Paris – 13:41 PM – February 10, 2027
The wind had changed.
It wasn't coming from the windows—but from the walls.
As if the building itself was breathing… or grieving.
Ryan sat on the floor.
His eyes were open, but they weren't seeing what surrounded him—
they were staring into something behind the moment.
Inside his head, a voice unlike any he had ever heard before:
"You were not created to understand.
But to rewrite."
"Who are you?"
"I… am the version that was never given a body."
Tbilisi – Tunnel Beneath the Mountain – 13:42 PM
Nico leaned against the wall.
The bone mask the man had worn had vanished…
Yet his face did not appear.
It was nothing—
merely a human void wearing memory.
"What does this have to do with the Ryan I know?"
"You don't know him. No one ever did.
Everyone who met him… met a distorted copy of the original question."
"What question?"
"What if his very existence… was a mistake?"
Inside Broken Time – Undefined Location – Unmeasurable Time
Ryan walked.
A floor made of glass beneath his feet.
Beneath it—millions of versions of himself,
each walking in a different direction.
Each one had made a different choice.
Then a deep voice echoed—
as if time itself had decided to speak:
"The Observer is collapsing."
"Observation has become action."
"Omega Ryan is unstable.
He is rewriting the terms of the Third Strike."
Paris – Lima's Home – 13:45 PM
The child sat by the window.
He drew a circle on the glass, then whispered:
"Mama… he's coming."
Lima turned sharply, her heart pounding.
"Who?"
But the child did not answer.
He simply drew an eye inside the circle… and smiled.
High Command Platform – Temporal Complex – 1:46 PM
"All versions are bleeding from the point of consciousness."
"Should we initiate full shutdown?"
"No. He has surpassed the shutdown threshold."
"Then what do we do?"
"We watch… and try not to understand."
Inside Ryan – The Moment of Severance from All Things
He now floated.
No body.
No thought.
No past.
Only one truth:
"If he is not the question…
then perhaps he is the answer."
And in a moment unregistered by any clock,
Ryan opened his eyes—
But not in Paris.
Not in any known place.
He opened them in a place that has not yet been created.
A Question for the Reader:
❓ If you were walking on glass above versions of yourself…
would you look down?
Or would you keep your eyes forward—
even if all you saw was nothing?