibration in the air pressed against his chest.
In the street below, a man dropped his coffee cup. The shards scattered across the pavement, the sound ringing clearly in his mind. But Kael hadn't seen it yet. Not in real time.
It was a glimpse of the future.
He blinked. Then the man dropped the cup again.
The same cup, the same noise. But this time, Kael felt it. He was there. His mind was already a moment ahead. He saw the man drop the cup again, right before it happened.
"Wha—" Kael staggered back, trying to make sense of it. The man below him never noticed that Kael had already seen what he would do, had already felt the glass shatter in real time.
The future—his mind had already lived it. And now, it was alive inside him, bleeding through his senses like a well-worn path.
Scene 4: The Modifications
The next few days felt like a blur. Kael started seeing things with unsettling clarity—tiny moments that hadn't happened yet. He'd know the precise second a car would pull up outside. He'd know when a text would arrive before his phone buzzed. And then, it wasn't just glimpses.
He could feel them.
And he started to understand that if he could sense these moments, maybe he could control them.
He tried something simple, a minor gamble: a stock he'd seen fall, then shoot up. He knew the exact time when it would hit rock bottom. Kael placed the bet. The money came in. He grinned. He'd done it.
He saw the future and shaped it.
But it wasn't enough. His thoughts raced ahead, seeking bigger stakes, more powerful moves.
For now, though, he was content. He wasn't in a rush. He had all the time in the world.