He didn't know how long he knelt there.
The fluorescent light buzzed. Wind through the broken door. Kiara's heartbeat behind him — one hundred and twelve. Fear.
He cared about the one that was missing.
His hands on Alessia's face. Skin cold to frozen. Chill seeping into his palms, up his wrists.
He should let go.
He couldn't.
His forehead pressed against hers. Tears frozen on her cheeks. Blue eyes still open. Still looking at him.
The smile was still there.
Frozen behind the glassy blue. The last thing she'd given him. Not a goodbye. A promise. The kind of smile that said I heard you. I know. Now go save them.
He pulled back. His hands sliding to her neck. Checking for a pulse he knew he wouldn't find.
Nothing.
Just cold. Just stillness.
He cut the zip-ties from her wrists. Her arms fell limp. Dead weight. He lifted her from the chair. One arm under her knees. One behind her back. Her head fell against his shoulder.
She weighed nothing.
She weighed everything.
He lowered her to the concrete floor. Gently. Her head on his folded thermal jacket.
He looked at her.
Peaceful. That was the worst part. Like she was sleeping.
Something cracked inside him.
Not broke. Cracked. Like a dam under pressure.
The void behind his sternum pulsed.
Saem.
The entity stirred. Deep. Ancient. The piece of broken time from his first death. It responded to his grief — not with comfort, but with power. Raw. Vast.
The fluorescent lights flickered. Buzzed. Died.
Darkness swallowed the warehouse. Only moonlight through the broken door.
Then the violet came.
A glow from inside Jae-min's chest. Seeping through the thermal suit like light through deep water. The concrete floor cracked in a circle around him.
A hum filled the room. Low. Deep. Felt in the teeth more than heard.
Kiara pressed herself against the far wall.
"Jae-min. What the f—"
He stood. Turned to face her.
His eyes were no longer black.
The irises bled violet. Slow. Spreading. Something infinite looked out. Not human. A depth that hurt to meet.
The air around him shimmered. Distorted. Moonlight bent around him. Warped.
Kiara's back hit the wall.
She'd been waiting for him to arrive. Waiting to see him cry. To feel the satisfaction of watching him fail.
This was not what she expected.
"Jae-min. What is that. What's happening to your eyes."
He didn't answer.
He raised his left hand. Palm open. Fingers spread.
Kiara watched.
The air in front of his palm split open.
Not a slash. A tear. Like someone had grabbed reality and ripped it apart.
A black crack appeared. Thin as a hairline fracture. Then wider. A vertical wound in space itself, two meters long, hanging in the air between them.
The edges didn't glow. They simply stopped existing. Beyond the tear was nothing. Not darkness. Nothing. An absence so complete it made the brain scream.
Kiara stared at it.
Her mouth opened. No sound.
She could see it. The crack. The nothing behind it. The way the air bent and twisted around it like reality trying to heal itself and failing. She could see her own reflection in the warped space — distorted, stretched, wrong.
"What the fuck," she whispered. "What the fuck is that."
Jae-min's hand moved. Slow. Deliberate.
The crack moved with it.
Kiara tried to run. Terror had locked her legs. Her knees buckled.
"Jae-min. Stop. Whatever that is, stop."
The spatial fold descended toward her right arm. The arm that had held the syringe. The arm that had pushed the plunger. The arm that had killed Alessia.
"No. No, no, no—"
Kiara's eyes were locked on the descending tear. She watched it reach her sleeve.
The fold passed through her arm at the elbow.
There was no blood. No pain. Not at first.
Her forearm and hand simply stopped existing. Gone. Erased.
The stump was clean. Smooth. Sealed. Edges blackened where space had cauterized the wound.
The sleeve hung empty. Flopping against the stump.
Kiara stared at it.
At the nothing where her arm used to be.
She looked up at Jae-min. At the violet eyes. At the tear in space still hanging in the air.
Then she screamed.
Not from pain. From horror. From watching her own arm cease to exist. One moment flesh and bone. The next — nothing.
She collapsed. Remaining hand scrabbling against concrete. Legs kicking.
"You're a monster," she gasped. "You're a fucking monst—"
Jae-min's eyes shifted.
The violet dimmed. The crack hung open one more second. Then the edges folded inward. The nothing shrank. The air stitched itself together.
The hum faded. The fluorescent lights crackled back. Sick yellow.
Jae-min's eyes bled back to black.
Kiara clutched her stump. Pain setting in. Hot. Blinding. She pressed her remaining hand against it. Clean. No blood. Space had burned it shut.
Jae-min turned away from her.
Knelt beside Alessia.
His hands found her face. Cold. Still cold.
He closed his eyes.
The void pulsed. Faint now. Spent. But still there. One thread left. One thin thread of temporal energy.
Rewind.
Air shimmered around Alessia's body. Violet light. Thin. Barely visible. Time bent.
Nothing.
Heart didn't restart. Lips stayed blue. Chest didn't move.
The poison was still in her blood.
Rewinding time didn't undo the toxin. The tetrodotoxin was there. In her veins, her nerves, her brain. Rewinding just took her body to an earlier state that still had poison in it.
He pushed harder. Violet intensified. Concrete cracked wider. Blood ran from his nose.
Rewind. REWIND.
Nothing.
He poured everything into it. Vision went white. Something inside him tore.
Rewind.
Nothing.
The thread snapped.
Jae-min gasped. Violet died. Bulbs popped. Glass rained down. Darkness again.
He was on his hands and knees. Blood dripping from his nose. Copper in his mouth. Head pounding.
He looked at Alessia.
Still gone.
Time reversal couldn't fix it. He'd have to go back before the injection. Before the kidnapping. Before the siege.
Saem retreated. The warmth faded. His eyes shifted. Black. Just black now.
Just Jae-min. Just a man on his knees in a frozen warehouse with the woman he loved dead on the floor and nothing left inside him.
He stayed there. Blood drying on his face. Ice forming on his shoulders.
Then he heard her.
Kiara.
Moaning. Trying to crawl toward the door. One arm.
She'd seen the tear in space. The violet eyes. The power that could erase reality. And she'd chosen to crawl away.
Jae-min looked at her.
His eyes were dry. Empty. The face of a man who had nothing left to feel.
"Kiara."
She stopped crawling.
"Jae-min. Please. I didn't know she would— please. Just let me go. I'll tell you everything. I'll disappear."
He stood. Walked toward her. Each step slow. Measured.
Kiara scrambled backward. "Jae-min. Please. I'm begging you."
He stopped one meter from her. Looked down.
The void pulsed. One last thread. Residual. Fraying. But there.
He reached for it. Wrapped it around Kiara.
Not rewind.
Forward.
She gasped. Skin tightened.
Ten years in three seconds.
Smooth became lined. Lines became creases. Burnt-orange hair at her temples turned grey. Then white. Her remaining hand wrinkled. Spots appeared. Joints swelled.
Fifteen years.
Muscles thinned. Joints stiffened. Spine curved. Skin became paper-thin.
Twenty years.
Not enough to kill instantly. But enough to destroy. Metabolism crashed. In minus seventy, a body that couldn't generate heat was a body that died slowly.
Kiara stared at her remaining hand. Old. Wrinkled. A claw. Not the hand of a thirty-two-year-old.
She touched her face. Skin hung loose. Jowls. Hollow cheeks.
Her eyes — still dark, still sharp — were the only thing that hadn't aged. Filled with something beyond terror.
"What did you do to me."
He didn't answer.
He turned away. Walked back to Alessia. Knelt. Lifted her into his arms. Her head fell against his shoulder.
No warmth. No pulse. No breath.
Just weight.
He stood. Carried her past Kiara. Past the empty chair.
Kiara's voice followed. Broken. Getting fainter.
"Jae-min. Please. I'm sorry. Please don't leave me here. I can't survive in this cold. Not like this."
He didn't look back.
He walked out into the frozen dark.
The walk back was two kilometers.
He carried her. Arms burning. Cold cutting through every seam. The void inside his chest where something used to live.
Snow crunched underfoot. Ice stung his face. White and black and nothing in between.
Alessia's head rested against his chest. Still cold. Getting colder. Rigor setting in. Her body stiffening against his.
His mind was empty.
No strategy. No calculation. The regressor who had prepared for everything — that man was gone.
What was left was a man holding a dead woman in his arms, walking through minus seventy because he didn't know what else to do.
She was dead.
Both timelines.
A needle in her neck. A calculating woman with a syringe. A clean, clinical death somehow worse because there was no rage in it. Just cold intention.
He'd built a fortress. Trained fighters. Saved Ji-yoo. Recruited allies. Done everything right.
She was dead anyway.
The compound grew closer through the dark. Windows dim. Generator humming. Three hundred and ninety heartbeats inside, warm and alive and unaware.
His mind drifted to her last look. Blue eyes. The smile behind the glass.
A doctor to the end. Poison in her blood, body shutting down, and she'd thought about them. Ji-yoo. Yue. Jennifer. Three hundred and ninety people she'd never stopped trying to save.
Then she'd thought about him.
I really want you to marry me.
Yes. I'll marry you. So please don't leave me.
She'd heard him. She'd smiled.
And now she was cold in his arms and the yes was just an echo.
He reached the compound. Snow on his shoulders. Ice in his hair.
Through the door, he could feel the heartbeats. Ji-yoo. Jennifer. Victor. Three hundred and ninety lives that didn't know yet.
He closed his eyes.
Then pushed through the door.