"Yuwon…" Mira's whisper bled into the hum.
He flinched at the name, blinking as though it physically hurt. "Don't—" His voice snapped into static, then re-formed, thin and trembling. "Don't call me that. It pulls the pieces apart."
I stepped forward against better judgement, palms numb. "What happened to you?"
He smiled — the smallest thing, apologetic and tired. "I stayed behind. You kept moving. The loops kept turning. Someone had to remember where you'd been. Someone had to watch over you guys."
There was no malice in his tone. Only a kind of weariness, like a man explaining the long bruise beneath his ribs.
Theo's face darkened, anger creasing his jaw. "You're not him."
The red cracks across Yuwon's skin brightened at the edge of Theo's words, reacting like exposed wires. The hum in the air deepened, a pressure against the eardrums.
"Please," the anomaly said too quickly, raising both hands in a fragile gesture. "Please don't say that."
The sudden vulnerability sliced through us. He looked almost—human—then closed his mouth as if snapping shut a wound. For a heartbeat his mouth stayed soft and small.
Yuwon—what was left of him—let out a shaky breath. "Thank you."
The lights along the chamber wall dimmed. For the first time since we'd arrived, everything felt still enough to hear our own blood.
"You don't have to fight us," I said. My voice caught, but I pushed the words out. "We can end this. Together."
His eyes searched my face like someone trying to memorise a map. "End it? If you end the frequency, you also end me. Every loop I watched over. Every try. Every mistake we fixed. Do you understand?" He stepped closer; the pale veins in his arms pulsed like failing circuitry. "If I stop observing, I'll die."
"You won't," I said, softer than I planned. "There's still a part of you that belongs here. Please, Yuwon. You can rest now."
He laughed then — a small, broken sound that echoed like a dropped cup. "Rest." He made a gesture as if juggling meaning. "You say it like it means peace. Truth is, it just sounds like deletion."
Hearing him name it like that — deletion — focused something cold and sharp in my chest. I'd thought of resting as mercy. He heard it as erasure. Something in the way he said it made my chest tighten. For the first time, I saw fear in the anomaly. In him—real, human fear.
"Yuwon," I whispered, "you're tired. You don't have to keep the loop running. It's hurting you."
He shook his head. "It's keeping me together. Every reset stitches me back long enough to remember why we began. Time is what created me. Time is what led you guys to me. Don't take that from me."
Mira's voice wavered. "Silva, he doesn't want this. He's… scared."
"I know," I said.
Yuwon looked between us, as if trying to memorize our faces one last time. "Do you remember what you once told me?" he asked. "You said the sun doesn't worry — so we shouldn't either."
His voice glitched mid‑sentence, splintering like glass.
"So why… do all three of you look so worried?"
He tried to smile. The gesture trembled.
"I know what I am. An anomaly. A system error dressed in memory. But I'm also him — truly. The part that refused to stop watching."
The humanity in his words hurt more than any threat could.
For a heartbeat, I almost believed we could talk until the loop simply unraveled around us.
Then the ground shuddered. The red cracks in his skin flared white, spreading like veins of lightning. He winced, clutching his temple.
"The anomaly's pulling you apart," I said. "You can't keep both halves anymore."
He nodded slowly, breath shaking. "I know. I want to survive."
Then his gaze lifted to mine, fragile and raw. "But he doesn't."
The words hit like a gunshot. Mira covered her mouth; Theo looked away.
I stepped forward, until the static brushed my skin like cold air.
"Then let me help you stop."
Yuwon smiled again — faint, grateful, unbearably sad. "You always were kinder than the rules you lived by."
He raised a trembling hand. The air between us shimmered, thin as glass — reality bending between touch and memory.
"If you do this," he said quietly, "the loops will end. But so will I. Yuwon."
"I'll take it," I whispered. "Because this—" I gestured at the flickering light, the fractures crawling up the walls "—was never life. It was punishment. This isn't what Yuwon wanted, is it?"
He opened his mouth — a breath, a protest — but no words came. Only a low hum, soft as a sigh.
A single tear slipped from his eye, catching the light like liquid static before dissolving.
It broke me. Seeing him like this — part ghost, part god, part man who only wanted to be remembered.
"Come closer," he said at last, his voice trembling. "Let's finish it together."
I hesitated. His silhouette was already dissolving, edges flickering into white light. Every instinct screamed don't lose him again.
But I stepped forward anyway.
Suddenly the static grew louder, crackling through the chamber like electricity slicing through fog. His eyes turned a brilliant white, and he dropped to one knee.
"Yuwon!" Mira and I called out. Theo looked away, silent.
"It seems my… anomaly half is… more tenacious than my human half," Yuwon murmured, voice weak and trembling. Tears ran freely down his cracked cheeks as he forced himself upright.
"This frail body won't listen…" he continued. Then his gaze flickered — first to me, then to Mira, then Theo. His final look was a silent farewell. A faint, sorrowful smile formed: the kind you give only at the moment of goodbye.
Then he raised his arms.
"You guys have to kill me. That's the only way."
Mira stumbled back, shaking. "N-no… we can't—"
Theo didn't speak. He just stared at the ground, expression unreadable.
I wanted to step back too. To collapse beside them and let the grief drown me, but reality pressed in. Less than thirty minutes remained until the Sunrise. Until the Yuwon of this Timeline dies. This was his death sentence, and only we could end it: By Killing this part of him.
I glanced down at the expandable steel baton clipped to my belt.
'No. I'll do it painlessly.'
"I'll handle it. Stay back," I said, trying to inject firmness into my cracked voice.
Neither Mira nor Theo moved. Their silence said everything.
I exhaled, my chest tight with sorrow, and charged toward Yuwon, fists raised — every heartbeat ringing with loss, fear, and guilt.
Static hummed violently, red cracks along his skin brightened, and for a fleeting second, I caught the faintest flicker of recognition in his eyes — a fragment of the humanity this anomalyhad gained.
"Do what you must…" he whispered, voice breaking across the static. As he dodged my first attack.
The words pierced me. Every loop, every sacrifice, every fragment of soul he'd left behind — it all led to this one moment.
And still… I moved forward.
I inhaled, the air thick with static and grief, and charged.
My first blow was a blur — not because he was fast, but because my grief powered it. He dodged, a human motion in an almost-human body. For a second, recognition flared in his eyes, a shard of the man he once was. The sight stabbed me.
Each dodge, each stagger, each soft, pained look he gave me hammered something new into my ribcage. The blows I landed were soft, more like shoves. The blows he returned were not meant to hurt; they were small resistances, like the hands of a person who did not want to be forced into oblivion.
"Please," he said between breaths. "This is wrong."
The world narrowed to faces. Theo's shoulders shook. Mira's hands pressed to her mouth. The hum sang low — like an enormous heart listening for the first time.
The blows we had exchanged weren't malicious. They weren't meant to hurt. Our blows were an exchange of emotions. Mine powered by desperation and guilt yet soft and weak each time they landed.
His hits were even weaker. A desperate defense in a decaying body by a man that welcomes death but is yet forced to fight by a half that isn't human. By a half thats a anomaly.