"Time is not a river, nor a wheel—it is a wound. And every epiphany is just another knife twisting deeper."

---

Juno's whisper—"Help"—hung between them, fragile and raw, dissolving into the thick silence like a dying ember.

The younger version of herself—this teenaged Juno—didn't move at first. She stood there, her expression frozen somewhere between fear and confusion. Her hazel-green eyes, wide and searching, flicked over Juno's trembling form, lingering on the grotesque twist of her broken leg. Her lips parted slightly, as if she wanted to speak, but no words came. Her breath was slow, shallow, the way a person looked at something they didn't quite believe was real.

Juno saw it then—the glitching.

Faint at first, barely perceptible, like the afterimage of a light when you blink too fast. But it was there. A flicker at the edges of the girl's silhouette, a stutter in her breathing. Her body lagged for the briefest second, a hairline fracture in reality, before smoothing back into place. It was wrong. It was broken. And she didn't even notice.

Juno's chest tightened. She was staring at something that wasn't meant to exist.

Her younger self hesitated, then took a slow step forward. The grass beneath her bare feet didn't bend the way it should have. It was as if she was only partially there, as if her existence was an afterthought in whatever strange law governed this place.

"Who… are you?" the younger Juno finally asked, voice small. Uncertain.

Juno almost laughed at the irony. "I—" Her throat ached. Her breath was shaky. "I'm Juno."

The younger girl flinched, as if the name struck her like a slap.

Juno pressed her palms into the dirt, willing her pain-riddled body to stay upright. She had more questions than answers. Where was she? Why was she here? Why was this younger version of herself the only one that didn't look at her with malice?

The wind shifted. The grass swayed, whispering secrets in a language neither of them understood. The ravine stretched endlessly in every direction, tall stone cliffs rising on all sides, but the sky above remained untouched—a perfect, too-blue dome, locked in time.

A prison.

Juno knew she wasn't meant to be here. Wherever here was.

She forced herself to take a slow, pained breath. "You're me. Or... you were me, once."

Teen Juno's brows knitted together. She was trying to understand, but she couldn't. She wasn't like the others. The ones who chased her, hunted her, grinned with too many teeth. This one wasn't broken in the same way. But she was still fractured.

Juno bit her lip. "Do you know where we are?"

Teen Juno shook her head, glancing around warily, as if she was only now realizing the world around her wasn't real.

"I—I was at home," she murmured. "I was walking. And then…" Her voice faded, uncertain. "I don't know. I woke up here."

Juno swallowed hard. That was impossible. It had to be. But nothing here followed the rules of possibility.

Juno tried shifting her leg, testing it. A sharp, blinding agony shot through her, and she barely bit back a scream. She gasped, nails digging into the dirt. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision. She couldn't move. She couldn't fight. If the other reflections found her like this, she'd be dead before she could even crawl away.

She clenched her jaw. "Listen. I need you to help me."

Teen Juno hesitated. "Help…?"

Juno nodded, panting through the pain. "My leg. It's broken. I can't move." She exhaled shakily. "I need you to help me—"

A sound.

Both of them snapped their heads toward the tall grass. A whispering rustle, something shifting just out of sight.

Juno's heart stopped.

Teen Juno took a step back, gripping her arms as if trying to make herself smaller. Her face had paled. She had heard it too.

Juno's blood turned to ice. If it was another reflection—if it was another version of herself, one of the ones that were hunting her—then she was dead. She could barely move, let alone fight.

Another rustle. Closer this time.

Teen Juno let out a shuddering breath. "There's something out there."

Juno's pulse thundered in her ears. She had to think. Had to act. But she had nothing—no weapons, no system functions, no plan. Just a broken body and a younger version of herself who didn't understand the danger they were in.

And then—

A shadow moved.

Just beyond the edge of the tall grass, something shifted. It wasn't the wind. It wasn't natural. It was watching them.

Teen Juno took another step back, eyes wide with something close to panic. "What is that?"

Juno's mouth was dry. She had no answer.

Then the figure stepped forward.

The first thing Juno noticed was the way the light refused to touch it. Its edges shimmered like a broken reflection, pieces not quite aligning. And then, slowly, it took shape.

A girl.

Another Juno.

But this one was wrong.

Her body twitched erratically, glitching between movements. Her mouth curled into a slow, unnatural grin, but her eyes remained empty.

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Juno's breath caught in her throat.

It was smiling.

And it was looking right at her.

The world narrowed.

Teen Juno grabbed Juno's wrist, voice trembling. "What do we do?"

Juno stared at the broken version of herself, heart hammering in her chest.

She didn't know.

The reflection took a step forward.

Then another.

Juno tried to move, but the pain in her leg screamed in protest. She sucked in a sharp breath, panic rising like bile. She was trapped. She was cornered. And the other Juno was coming closer.

The younger Juno tightened her grip on Juno's wrist. Her voice was almost pleading. "Tell me what to do."

Juno's throat went dry.

There was only one thing they could do.

"Run."

Juno's voice was barely above a whisper, but the word slammed into the younger version of herself like a gunshot. Teen Juno hesitated for only a fraction of a second—just long enough for the reflection standing in the tall grass to twitch.

Then it lunged.

Juno barely had time to react before Teen Juno yanked her up by the arm, forcing her broken body into movement. A fresh wave of agony seared through her, a blinding, sickening pain that made her vision fracture at the edges. Her leg—

She choked down a scream, gritting her teeth as her younger self half-dragged, half-supported her into a stumbling escape. The tall grass lashed at them as they crashed through it, bodies pushing past the suffocating stalks. Behind them, the twisted reflection let out a guttural, static-laced noise—a sound that was neither voice nor human breath.

Juno risked a glance back.

It was chasing them. And it was fast.

The reflection's body didn't move naturally. It jittered in sudden bursts, skipping forward like a corrupted frame in a broken film reel. One moment, it was several feet behind them. The next, it was closer—too close.

Juno's stomach turned to ice. Her system—her instincts—it wasn't working. None of it was working.

[System: -ERROR-]

She clenched her jaw, forcing herself forward. If she stopped now, if she hesitated for even a second, she was dead.

Teen Juno was panting beside her, struggling under the weight of supporting her. Her face was pale with fear, strands of dark brown hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. "I—I don't know where to go!" she gasped, looking wildly around.

Neither did Juno.

The landscape around them was shifting, distorting with every desperate step. The open field wasn't open anymore. Jagged rock formations jutted up where there had been only grass moments ago. The trees loomed, their branches curling inwards as if trying to trap them. The sky—

She looked up.

The sky was wrong.

The glass dome that had once been bright blue was now dark, cracked with veins of pulsating violet. It shifted like something alive, something watching.

Juno's pulse spiked. There was no escape. No safe direction.

Teen Juno let out a yelp as her foot caught on something—a root, a stone, or maybe the world itself betraying them. They both tumbled forward, crashing into the damp earth in a heap. Juno gasped as white-hot pain shot up her broken leg. Her vision blackened for a second, the sound of her heartbeat roaring in her ears.

She blinked rapidly, trying to fight through the haze of agony.

The reflection stopped.

A few feet away, the twisted version of herself stood unnaturally still. It tilted its head, slow and deliberate. Watching.

Juno could barely breathe.

Teen Juno scrambled up to a crouch, clutching at her scraped arms, but didn't move to run again. She was shaking.

Juno wanted to scream at her to move, to keep going, but—

The reflection took a step forward.

Then another.

And then—

It stopped again.

Juno's breath hitched.

Something was wrong. More wrong than it already was.

The reflection's body glitched sharply, its form distorting in a way that made Juno's stomach twist. Then, slowly, it lifted a trembling hand to its chest—

And tore something out.

A sliver of light. Small, fragile, flickering like a dying ember.

Juno's throat tightened.

The reflection gazed at the light in its hand, its expression unreadable. Then it looked at Juno.

And smiled.

The world cracked.

Juno barely had time to react before a violent force knocked her backward. She slammed into the ground, the impact sending shockwaves through her skull. The pain was unbearable.

Teen Juno screamed.

The sky shattered.

A deafening hum filled the air, drowning out all thought, all reason. Juno forced her eyes open, blinking through the haze of static and pain.

The reflection was gone.

But the light—the sliver of light—remained, hovering in the air. Pulsing. Beckoning.

Juno's fingers twitched. She didn't understand. None of this made sense.

[System: -ANOMALY DETECTED-]

She clenched her fists, forcing her broken body to move, to reach—

Then the world seemingly swallowed her whole.

Into the pits of darkness.

---

The dark is scary yet familiar.

It's full of mystery yet you know the feeling.

But you feel it too, don't you?

The weight of knowing.

That quiet, sinking sensation when reality slips just enough for you to notice the seams.

There's something unsettling about an epiphany—

about realizing that the truth was always there—

festering beneath the surface, waiting for you to be weak enough to see it.

And time?

Oh, time is the cruelest accomplice.

It lets you wander, lets you believe you have choices, paths, destinies.

But in the end, every road leads back to the same revelation:

You were always meant to end up here.

Maybe you thought you were in control.

Maybe you believed your decisions shaped the world instead of the other way around.

How sweet.

How naive.

But tell me—when did you last feel truly free?

Or have you always been running toward a future already written, one tick at a time?

---

Juno woke to the scent of damp stone and distant smog.

Aetherion.

The realization slithered into her mind before she even opened her eyes. The weight of familiarity pressed down on her chest, thick and cloying. She knew these streets. She had walked them a thousand times before, dodging beggars and merchants, slipping through the cracks of a city that thrived on swallowing the weak whole.

"Motherfucker. Not again."

But something was wrong.

She blinked. Once. Twice.

When her vision steadied, she found herself standing at the intersection of two alleyways—one leading to the grand marketplace, the other toward the lower districts where the city bled into its slums. The streets stretched out before her, eerily empty. No merchants shouting their wares, no children darting between carts, no distant murmur of Aetherion's never-ending heartbeat. Just silence.

Aetherion was never silent.

Juno inhaled sharply, her breath catching. The air was wrong—too still, too thick, like the world had been hollowed out and left to rot in its own absence. A strange light hung in the sky, but there was no sun. No moon. Just a vast, empty void where the heavens should be. Shadows stretched long and unnatural along the cracked cobblestone, twisting in ways that defied logic.

And then she looked down at herself.

Her body was smaller. Thinner. Frail.

Her hands trembled as she raised them, fingers slender and uncalloused, untouched by the weight of wielding the Chronosword. The sleeves of her worn-out jacket barely fit her frame, loose and familiar in a way that sent ice crawling up her spine.

This was her teenage body. The one she had long outgrown.

"This time's different."

She staggered back, her boots—no, her old, tattered shoes—scuffing against the stone. The world spun as realization set in, clawing at the edges of her mind like a caged beast.

No. No, no, no. Not again.

Something was wrong. Something was doing this to her. Just like before, when a Void Lord had twisted her perception into endless loops of suffering. But this time, it was different. Worse.

Because she was alone.

Juno swallowed, forcing down the bile rising in her throat. Her head ached, a slow, pulsing throb that told her this wasn't just some fragmented dream. No system messages. No glitching interfaces. Just the raw, unfiltered weight of a memory she had already lived.

Or was she living it now?

Aetherion's streets remained empty, stretching outward into the void. The silence pressed in, suffocating. She turned sharply, scanning the alleys, the rooftops, searching for something—anything—that made sense. But there were no familiar voices, no distant echoes of the life she had once clawed through.

She was utterly, terrifyingly alone.

Juno clenched her fists, trying to steady herself. If this was another trick, another manipulation by the unknown forces that had been tormenting her since she entered that damned ravine, she needed to figure it out fast.

She sucked in a sharp breath and took a step forward.

The echo of her footstep was the only sound in the entire city.

Aetherion was never silent.

But now, it was dead.