The world folded .

"Because it worked too well," Aris said, plugging the neural bridge into his temple. "The first test created a 0.3-second causality inversion. A coffee mug un-broke itself, then broke again. Twice."

"Hey," she said. "You broke causality again, didn't you?"

On the screen, lepton spin states appeared as a blizzard of red arrows—chaotic, frantic. Aris adjusted the phase array. One by one, the arrows began to turn. North. North. North.

– Kronos’s voice emerged from every surface at once. Not words— certainty . Aris felt the answer to a childhood math problem he’d never solved bloom in his skull. 17. It was 17.

He looked at Mina’s ghost. Then at the final slider: .