The silence after Eric's disappearance was deceptive—like the eye of a storm, calm but brimming with latent fury. Though the temporal collision had ended, its aftershocks rippled through Lin Xiaoxia and Xu Yuan's lives in ways neither could have anticipated.
Lin Xiaoxia was the first to notice the fractures.
Her dreams became portals to splintered futures.
Some nights, she wandered a metropolis of cold steel and humming drones, its skyline cutting into an ashen sky. She wore clothes she didn’t own, walked streets she’d never seen, and woke with a loneliness so acute it clung to her like a second skin.
Other nights, it was blood on pavement—Xu Yuan’s body broken, his eyes wide with surprise—and she’d jolt upright, her throat raw from screaming.
The visions felt less like dreams and more like memories of timelines that never were—or might yet be.
Xu Yuan, meanwhile, developed an uncanny sensitivity to time’s flow. He’d pause mid-step, staring at nothing as if listening to a whisper only he could hear. Sometimes he murmured fragments of languages neither recognized—words that tasted of antiquity and dust.
Then came the strangers.
They appeared like ghosts at the edges of their lives: a man in the café who stirred his coffee clockwise, then counterclockwise, in perfect rhythm with the second hand of his watch; a woman in the park whose shadow stretched too long at noon. Their gazes lingered just a beat too long on Xu Yuan.
Lin Xiaoxia and Xiaoya dug deeper. What they uncovered chilled them:
The Silver Family hadn’t died with Eric.
Its roots ran deeper, its branches wider. And now, like vines after rain, they were reaching toward Xu Yuan—drawn to the power stirring in his blood.
One evening, as Lin Xiaoxia traced the symbols from her nightmares onto paper, the pieces clicked.
"They’re not just watching him," she realized, her voice hollow. "They’re waiting for something. A sign. A trigger."
Xu Yuan stood by the window, his silhouette framed by moonlight. When he turned, his eyes held a glint she didn’t recognize—something old, something hungry.
"What if," he said slowly, "the dreams aren’t warnings?"
"What else could they be?"
His fingers brushed the glass. Outside, a streetlight flickered—then froze mid-spark.
"Invitations."
The clock on the wall stopped ticking.
Lin Xiaoxia’s breath caught.
Somewhere, a door between times creaked open.
And the hunt began anew.
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