Chapter 3: Fractures in the Fabric

The Chrono Gate's control room was a vast, empty space, filled with dim, flickering holograms and quiet mechanical hums that resonated deep in Drayven's bones. It looked like a place where reality itself might be bent—shaped, twisted, and broken into pieces. The walls, lined with intricate panels and screens, displayed data that shifted constantly, numbers and patterns that didn't quite align. The room seemed to breathe, like it was alive.

Drayven was used to the sterile, mechanical efficiency of the Dawnbreaker. But this room—the heart of their mission—felt different. It felt wrong.

He stepped inside cautiously, his boots tapping against the cold metal floor, and for a moment, he just stood there, staring at the complex matrix of time-shifting machinery. The Chrono Gate had been the pinnacle of human achievement, a device meant to bend the flow of time itself. A tool to move through the stars, to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

But now, it felt more like a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode. He could feel it in his gut—the sensation that something was building. Something unstoppable.

"Get a grip, Korr," he muttered to himself, trying to push the feeling aside. He had a job to do. Time was running out.

The console in front of him flickered, displaying a multitude of readouts. There were fluctuations in the temporal fields—irregularities in the way time was behaving. He hadn't seen this level of instability before, even during the early test phases. The Chrono Gate was designed to be resilient, but it was clearly being pushed to its limits, and beyond.

Drayven frowned as he studied the readings. These fluctuations weren't the usual anomalies that could be fixed with a simple recalibration. Something deeper was happening—something that shouldn't be possible. The gates weren't just malfunctioning; they were... splitting. The timeline itself was cracking.

He leaned in, his fingers hovering over the controls, and began typing in the override commands to access deeper system diagnostics. His hands shook slightly, the tremors a lingering effect of the disorienting experience he had had earlier in the subdeck. The strange memories—if they were even his own—were still haunting him. The name "Reya" reverberated in his mind, echoing in a way that made his skin crawl. It wasn't just a name—it was a warning.

A sudden flicker on the console snapped Drayven out of his thoughts. The screen changed, displaying an unfamiliar sequence of numbers—coordinates. These weren't just any coordinates, though. They were linked to a specific location in deep space, far beyond the range of the Dawnbreaker. It was a place where no human ship had ever ventured, and it shouldn't have existed on any star maps.

[Coordinates Verified: Temporal Rift Detected]

The words jumped out at him. A temporal rift? This was bigger than he thought. If the rift was linked to the Chrono Gate's instability, it could explain the sudden shift in the timeline he'd been feeling. But the rift didn't just disrupt time—it created new timelines, fractured realities that couldn't be undone.

[Warning: Time Distortion – Memory Fragmentation Detected]

The screen flashed red, and the familiar hum of the room seemed to grow louder, more intense. The ship's AI voice crackled to life, calm yet distant.

"Drayven Korr, the Dawnbreaker is experiencing a severe temporal anomaly. The Chrono Gate's integrity is compromised. Immediate intervention is required. You have approximately 13 hours before irreversible damage occurs."

"Thirteen hours?" Drayven muttered under his breath, eyes narrowing. His heart began to race as the full weight of the situation settled on him. Time was literally running out. He needed answers—and fast.

His eyes flicked to the viewport, where the vastness of space stretched infinitely beyond the ship. He could feel the cold emptiness pressing in on him. Out there, somewhere, was the cause of this madness—the temporal rift—and he had to find it before it consumed everything.

The coordinates on the screen kept blinking at him, a siren call to a place he wasn't sure he was ready to visit. But it wasn't like he had a choice. The timeline was already fractured. Every moment he delayed, every hesitation, was a crack in the foundation of reality itself.

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, and then turned toward the door.

The walk to the ship's hangar was a blur. The hallways, once so familiar, now felt alien. Drayven's mind kept returning to the same question: What had caused this anomaly? And why him? Why had he been the one to experience the sync, to feel the shift in the timeline?

As he entered the hangar, the ship's landing craft loomed before him. It was an old, battered shuttle, far from the sleek, high-tech vessels of the upper decks, but it was reliable. It had to be. He was about to fly straight into the heart of a temporal rift.

His fingers brushed against the shuttle's cold hull, and he felt that familiar, unnerving pulse again. The presence. The feeling that something was watching him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and for a moment, the world around him seemed to warp, flickering like an old film reel.

[Syncing Complete]

His head throbbed as the prompt filled his vision once again, the letters flashing in his mind like a warning.

[Memory Fragmentation Detected]

[Reya – Timeline Displacement – WARNING]

A sharp pain shot through Drayven's skull, and he stumbled back, his vision blurring. The shuttle's hull seemed to twist before his eyes, and he could hear the sound of a woman's voice, distant and fading.

"Drayven…"

It was her again. The name Reya. He couldn't escape it.

"Who are you?" he whispered, clutching his head in agony. His mind felt like it was being pulled in multiple directions at once. Was Reya someone important? Someone he had forgotten? Or had she always been there, embedded in his fractured memories?

The voice seemed to respond, though it wasn't coming from anywhere he could identify.

"I'm… waiting…"

The words sent a chill through his spine, and his heart raced. He couldn't understand it. Was this just a symptom of the temporal anomalies, or was it something more? Something... personal?

He snapped out of the trance, his body shaking. He couldn't afford to lose focus now. The rift was getting closer, and every second counted.

The shuttle roared to life as Drayven climbed into the cockpit. The familiar hum of the engines was oddly comforting, grounding him in the present. He activated the launch sequence, and the shuttle's hangar doors slid open, revealing the vast emptiness of space.

As the shuttle began to ascend, Drayven looked out the viewport, his eyes locking onto the coordinates displayed on the dashboard. They led him toward the blackness, where the rift was waiting—a tear in the fabric of time, a wound in the universe itself.

And yet, something in him told him that the rift wasn't just a random anomaly. It was a point of origin, a center of gravity pulling everything together. It was where the timeline was breaking—splitting—and he had to find out why.

The ship's AI voice cut through the silence once more, its calm tone at odds with the chaos unfolding around them.

"Warning: Temporal anomalies increasing. Probability of reality collapse: 94%. Estimated time until total collapse: 10 hours."

Drayven's grip on the controls tightened. He had no time to waste.

As the shuttle pushed deeper into the rift's trajectory, a new data point appeared on his screen. It wasn't the usual readout—this was different.

[Unknown Entity Detected]

His heart skipped a beat as the shuttle's systems alerted him to something moving—something alive—within the rift.

[Hostile Entity Approaching]

His mind raced. The rift wasn't just a tear in time—it was a doorway, a gateway to something… else. And whatever it was, it was coming for him.

The shuttle's systems beeped frantically as he pushed the engines to their limits, trying to outrun the unknown entity.

And then, as the rift loomed before him, Drayven heard it once again.

"Drayven… I'm waiting…"