The low, mechanical hum of server racks was the only sound that kept Shadow company most nights in 2025. It was more than white noise—it was the heartbeat of Fiction Zone, his life's work, his sanctuary, and his prison.
The blue glow of his 42-inch curved monitor lit up his tired eyes, reflecting endless lines of code that danced like ghosts on the screen. He adjusted load balancers, fine-tuned algorithms, and tracked real-time user spikes. Fiction Zone wasn't just a website; it was a global revolution in digital storytelling. A titan of content, outpacing publishing giants, housing millions of serialized tales from around the world.
It was his cathedral of redemption.
But no number of successful updates could erase the ghost of Sarah.
Sarah—her name lingered like an unclosed tag in the HTML of his heart. A long-lost love, severed by a misunderstanding neither of them had dared to confront. She had once been his co-founder, his equal in both intellect and imagination. Now, she was only a memory wrapped in silence.
A thunderstorm loomed outside, its fury reflected in the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. Forks of lightning streaked the sky, momentarily illuminating the city skyline in brilliant whites and eerie blues. He didn't flinch. He'd long since grown used to storms—both in the skies and within himself.
He reached for his coffee, lukewarm and bitter, when it happened.
The monitor surged—no, exploded—with a blinding light. Not a flicker, but a flood. A radiant white wave that swallowed his vision and erased every sound, every breath, every thought. He tried to scream, but his voice was lost in a vortex that had no air, no ground, no sense of direction.
His body convulsed, twisted in a thousand directions. It felt like being sucked into a digital maelstrom—code, memories, sensations, time itself—shredded and recompiled.
Then—nothing.
He gasped, lungs desperate for air as if he'd been underwater. His eyes fluttered open to a different world. No more sleek glass desks. No humming servers. No glowing monitors. Just… stillness.
And the scent.
A strange, hauntingly familiar blend of old textbooks, aged wood, and the lingering trace of a cologne he hadn't worn in over a decade. His gaze darted across the room. Posters of Linkin Park and Green Day lined the walls. A tattered skateboard leaned against a chipped dresser. His desk—his old desk—was cluttered with pens, notebooks, and a dim lamp that flickered faintly.
He shot upright, only to stumble over the skateboard. "What the—?"
He staggered to the mirror, heart thudding like a war drum. What he saw nearly sent him reeling.
Staring back was a gangly, pimply-faced teenager with a mop of unkempt brown hair. A face he hadn't seen in fifteen years.
"No way," he whispered, breathless. "No—freaking—way."
He touched his cheek. The skin was smoother, softer. His fingers trembled. This wasn't a dream. It couldn't be. Every detail was too vivid. The weight of the air. The creak of the floorboard beneath his foot. The faint hum of the ceiling fan.
"This is my old room… from high school?" he muttered.
Then it hit him—like a tidal wave crashing against the cliffs of his mind. A surge of information, organized with perfect clarity. Every novel hosted on Fiction Zone. Every line of code he'd written. Every growth hack, partnership, marketing campaign. Everything from 2025—preserved, indexed, and now embedded within his brain.
He fell to his knees, gasping as if the sheer volume of data was crushing him. But instead of pain, it brought clarity.
It was a rebirth.
A cosmic do-over.
He wasn't just a teenager again—he was armed. Equipped with the knowledge of the future, carrying the blueprint of a billion-dollar empire inside his head.
And then—Sarah.
His breath caught.
Could he find her again? Reach her before things went wrong? Fix what they'd broken?
He stood slowly, gazing into the mirror, his eyes meeting those of his fifteen-year-old self. This version of him was no longer aimless. No longer a slave to regret.
"I'm back," he whispered, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "And this time… I won't fail."
He turned from the mirror, his heart pounding with purpose. The world thought it had seen the rise of Fiction Zone. They hadn't seen anything yet.