Salem plummeted through the void, but "void" was too simple a word. Around him, shards of reality spun like shattered glass caught in a storm. Each shard reflected a different version of himself: one laughing manically, one curled in despair, one screaming silently. The fragments collided, rebounded, and merged, forming dizzying patterns that hurt to look at, yet demanded his attention.
"Ah, finally!" the watch chimed somewhere behind him, though there was no behind. "You made it to the freefall segment. Everyone loves freefall. Statistically, chaos increases by 73.2% during this phase. Fun, right?"
Salem gritted his teeth. "I hate freefall."
"Technically, you're in fifty-three freefalls at once. Hate each equally, or just pick one. Or none. Very meta."
The first shards of reality he passed were mundane: a street he remembered, the broken coffee cup from last Tuesday, his own reflection staring back at him from a puddle that shouldn't exist. Then came the wrong ones: buildings upside down, skies a sickly green, birds that walked on clouds, whispering his secrets in languages he almost understood.
"I… I can't… think," Salem groaned, trying to focus on anything solid.
"Good," said the watch. "Confusion is part of the narrative. If you knew everything, it wouldn't be your story. Or maybe it would. Who's keeping score?"
A figure appeared ahead, or behind, or beside—perspective was meaningless here. It wore a black cloak that seemed stitched from the night itself, and its eyes glowed with a knowing, terrifying light.
"Ah… you again," Salem muttered, recognizing the Observer from the carnival. "What do you want from me?"
"I don't want," the Observer replied, voice echoing through fractured time. "I exist. You move. Everything else is just… consequences."
A shard spun violently and collided with him. Instead of breaking, it morphed, stretching his arms, twisting his limbs, and for a heartbeat he felt like a puppet strung by invisible hands. Memories flooded him—skipped conversations, lost mornings, decisions he hadn't made but felt obligated to.
"Stop it!" he shouted. "I'm not a… a… pawn!"
"Oh, but you are," the Observer said, tone amused. "You always were. The question is… which game are you playing?"
The watch spun beside him faster, its ticking now overlapping, multiplying into dozens of rhythms. Salem's ears ached. The spinning shards now reflected entire cities he didn't recognize: one post-apocalyptic, one pristine and hyper-technological, another resembling a carnival of impossible geometry.
"So many… possibilities…" Salem muttered. "I… I can't hold them all…"
"No, but you can step through one," said the watch. "Just pick a shard. Any shard. Or… let me pick for you."
Salem's hand hovered over a glowing shard. It shimmered with potential: a scene he vaguely recognized—himself, older, holding a child whose eyes mirrored his own. Something about it felt… urgent. But before he could reach it, the Observer extended a hand, black as ink.
"Careful," it said. "Not every path leads to salvation. Some are… entertaining in their failure."
The shard pulsed, then exploded into a storm of miniature timelines. Salem felt himself ripped apart and reassembled, stitched back together with a dozen versions of himself whispering warnings and encouragement all at once.
"I can't…" he gasped. "This isn't possible!"
"Oh, but it is," said the watch, now inside his chest somehow, heartbeat syncing with its tick-tock. "Welcome to your personal hell, playground, and rehearsal stage. All rolled into one."
Gravity, time, logic—everything he knew became irrelevant. One shard he grabbed dissolved into liquid numbers. Another became a staircase ascending into impossibly bright clouds. Another twisted into a Ferris wheel that seemed alive, its carriages filled with whispering faces, some of whom mouthed words he couldn't comprehend.
"Why are you showing me all this?" Salem cried. "I… I don't understand!"
"Because understanding is a luxury," said the Observer. "And you've never been good with luxuries."
A sudden jolt sent him spiraling through a shard that looked like a classroom. Desks floated, chalkboards wrote and erased themselves, and versions of himself sat, taking tests he never studied for. A bell rang—though no bell existed—signaling not the end of class but the collapse of time within that shard.
"Enough!" Salem shouted. "I'm… I'm done!"
"Done?" asked the Observer. "Done is not in the vocabulary of the timeline. It only exists in your expectations. And you—dear boy—have shattered those."
Suddenly, a hand—his own hand, older, scarred, and more confident—grasped his shoulder. The shard froze. The kaleidoscope paused mid-spin. The Ferris wheel, the carousel, the floating cities—all hung in suspended animation.
"You think you control the spin?" the older version said. "You don't. You never did. But… maybe, just maybe, you can ride it without losing yourself completely."
Salem blinked. "How… how?"
"By choosing," the watch said, now echoing from everywhere and nowhere. "One shard. One timeline. One action. One… consequence."
He looked around. Every shard pulsed, cried, whispered, laughed, or screamed. One shard glimmered brighter than the others. It was the same one with the child—his future self, the one he wasn't ready to acknowledge. Something about it called to him, tugged at his gut, and whispered promises of clarity… or chaos.
Salem swallowed. He reached.
"This… has to be it," he muttered.
As his fingers touched the shard, the Observer's voice rang in his skull:
"Remember… not all choices are yours… and some will choose you."
Time twisted violently. The shards collapsed into streams of color, numbers, and sound. His body elongated, then shrank, then split into echoes of himself, each pulled toward infinite directions.
And then—
Silence.
Salem floated, suspended in darkness, the shard glowing faintly beneath his palm. A whisper cut through the void, familiar yet alien:
"Welcome to the next act, Salem Grey. Only now… the rules are gone."
And just as he was about to step forward, the shard trembled. It cracked. And a single glowing text appeared above him in jagged letters:
"CHOOSE… OR BE ERASED."
Salem faces the ultimate choice with the fate of multiple timelines hanging on his decision, but even the Observer warns him not all choices are truly his.