Part 6: A Reversed Future

Lyn opened her eyes.

No more closed room, no more ticking from the old clock in the dead of night. She was standing in the middle of a vast square, where everything reflected the old world… but twisted in ways that made her skin crawl. The clocks atop the towers ticked backward. People walked normally, but their shadows moved the opposite way—grinning.

“What is this?” Lyn whispered.

A voice answered, light as wind but sharp as metal:

“This is the Reversed Future. A place where time doesn’t move forward... but loops back to the beginning, over and over, until all will is worn down.”

She turned around—and stood face to face with a girl who looked exactly like her, except with white hair and eyes devoid of hope.

“You’re me?”

“I’m your end... if you don’t stop.”

That girl—her double—was Lyn of the final loop, the version who had stayed too long, tried to fix every mistake with time, until she no longer remembered where she lived, who she was, or when she belonged.

“Where’s Du Hao?” Lyn asked.

“He’s trapped in the present. The one you abandoned… to chase a ghost.”

Lyn looked down at her wrist. The tiny watch she’d worn since childhood was ticking backward, the numbers melting like ice.

“You can’t save your father,” the version said. “He’s become part of the stream. You only have a choice: keep going and forget everything… or go back and let the pain remain.”

Lyn stayed quiet. But she remembered Du Hao’s words: “A watch doesn’t repair memory. It gives us a rhythm to make a choice.”

“I won’t become you.” She stepped forward. “I’ll break the loop.”

The doppelgänger nodded. “Then find The Primal Timekeeper—the original clock. It’s the beginning and the end. But remember: the deeper you go into the core of time, the harder it is to keep your true self.”

Lyn stepped into the center of the square, where the light spiraled like the iris of time. With every footstep, the world reversed further: people turning into clocks, walls dissolving into a rain of numbers, and memories she had never lived began flooding her like a storm tide.

To be continued...