He fell.Not down. Not through sky or space or logic. He simply fell—as if the universe had let go of its grip on him.
There were stars, but they flickered in reverse. There was a silence so deep it pressed into his skin, though he had none. No breath. No blood. No bones. Just thought. Just awareness. And pain.
Her face.It drifted into view like smoke on water. Eyes wide in disbelief. Lips trembling. Her final words. He couldn't remember them, only the sensation—like time stopped, then broke.
She died.He didn't know who. Or why. Or how.He only knew that it shattered him.
Then everything fractured. Time unraveled. And he became... something else.He emerged in a sky that was too still. He reached a planet amidst the darkness.
A strange world floated beneath him. Blue oceans, clouds suspended like frozen breath, trees blooming and rotting in the same heartbeat. Cities buzzed with life, unaware they were being watched by a being from outside time. From above time.
He looked down and saw it all. Every moment at once. Past, present, future. Birth and death as layers of the same skin. A baby took her first step as her bones turned to dust in a hospital bed. A man cried at his wedding and his funeral in the same blink.
What is this?He had no voice, only thoughts. And they screamed.
He saw a woman walking below.She was not the woman from his memories.
Upon reaching her he saw that at once, she was a child skipping rope. A teenager kissing someone behind a library. An old woman staring at an empty rocking chair. She shimmered like glass.
He reached out without fingers.And slipped inside.
Pain.Crushing, suffocating pain. A lifetime in a second. Her memories hit him like a thousand mirrors shattering against his skull.
He saw her heartbreaks. Her secrets. The night she buried her brother. The morning she lost her job. The ache of years pretending to be strong.
He felt it.And then—he was her. In her skin. Breathing. Blinking. But wrong. Her mind pushed back. He trembled. He couldn't move her limbs right. Couldn't even speak her name. She screamed inside.
He broke free, staggering out of her body like a ghost purging itself from a haunted house.He was back in the air, trembling. Shaken.
What am I? Where am I?
And then, for the first time, he noticed the mark on his chest. A flicker of light, pulsing faintly. A wound. A memory.
Her hand.Slipping from his.The hand of the woman from his memories.
He looked up at the sky—a thousand stars glimmered, each whispering a different moment.
He was alone. No past. No name. No purpose.Just pain.
It had all started a year ago, when he was still on Earth.
Viktor Volkov.A theoretical physicist working under the USSR's clandestine science division. He specialized in temporal mechanics—time, essentially. Time, and the threads that might bend it.
His workspace was a cathedral of half-finished diagrams, chalk-dusted blackboards, and humming machines. Time did not flow normally here. It twisted around the sound of old vents and low voltage.
Time was not a concept to him. It was a map. A puzzle. A riddle that, if solved, could be bent into mercy.
He was married.To Anya.
He met her when he was sixteen. She was sunlight and steel, sharp where he was slow, soft where he was absent. She laughed with her whole chest. She rolled her eyes at his seriousness, and then stared at his lips like he was poetry.
She made the stars sound like music. He tried to make them into equations.
And he loved her.He did.But love was not always visible. Not when you were lost in numbers. Not when you were fighting time itself.
He didn't stop loving her.He just stopped remembering how to show it.
Somewhere along the line, the language between them grew quiet.She did all the talking now. With gestures.
Fresh flowers every day on his desk—daffodils, white lilies, violets.They wilted. He didn't notice.She never complained. Just replaced them.
She brought him tea. Every morning.Honey stirred just the way he liked it.Steam curling upward. A gentle clink on the edge of his desk.Her fingers brushed his.He never looked up.
She cleaned around his stacks of paper like a ghost afraid to startle him.She left food warm in the oven. Folded his clothes, repaired loose buttons.She left notes. Jokes. Little hearts on napkins.Sometimes she waited for a thank you.Most nights, she just smiled to herself.
She waited.She waited through months where the only things he held were chalk and calculations.And he didn't even see it.Didn't see her fading, quietly, like one of her flowers left too long without water.
He didn't hate her.He could never.But he forgot how to be present.And she was too gentle to remind him with fire.
The night before it happened, she whispered, "I miss you."He murmured, "I'm right here."But he wasn't.
The day of the accident was meant to be routine.Just another calibration run on the quantum plasma reactor. One more entry in a long log of tests and late hours. The reactor had been unpredictable lately. Viktor insisted on staying overnight.
He watched the data scroll, lines of light across the monitors, while the rest of the facility slept.
At 5:03 a.m., Anya arrived at the lab.She wore that old cardigan. The one she stitched herself. Threads pulling at the cuffs, but the embroidered daisies still bright.
Sleep lingered in her eyes. Her hair was uncombed. She looked at him with an expression that somehow said: you forgot to come home again and I forgive you anyway.
She leaned on the console."Viktor," she murmured. "You've been here all night."He nodded, eyes still on the monitor.
She didn't sigh. She didn't protest.She just stepped closer and placed a mug of tea beside him.The clink. Always the clink.He barely noticed it anymore.
"You should eat," she said. "There's soup. I made your favorite."He didn't answer.
She lingered."I moved your notes off the radiator. They were curling."Still no response.
She smiled—tired, but soft—and walked to the chair by his desk. Sat down. Rested her head on her arms, right beside the sketches he'd drawn during the night.
He let her stay.He always let her stay.But he never asked her to.
And then—An alarm. Sharp. Shrieking.The reactor flared.The glow intensified behind the containment glass.
A low rumble shook the floor. Monitors cracked with static.Viktor's calculations blurred. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
He stood up. His heart pounding. Eyes darting to the reactor core.Plasma buildup. Radiation spike. System overload.
The discharge would fire directly through the room."Anya!" he shouted. "Get out! Now!"
She stirred, dazed. Panic flickered across her face.She saw the light. She saw him.And she moved.Not away. Not to safety.Toward him.
She ran into him—arms around his chest, pulling him down, shielding him with her body."It's okay," she whispered.
The reactor exploded.Light.Heat.Force.A roar of white sound, the world cracking apart.
He braced for death.But what he felt—Was warmth.
When the world cleared, she collapsed in front of him.Smoke rose from the control panel. Alarms still howling.Anya lay still.Her cardigan was scorched. Her hair singed at the edges.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes."I didn't think it would come to this so soon," she whispered.
He dropped to his knees."Anya…"
She reached for his face, a trembling motion."Check—the cupboard."
He wanted to say so many things.But he said nothing.
She brushed his cheek. A tiny movement. Fingers blackened at the tips.
Then she went still.
Her heart was still beating, but she knew it wouldn't be for long.
He didn't remember getting up.Didn't remember leaving the lab.The hallway was silent. The same silence that had swallowed him a hundred times before.
Her shoes still by the door.He stepped around them, as if she were still there.
He walked like a ghost. Every wall looked wrong.
In their room, he found the cupboard.Inside: pressed flowers. Dozens of them. Each tagged with a date. Each a silent offering.A photograph from their wedding. A page from her journal. A scarf he gave her on their first anniversary. A box of chalk she bought him when he said the lab's was too brittle.And a tape.Labeled: For V.
His hands shook as he slotted it into the player by her chair.The screen flickered.Then—her face.Alive. So alive.
She looked tired. But she smiled."I'm sorry if you're seeing this. It probably means I'm already gone."
She inhaled, deeply. Her voice cracked."I'm sorry the flowers wilted waiting for your attention. I thought… maybe one day you'd ask me where I got them."
"I'm sorry I spilled the hot tea on myself and made you wait for another cup.""I'm sorry I wasn't the kind of wife who could pull you away from equations."
Tears welled in her eyes."But I loved you. Even when you forgot to say it back. Even when your eyes never met mine."
A silence."I'll love you with everything I have. I'll love you until my last breath, Vik."
She chuckled softly, her voice trembling.
"Even if I run out of breath… and now that I have, I still love you just as much as I did when you first looked into my eyes and told me how much you loved me."
"I'm sorry."
The screen went black.The tape whirred.And Viktor broke.
The remote slipped from his fingers.He stumbled outside, gripping her burnt sweater. The smell of it. The shape. The last thing she touched.
He collapsed beneath the skylight. The one she loved. The one she always said made the stars feel less lonely.
He looked up.And for the first time in years—he prayed."Please," he whispered.
A word with no answer.
Suddenly, she looked at him with a smile and whispered, "Thank you."He didn't understand why.
The way she smiled, it felt like she just heard something good."What was it?" he wondered.
He pressed his face to it, tears soaking into the fabric."I'll fix this. I'll get her back," he screamed to the skies.
Somewhere deep in the earth, through wires and static and time-bent glass, something stirred.The machine he built—The one he swore he'd never use—Began to hum.