"[MESSAGE INITIA-DATA REFRESHING... RE-INITIALIZING...]

Time is a cruel trickster.

It lulls you into believing you have a grasp on it, a hold on the seconds slipping through your fingers, and then—

[WARNING: DATA GLITCHING]

It yanks the ground from beneath you."

[HUSH.]

---

Juno ran.

Her boots hammered against the cold, uneven stone, kicking up dust that shimmered under the dim, dying glow of lanterns bolted to the cavern walls. The air was thick with something wrong—like time itself had turned viscous, stretching too far and snapping back violently. Her breath came in ragged gasps, each exhale laced with exhaustion she didn't have time for. The world around her twisted, the corridors of the underground labyrinth warping as if they were breathing. And behind her—

Footsteps.

Not one pair. Not two.

Dozens.

She risked a glance over her shoulder and immediately regretted it. They were there. Versions of herself. Some sprinting, others crawling on all fours like feral beasts, some stumbling with vacant, dead eyes. One had no face at all, just a smooth, pale expanse where features should have been. Another Juno grinned, her mouth split too wide, revealing jagged teeth that didn't belong to any human. They all had her hazel-green eyes, the same streak of gold flickering like candlelight—

And they were all chasing her.

[System Alert: UNKNOWN PHENOMENON DETECTED.]

[Status: CRITICAL. CHRONOENERGY INTERFERENCE IMMINENT. ERROR—]

Juno barely registered the flashing red warning in the corner of her vision before her foot caught on something. A crack in the stone. A loose root. A trick of time itself. It didn't matter.

She fell.

Her skull struck the ground with a sickening crack, and her vision erupted into white-hot agony. Darkness pulsed at the edges of her sight, her limbs momentarily numb. A coppery tang filled her mouth—blood, or maybe just the taste of raw fear scraping the back of her throat.

The footsteps didn't slow.

Juno's body lurched as she forced herself up, every nerve screaming in protest. The system was glitching hard now, her interface flickering erratically.

[System Failure: DAMAGE DETECTED. HEAD TRAUMA—]

[Chronoenergy Unstable. Time Abilities: LOCKED.]

No. No, no, no—

She clawed at the ground, shoving herself forward just as the first of them lunged. A hand—her hand, but wrong—snapped inches from her ankle, fingers twitching like a dying insect. Juno rolled to the side, her body moving purely on instinct, and barely dodged another version of herself barreling into the space she'd occupied seconds before.

They were fast. And they were getting faster.

Juno's mind worked in overdrive, cataloging her surroundings. The cavern had narrowed, stone walls closing in like the throat of some ancient beast. Shadows danced wildly as the dying lanterns flickered overhead, their weak light making the passage look even more surreal, more nightmarish. Her body ached, her vision blurred, but she forced herself up, staggering into a sprint once more.

There—up ahead. A break in the tunnel. A collapsed section, jagged rocks forming a barrier.

A hiding spot.

Juno barely hesitated. She threw herself behind the rubble, pressing her body into the crevice between two massive stones. Her breath was deafening in her ears. She pressed a trembling hand to the side of her head, feeling something warm and sticky—blood. Her skull throbbed in warning.

[System Recalibrating.]

[Status: CONCUSSION DETECTED. MOTOR FUNCTION COMPROMISED.]

Juno gritted her teeth. No time to dwell on that. She swallowed down the nausea clawing its way up her throat and forced herself to focus. The footsteps slowed.

They were close.

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She could hear them breathing. Some wheezing. Some laughing—

One humming.

A lullaby.

Juno's blood ran ice-cold. That voice—her voice—was soft, almost gentle, but it carried an unnatural echo, like it existed in more than one place at a time.

"Juno, Juno, lost in time…"

A figure passed by her hiding spot, so close she could make out the stitching on its tattered coat—a coat identical to hers, but shredded, as if something had torn through it. This Juno dragged a broken pocket watch behind her by its chain, the metal scraping against the stone like nails on a coffin lid.

The other Junos moved past her, some twitching, some whispering, some walking too smoothly, like marionettes on invisible strings.

Juno's muscles coiled. She had one chance. One shot. Her system was still recalibrating, her abilities on lockdown, but she had her body, her wits.

She waited.

Three seconds.

Two.

One—

She burst from the crevice, lunging forward with every ounce of strength she had left. Her shoulder slammed into the closest doppelgänger—the lullaby-singing one—and they toppled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. The others turned in eerie unison, eyes locking onto her.

Juno didn't wait for them to react. She ran.

The tunnel twisted and buckled, the walls seeming to breathe, pulsing like a living thing. Her heartbeat was a frantic drum against her ribs. She didn't know where she was going, only that she had to move—

Faster.

A sharp turn. A split-second decision. She threw herself down a narrower passage, the walls scraping against her jacket, the air growing colder. She could hear them behind her, the collective thud of their footfalls.

Her body was breaking. Every muscle screamed. Every breath tasted of iron and panic.

Then—

A dead end.

Juno skidded to a halt, her boots scraping against the stone. No. No, no, no. The wall loomed before her, slick and unscalable. She whirled around, just in time to see them pouring into the passage, filling it like a flood of twisted reflections.

The first one reached for her.

Her hands clenched. If her system wouldn't work, if time itself was failing her—

She would fight anyway.

Juno swung. Her fist connected with something too soft, too yielding—her own face. But this version of herself only grinned, unfazed, even as its jaw snapped unnaturally to the side from the impact.

Her vision blurred. Her body burned. Her system flickered uselessly in the background.

Hopeless.

The faceless Juno stepped forward, hands outstretched, reaching—

Then there was a blur.

...

Juno's body swayed, the sensation of a rope tightening around her neck lingering like a phantom hand still gripping her throat. A second ago—no, a blink ago—she was hanging. She had seen it. Felt it. The pressure, the burning lack of air, the pull of gravity as if the world itself wanted to devour her. And then—

She blinked.

The world changed.

Her back struck something rough, solid. The scent of damp earth invaded her senses, sharp and undeniable. Her fingers twitched, curling into dirt and stray leaves. Her head pounded, a slow, miserable throb. She wasn't hanging anymore. She was lying beneath a tree, sprawled across the tangled roots like some fallen thing.

What—?

Juno gasped, a sharp inhale that ended in a shudder. Her hands shot to her throat, patting frantically. No rope. No bruising. No burn. But she had seen it. Hadn't she? Her feet dangled, the world blurred, the suffocation real. But now, she was here, fallen, crumpled against the roots.

She moved. Or tried to.

Pain exploded through her leg.

A sharp, nauseating agony rocketed from her ankle to her knee, white-hot and relentless. Her breath choked in her throat. Her vision flickered, momentarily darkening at the edges as a raw, broken noise ripped from her lips. She barely caught herself, pressing both hands over her mouth to silence the scream. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, unbidden and unwelcome, smearing into the dirt on her cheeks.

No, no, no.

Juno's heartbeat slammed against her ribs, wild and panicked. Her leg. It was wrong. Twisted in a way that shouldn't be possible, the limb angled in a grotesque distortion of its usual shape. Even thinking about moving made her stomach turn, the pain so overwhelming that she swore she could taste metal at the back of her throat.

Her lips trembled.

"System." Her voice was barely above a whisper, shaky, pleading. [System, activate. Status check. Healing function—anything."

Silence.

No response.

Her stomach curled inward with dread. No flickering text, no corrupted data stuttering across her vision. No glitched-out menu half-loading like a broken hologram. Nothing. The system was gone.

Juno bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough to draw blood.

No. Not gone. Just…not answering.

Another shuddering breath. She pressed a hand against her chest, willing herself to think past the pain. She could crawl. She had to crawl. The trees around her stretched impossibly high, their branches forming a canopy that barely let any light through. The air smelled damp, thick with the scent of moss and something older, something that had been here long before she had fallen into it. Tall grass surrounded her, swaying unnaturally, as if something unseen brushed against it.

She pushed herself forward, dragging her body through the dirt, careful not to jostle her leg. It was slow, excruciating. Her breath hitched with every inch she gained, the throb in her ankle growing unbearable. Her fingers dug into the soil, pulling her weight forward.

And then she saw it.

A silhouette.

Juno's body locked up so fast she nearly collapsed back onto the ground. Her breath stuttered, her entire chest tightening with a sensation colder than fear.

There was someone in the grass. Not far. Close enough that the outline of them shifted through the blades, the faintest movement rustling through the field of green.

She went still.

Her hands pressed against her mouth, willing herself silent. Her breath trembled through her fingers. The pain in her leg made it impossible to stay completely still. A twitch—an accident—shot another jolt of agony through her, and she whimpered before she could stop it.

The figure moved.

Juno's heart slammed against her ribs. The grass parted.

A girl stood there.

No. Not a girl.

Herself.

But not quite.

The figure stepping forward was younger—her, but a version of her long left behind. This Juno wasn't the Timekeeper. This was Juno before the burden. Before the rewinds, before the deaths, before the system even knew her name. A teenager, barely out of childhood, eyes too wide, too full of something she barely recognized.

Fear.

Juno stared at her younger self. And for the first time, the reflection didn't look at her with hostility.

They stared at each other, caught between worlds, between selves, between versions of who they had been and who they had become. The younger Juno didn't move, but her fingers twitched at her sides, nervous, hesitant.

Juno exhaled a shaking breath. Then, with everything left in her, she whispered the only thing she could think of.

"Help."