The Archive was silent.
Liam stood before the Tapestry of Moments—a vast, shimmering expanse of threads that wove together every event in time, past, present, and future. Each strand pulsed with light, a living chronicle of existence. He had spent weeks learning to navigate its currents, to observe without interference.
But today was different.
Today, the Archive had chosen his test.
A thread glowed brighter than the others, pulsing like a heartbeat. Liam reached out, and the vision swallowed him whole.
---
He stood on a rain-slicked street, the air thick with the scent of wet asphalt and distant thunder.** Neon signs flickered through the downpour, casting fractured reflections in the puddles at his feet. This was a memory—or rather, a moment yet to pass.
And there she was.
Clara.
His best friend since university, the woman he had always been too hesitant to tell how he truly felt. She was laughing, her umbrella tilting against the wind as she hurried down the sidewalk, oblivious to the danger lurking just beyond the glow of the streetlamp.
A shadow moved in the alleyway.
Liam's breath hitched. He knew what came next. He had seen it in the Tapestry's weave.
A figure lunged from the darkness.
Clara's gasp was cut short as a hand clamped over her mouth. Her umbrella clattered to the ground.
Liam's body moved before he could think—instinct screaming at him to intervene, to step in and stop it—
pains assults his body, as he fell to the ground,But the rules of the Archive were absolute, not to be tampered with, for each sin has it punishment.
He was not permitted to interfere.
His fists clenched at his sides, nails biting into his palms. Every muscle in his body burned with the need to act, to do something, as tears streamed down his face
But that was the test.
Discipline.
Restraint.
The agony of inaction.
Clara struggled, her muffled cries like knives in Liam's chest. The attacker dragged her toward the alley, her shoes scraping against the pavement.
"Let me help her!" Liam's voice was raw, desperate. He whirled toward the empty air, as if Kairus might appear to grant him permission.
But there was no answer. Only the relentless truth of the Archive's law:
Some moments must unfold as they are meant to.
Tears blurred his vision. He could feel the temporal energy around him, the power at his fingertips to rewrite this horror—but he didn't.
He couldn't.
The scene before him flickered, the edges dissolving like smoke. The Archive was pulling him back. The test was over.
Clara's terrified eyes locked onto his—as if, for a single impossible second, she could see him there, watching.
Then the vision shattered.
Liam stumbled backward in the Archive, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The Tapestry of Moments rippled calmly before him, undisturbed.
Kairus stood nearby, his expression unreadable.
"You passed."
The words should have been a comfort. They weren't.
Liam wiped his face with a shaking hand. " but she still gets hurt."
Kairus nodded. "But the timeline remains intact. That is the burden of an Archivist."
Liam looked down at his hands—hands that could rewrite history but chose not to.
The weight of that choice settled into his bones.
He had held his discipline.
But it had cost him a piece of his soul.