Shattered Time-Chapter 33 – “The Stillness Before the Scream”

Kael didn't try to escape the room anymore.

There were no exits. There was no time. The tea set reset itself every morning, always warm, always fragrant. The candles never fully melted. And the photograph on the table kept changing.

Day one: him and her, smiling.

Day two: just him.

Day three: empty chairs.

He stopped turning it over after day seven.

He wasn't sure if it had been seven days. It felt like a hundred. Or one.

The Pulse remained silent. It hadn't stirred since that moment—the moment she vanished like vapor, her final words echoing like static in the corners of his head.

"You died, remember?"

But he didn't feel dead. His fingers still ached. His stomach growled. His thoughts, though slower now, still clawed at the silence.

Stillness was worse than screams.

He began to talk out loud, not to her, not to himself, but to it—whatever had been watching him through the fractures of this reality. Whatever had twisted his memories and broken his mind.

"Why?" he muttered one night, staring at the candlelight. "Why show me peace if you'll take it away again?"

No answer. Just that suffocating silence.

Until—a knock.

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Three soft, deliberate taps on the wall behind him.

He froze.

The wall looked the same. Floral pattern, dusty trim. But the sound was real. Not in his head.

Another knock. Three again.

Kael approached it slowly.

"Hello?" he whispered, pressing his ear to the cold plaster.

Nothing.

Then a voice, barely more than breath:

"Do you remember what came before the Pulse?"

His heart stopped. He backed away, stumbling into the table. The teacup shattered. The candlelight flared, briefly showing something on the far wall.

A word. Carved in shaking, frantic lines.

"RUN."

He spun, expecting something behind him.

But there was no one.

Only the photo on the table...now showing a version of him slumped against the wall, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes wide with terror.

And beneath it, in smeared ink:

"You're almost home."

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