Salem blinked, and the world around him stuttered. One moment, he was standing in the flickering neon-lit hallway of the Narrative Processing Department, and the next, he was sprawled across cracked asphalt under a sky bleeding orange and purple. Somewhere distant, sirens wailed like ghosts of events that hadn’t happened yet—or maybe ones that had already been forgotten.
“…Not again,” Salem muttered, scrambling upright. His journal was gone. His hands were empty, but the buzzing in his skull—like a thousand overlapping alarms—remained. The static of time skipped in waves, thrumming across his nerves.
A whisper hissed through his head, mocking and playful: Welcome to your tangent, protagonist. Do try to keep up.
Salem groaned. “Fine. Fine, I’m awake. Can we not—”
BZZZT.
A blinding flas
