——When Time Itself Begins to Crumble
The leather-bound journal lay between them.
its presence almost electric, as if it carried the weight of the unknown within its pages.
Shawn hesitated before reaching out, his fingertips grazing the worn cover.
Sandy's voice was barely above a whisper. "I never opened it."
Shawn's head snapped up. "You never read it?"
His grandfather shook his head, his eyes dark with something unreadable.
"It arrived three days after she disappeared."
"No return address."
"No message. Just… this."
He tapped the journal lightly, the sound oddly hollow in the thick silence. "I was afraid, Shawn. Afraid of what I might find inside. Or worse—afraid I'd find nothing at all."
A weight settled over the room, invisible yet suffocating, pressing against Shawn's shoulders.
His pulse quickened as he flipped open the cover, a hammering beat against his ribs.
The first page was blank.
So was the second.
And the third.
His breath hitched. He rifled through more pages—nothing. Just empty, time-stained paper.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he muttered, frustration creeping into his voice.
Sandy frowned. "Keep going."
Shawn did.
And then—
A single page in the middle of the journal wasn't blank.
Ink, faded but still legible, stretched across the paper in Lucy's handwriting:
If you're reading this, it means the century-long Loop will begin again.
Shawn's stomach clenched.
The journal slipped from his fingers, hitting the wooden floor with a soft thud.
His grandfather's breath caught midair as they both stared at Lucy's ominous words.
"If you're reading this…"
Before either could speak, Shawn's phone buzzed violently on the coffee table.
The screen lit up—not with a notification, but with a hemorrhage of crimson text where the time should have been:
2031.07.01|60D06:29:59
2031.07.01|60D06:29:58
2031.07.01|60D06:29:57
...
The numbers stuttered, the countdown flickering erratically, as if uncertain of its own progression.
It is now 17:30 on April 30, 2031. The meaning is clear:
The countdown has begun to 00:00 on July 1.
Sandy's weathered hand shot out, gripping Shawn's wrist with surprising strength. "Check everything."
Shawn lunged for his tablet.Same red text.
The microwave clock in the kitchen: 2031.07.01.
The vintage wall clock with its mechanical hands: frozen at 7:01, its glass face now etched with the same bleeding digits.
Even the smart fridge's display had overwritten its grocery reminders with:
60D:06:28:46
A shrill, unnatural ringing shattered the silence. Sandy's old rotary phone. No caller ID.
Shawn grabbed it—
Static. Then a voice, warped and fragmented:
"Sixty…Sixty... Sixty..."
The line went dead.
Shawn's Thunder Core thrummed—not in warning, but in recognition.
***
Sandy staggered toward his bookshelf, yanking out a thick volume of 20th-century history.
The pages fluttered open to a chapter titled:
"The Year the World Fractured: 1931"
Shawn read over his grandfather's shoulder:
January: Global markets collapsed under the second wave of the Great Depression.
September: Japan invaded Manchuria—the first domino in the Pacific War.
December: Einstein published his "closed universe" theory, later retracted after his mysterious disappearance that same month.
A yellowed newspaper clipping slipped from between the pages. Sandy's hands trembled as he unfolded it. The headline screamed:
LOCAL RESEARCHER CLAIMS 'TIME LOOPS' AFTER LAB EXPLOSION
The photo beneath it showed a younger Lucy standing beside a charred ruin, her face smudged with ash but her eyes disturbingly calm.
Shawn's throat went dry. "She knew."
Sandy's finger traced a paragraph at the article's edge:
"Dr. Lucy insists the event was not an accident but a 'temporal correction,' though authorities dismissed her claims as shock-induced delirium."
A crash from the kitchen.
They spun to see the refrigerator door swing open, its interior light flickering red. The temperature display now read:
-1931°F
The house's foundation groaned—the sound of a timeline fracturing
Windows rattled not from wind, but from the pressure of compressed history - as if a century's worth of moments were being forced into a single instant.
Shawn's phone screen shattered. The glass shards didn't fall - they hovered, rearranging into AGI-ST's insignia while displaying the pulsing countdown:
2031.07.01 | 60D06:26:36
2031.07.01 | 60D06:26:35
2031.07.01 | 60D06:26:36
...
Outside, the sky had become a living palimpsest:
To the east: today's sunset (April 30, 2031)
To the west: July 1's crimson dawn (the target date) Both existing simultaneously.
Neighbors stood frozen mid-motion, their devices showing identical countdowns.
A child pointed upward, screaming at the clouds moving in perfect loops - tracing the same path up and down like a broken record.
Then the ground hummed with the sound of... ...a clockwork universe rewinding its gears.
Shawn's Thunder Core thrummed, not with warning, but recognition—as if it knew what came next.
The journal on the floor trembled, pages flipping on their own—stopping at a new entry that hadn't been there before. Lucy's handwriting was now frantic, ink splattered like blood:
The countdown isn't to the end.
It's the beginning.
Sandy paled. "What beginning?"
Shawn tore through the journal.
The once-blank pages bled ink, revealing Lucy's notes:
The Loop corrects via catastrophe.
1731: Fire.
1831: Plague.
1931: War.
2031:?
What disasters are they creating?
The ink seemed to tremble on the page, as if holding its breath.
---
A hush fell.
Shawn leaned forward, his breath shallow.
But before Sandy could continue, his eyes drifted back to the journal on the table—its edges frayed, its pages worn with age and secrets.The last line.
"Find the lost pages."
Shawn sat back abruptly, as if the words had struck him in the chest. His mind spun, thoughts spiraling into unknown corridors.
"Lost pages? From this journal?"
Sandy shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But if Lucy wrote this, she must have left something hidden. Somewhere."
Somewhere.
Shawn's mind raced—memories flickered: family trips, old boxes in the attic, strange symbols he'd once seen as a child and forgotten.
Why now? Why him?
***
Then—
A sudden chime from the laptop.
Shawn turned sharply.
His inbox.
One new message.
He clicked it open. The sender's address was a deteriorating string of characters—symbols glitching and fading in real time. A self-deleting encryption. He barely had time to scan the content before the characters began to blur and dissolve.
> A new Loop is about to begin, and time is running short. Quinn's faction is strong. The Earth Stone Palace is the only clean area, and tomorrow at 12:00, you must handle it yourself. Burn it down.
Shawn stared at the screen, unable to breathe.
The Earth Stone Palace.
He knew that place.
Deep within the Meta Origin Mountains—cold, isolated, ancient. A place no one visited without reason. And even fewer returned.
He looked up at his grandfather, but Sandy was already watching him—his eyes calm, but resolute.
Shawn swallowed hard, adrenaline rising like a tide in his chest.
"Burn it down?" he whispered.
But the message had already vanished. Gone. Like a match burned too fast.
He sat frozen, the silence louder than before. His thoughts tumbled over one another—questions with no answers, choices with no time.
What was the Earth Stone Palace hiding?
And what did Lucy bury that was worth destroying everything to protect?
In that moment, one truth settled in his bones, cold and irreversible:
Nothing in his life had ever been normal.
And nothing would be again.