...utter disbelief.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the tea beside her, now long gone cold. The Ancient One—whose perception spanned centuries, dimensions, and infinite strands of possibility—felt something that had only visited her twice in her long, winding life:
True fear.
"Restart the world..." she whispered.
It wasn't a theory.
It wasn't a myth.
It wasn't a wild speculation.
It was real.
It happened.
She had sensed the disruption—not in time, but in the very weave of the multiverse. Like a cosmic tapestry being shredded and re-stitched by untrained hands. A thread snipped, a patch hastily sewn into the absence. The realization bloomed slowly, with the same heavy silence that followed bloodshed on ancient battlefields:
The world had ended, and no one remembered.
No one... except for a precious few.
People like James.
Asgard
Mjölnir hung loosely in Thor's hand, but his grip tightened until the white of his knuckles showed through. Lightning shimmered faintly in the hammer's surface as he stared at the screen in front of him.
"Loki... did you see that?" Thor's voice dropped, heavy with tension.
"I saw it," Loki replied hoarsely, almost as if his throat was parched from shock. "But I do not believe it."
"A system that resets the world… and we didn't even notice."
Thor turned away from the screen, his jaw rigid and unrelenting. "To wield that kind of power... not even the gods of Asgard could dream of such dominion."
Loki didn't respond immediately.
He continued staring, mind whirring faster than he'd ever admit. That kind of power… it shattered the very hierarchy they believed in. Not the Celestials, not even the all-seeing TVA, held sway over such fundamental reality.
No… it was them.
The Foundation.
Inside the O5 Council Chamber
The room was dim, lit only by glowing monitors and the soft ambient hum of classified machinery. Behind secured titanium-alloy doors and under untraceable shielding, James stood before the most powerful group no civilian had ever heard of—the Overseer Council.
And he was telling them the truth.
Every word more terrifying than the last.
"After SCP-2000 activates, the world is restructured using pre-programmed scenarios," he explained, his tone clinical but burdened with a tension that made it impossible to ignore. "Populations are replaced with biologically engineered clones stored beneath Yellowstone National Park. Memories are implanted. Societies are rebuilt from the ashes of annihilation. And the story of the world continues."
He let that sink in for a moment.
"But this time," he said, "the activation was not intentional. It was forced."
A quiet murmur passed through the seated O5 members. Eyes shifted. One of them finally asked:
"Forced? How?"
James nodded solemnly and dropped a manila folder onto the polished obsidian table. Inside: classified logs, anomaly activity charts, failed experiment documentation, and a torn page from a black site's daily schedule.
"A researcher. A hybridization test. They attempted to merge SCP entities using a controlled energy matrix. Instead, it created a feedback loop that destabilized reality across multiple layered vectors. The system read it as a CK-Class restructuring-level threat... and triggered an emergency protocol."
He paused.
"The result: an unintended CK-Class event. The Yellowstone facility activated. Two-thirds of all anomalies? Gone. Either unaccounted for or erased entirely from history."
For a moment, the chamber was completely silent. The weight of those numbers hit them like a detonation.
And then James looked up.
His voice dropped into something that almost resembled reverence—and dread.
"The worst part?"
Everyone leaned in slightly. Even O5-One, normally unreadable, looked engaged.
"We don't know what caused the initial trigger. Not really."
More silence.
And this time, it felt suffocating.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier
The screen faded to black. A lingering hum buzzed in the room. Nick Fury stood rooted in place, one eye locked on the residual afterglow of the broadcast.
"What kind of organization did we get involved with?" he muttered under his breath.
Natasha, seated nearby, said nothing. Her usual sarcasm, wit, and cool professionalism were absent. Her face was unreadable, but her clenched fists said enough. Neither her Red Room training nor her S.H.I.E.L.D. experience had prepared her for this.
They were pawns on a chessboard built by giants.
No—by architects.
And those architects had just rewritten the rules of the game.
Kamar-Taj
The apprentices stood in stunned silence, some of them still glancing up at the energy-scrying portals floating in the sanctum air. The Ancient One finally spoke.
"The Foundation... they are not part of this universe's design," she said. "They are its fail-safes."
A young apprentice, hesitant, finally asked: "Master… what should we do?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she walked toward the arched window, gazing out into the constellations above.
"We watch," she said quietly. "And we remember."
Because if memory was the only weapon left in a world that could be reset at a whim... then remembrance itself was resistance.
Back in the O5 Chamber
James closed the last folder, his voice firm but not unfeeling.
"There is hope," he said. "The primary systems within SCP-2000 are intact. The damage was contained before full narrative collapse. The next step is stabilizing what anomalies remain and locating erased Foundation sites through retroactive time-mapping."
"Will it hold?" O5-One asked.
James paused, eyeing the flickering graphs on the screen—each one a pulsing heartbeat of a shattered reality.
"…For now," he said. "Yes. But this event... it was a warning."
He took a breath. His eyes scanned the council, each of them absorbing the enormity of what had transpired.
"The next CK-Class restructuring event may not be accidental."
And then—
The screen began to fade.
Words scrolled slowly across the black display in clinical white text:
[This concludes the current public access briefing.]
[You are now exiting Level 5 Clearance.]
The broadcast ended.
The screen went dark.
Around the world, silence followed.
A silence louder than sirens.
A silence filled with dread… and awe.
The kind of silence that comes only after realizing the world isn't what you thought it was. That your memories, your histories, your cities and families and childhoods—could be overwritten by someone else's version of truth.
The SCP Foundation had pressed the reset button.
And the world hadn't even blinked.
To be continued...
___________________________________
Get membership in patreon to read more chapters
Extra chapters available in patreon
patreon.com/Dragonscribe31