Fragments of a Life Out of Order

If you're reading this, it means I'm still ahead of him... or that I've already lost. Hard to say.

Time was supposed to be a river. That's what the Timekeepers claimed. One direction. One Current. One long, obedient flow. But rivers split. Rivers flood. Rivers break. Mine broke first.

Now the world lives in pieces. Some days I walk through cities that haven't been built yet. Other days I watch them burn again. Empires repeat themselves because they can't remember they already died. Even the sky forgets what hour it is.

I move through it all unseen, wrapped in the only thing that listens to me... a cloak of stolen hours. It lets me slip through crowds, between centuries, across wars, through markets where futures are traded like fruit. Useful. Or it would be, if it hid me from him.

The Alpha and the Omega. The end of all things. The only constant in a world without constants. He finds me no matter where (or when) I run. I can feel him even now, like a weight on the back of my skull. Waiting. Watching. Certain.

I'm not the only one shaped by the fracture. The Elves of the Fractured Hour drift through their own lives, aging out of order, clinging to journals and ceremonies just to remember themselves. The Timekeepers pretend they still hold the reins. Dangerous lie, that. There are others too... moment thieves, zealots of chaos, traders who buy and sell memories as if they weren't the last true currency we have left.

This world is cracked open. Beautiful, sometimes. Terrifying, always, and everything we do sends another ripple through a timeline already stretched thin enough to tear.

If there's an answer to any of this, if freedom can exist where time doesn't, I haven't found it yet. But I'm still running. I'm still writing. Because as long as I keep leaving words behind, maybe I won't forget who I am.

And if he finds me... at least someone will know I was here.