Caleb drifted through currents of overlapping realities. Each thread of existence unraveled before him—timelines unfurling like ribbons of light, fractal and endless. Every echo shimmered with its own truth, its own sorrow. He was slipping between lifetimes, pulled by a force beyond gravity—by Resonance.
In one timeline, they died together—hands interlocked, drifting silently into the void, no one there to mourn them. In another, they were stuck in an eternal loop, reliving their first escape, their last goodbye, again and again, a cycle that grew fainter with each repetition. One reality showed Caleb alone, holding Mira's lifeless body in his arms beneath a darkened sky, screaming her name into a silence that refused to echo. And yet another world twisted his heart cruelly—her face was the same, her voice identical, but the soul behind those eyes wasn't hers. It wasn't Mira.
He trembled.
The resonance inside him flared, a rhythmic pull against the frayed multiverse. Each possibility bent away like overexposed film, but one thread remained—bright, unbroken. One fate still intact. It pulled him further, drawing him toward a destination that lived somewhere in his dreams.
Then, he saw it.
Blue skies. Clouds touched with gold. Towering steel and glass scraping the horizon. Streets humming faintly below. Earth.
It wasn't a vision—it was memory made real. The same world he had seen in flickering flashes, when he was still a boy suspended in cold fluid and wires, when Mira spoke of a place where stars felt soft, not like missiles waiting to fall. The pieces of his mind and soul began aligning like magnetic poles. This was it. Their home. Hers... and now, his.
The threads of fate led him to a skyscraper on the city's edge. The wind tugged at his coat as he stepped to the edge of the rooftop.
And then—
Her.
Mira.
She stood at the brink, a silhouette against the glow of city lights, her posture slack, her balance teetering. The wind played with her hair like it had no consequence. Her face was unreadable, her soul already elsewhere.
"NO. No—no, no—"
His voice cracked as she tipped forward.
He moved.
Faster than his thoughts, faster than the gravity that tried to claim her. He launched himself after her, slicing through the air like a blade, the world around them narrowing to this moment—just her, just him.
He caught her mid-fall, locking his arms around her waist, pulling her close.
"I always wanted to be in the same world as you," he said, breathless, forehead pressed to hers, "instead of just watching you... I'm not losing you."
Her eyes flickered open.
With no recollection of who he was. Her first instinct was to resist, to escape—but what was the point? She had already surrendered to the fall.
"What's the point?" she whispered.
Caleb's voice trembled, fierce and unwavering.
"Minds and spirits... even if everything fades, my soul will always resonate with yours."
Her body slackened as unconsciousness claimed her. But something stirred inside her. A flicker beneath her skin. Remnants of his Resonance passed into her, like a soft light through broken glass.
The ground surged up, unrelenting.
Caleb braced himself, folding his body around hers. A gravitational anomaly—distant, familiar—tugged at them, a final gift from a world far beyond this one. It slowed their fall, redirected it—but only barely.
The impact was brutal.
They slammed into the ground. The pavement cracked with a thunderclap, webbing outward. The shockwave rippled through concrete and air. Caleb's exoskeleton shattered around them—armor plates splintered, circuits ruptured, his body acting as the only shield between Mira and death.
A crater formed, smoke rising in twisting coils.
Sirens.
Lights in windows above. Screams from the street.
"TWO PEOPLE FELL FROM THE ROOF!"
"Oh my God! They're still moving!"
"Someone call an ambulance, now!"
Red and blue lights painted the broken pavement as emergency crews flooded the area. Police cordoned off the block. Paramedics rushed forward.
They found Caleb unconscious, blood streaking his temple, holding Mira like something sacred. His arms refused to let go, even as his body gave out.
The city had never seen anything like it.
And above them, the stars watched silently—threads of destiny rewinding, realigning, waiting for what came next.