Anchor ∞L0-W – The Infinite Echo
There were Anchors that told stories.
And then there were Anchors that refused to end.
∞L0-W was one of the latter — a haunted loop of eleven minutes and forty-two seconds, endlessly repeating. Its nickname among timewalkers?
> The Loop of Woe.
No one remembered its origin.
No one remembered escaping it either.
Because once inside, you forgot you'd ever been anywhere else.
And now, the ChronoKnots were walking in willingly.
---
"Loop sync in ten seconds," Aren announced, double-checking his chrono-harness. "Remember the plan: we only have 11:42 every time. Once it resets, we retain only what's imprinted in our neural timefolds."
Ghost Ronin grunted. "Sounds like a nightmare."
"It is," Myra said, "and we'll live it until we break the lock."
Kael looked at his team. "We are not meant to exist here. This place devours identity. Speak your names constantly. Don't trust the environment. Don't even trust me if I act strange."
The loop began.
---
00:00 – Entering the loop
They stood at the center of a city frozen mid-catastrophe.
Buildings crumbled, yet never fell.
Lightning struck the same rooftop over and over.
Citizens screamed in place — mouths open, eyes vacant, looping the same breath.
A hologram blinked on in the sky:
> "Welcome to ∞L0-W. All time is property. Unauthorized memories will be eliminated."
Kael muttered under his breath. "Kael Varin. Kael Varin. Kael Varin."
Myra did the same. "Myra Quill. Myra Quill. Myra Quill."
The tether to self was everything here.
They moved.
---
02:35 – Searching for the Lockpoint
Aren accessed the city's core servers with a neural spike.
"We're in a split Anchor — someone hacked the exit. The only way out is to restore a memory the loop is trying to delete."
Myra narrowed her eyes. "Whose?"
Aren's voice dropped. "Kael's."
---
04:48 – Memory Ghost Detected
They found a boy—maybe 10 years old—hiding inside a damaged memory core. He looked up, eyes terrified, and whispered:
> "He keeps coming back… Kaelen keeps coming back."
Kael froze. "That's… me. That's my childhood."
The team realized what was happening.
Kaelen, the variant, had inserted a trauma echo into the loop. He wasn't just hunting Kael in real time — he was trying to unmake his origin.
Ghost Ronin growled. "That's psychotic."
Kael turned. "No. That's personal."
---
07:13 – Loop Distortion Begins
The city around them twisted. Buildings reset. Blood ran backward into wounds.
Then the air screamed.
A version of Kaelen — thinner, whispering, with eyes like shattered clocks — stepped out from behind a time-broken statue.
> "Erase the beginning. Erase the hero."
He snapped his fingers.
Aren exploded in light — deleted from the loop.
---
08:00 – Loop Restoration Warning
Kael shouted, "No! We reset in 3 minutes. We can't lose anyone!"
Myra grabbed the memory-boy version of Kael. "You have to remember who you are! Say your name!"
The boy sobbed. "I… I don't know. I don't know anymore…"
Ghost Ronin hurled a memory-bomb at Kaelen. It exploded into frozen childhood smells — Kael's mother's cooking, a lullaby, an old war book he loved.
Kael knelt by his younger self. "You are Kael Varin. You survive this. You build a team. You don't become him."
The boy's eyes glowed.
A fragment of timeline stitched together.
---
10:59 – Exit Fragment Found
Aren's voice returned over comms — "Still alive. Loop was a fake deletion. I uploaded myself into the memory stream."
Ghost Ronin: "Show-off."
Myra activated the exit gate — a floating rift formed above the city, pulsing white and blue.
Kael looked at the boy — now a flickering echo. "Thank you."
The child nodded. "Don't forget who you are. Or I'll come back and remind you."
---
11:42 – Loop Break Achieved
They leapt.
The world rewound one last time and shattered behind them.
---
Anchor ∞L0-W – Cycle Terminated
Entity: Kaelen Echo – Disrupted
Team Memory Stability – Restored (94%)
Aren's Neurological Presence – Partially Digitized
---
Back in the Sanctuary, Aren blinked as his systems rebooted.
"Okay," he sighed, "remind me to never upload my mind into looping trauma again."
Kael chuckled softly. "You did good."
But Myra wasn't smiling. She pointed at the Anchor map.
Another red light was blinking.
> "Kaelen's next move is already in motion."
Kael whispered to himself, "We're going to have to end this. And it's going to hurt."