Chapter 18: The Ouroboros Protocol

Modern Timeline - Prom Night Paradox

Elara's thrift-store dress morphed into quantum chainmail when her date's "chivalrous" hand turned clawed. The black dog materialized wearing a bowtie of barbed wire.

"Time loop protocol," it barked as the gymnasium warped into a Mayan ziggurat/1940s USO hybrid. "Isolde's recycling the same romantic tropes since the Spanish Inquisition."

Multiverse Flashback - 1620 Salem

Spirit Child #12 screamed into a love letter that would later surface as Elara's math homework: "His fangs feel like rose thorns when he pretends to be human..."

Modern Showdown

Elara jammed Isolde's algorithm by kissing both the dog and its human flicker-form simultaneously. The resulting temporal shockwave:

1. Erased all digital records of her existence

2. Aged the black dog into a WWII-era soldier missing half his face

3. Transformed the prom king into a sentient wolfram beta version of ChatGPT