The moment Jae-Won landed in the ravaged remnants of Busan's Underhub, the air sizzled with static. His boots scraped over broken glass and scorched concrete. Above him, the moon hung fractured—its cratered face mirrored the chaos now threading across the timelines.
His Chrono-Mark burned, a pulsing light spiraling up his forearm like a countdown. He winced.
"Damn it... It's accelerating again."
Time was fraying.
The clash with Serin had altered more than just his confidence—it had twisted the Rift itself. Ever since the encounter, his recall of past cycles had sharpened, but something else had surfaced: the presence of another Riftwalker.
He wasn't the only one.
Not anymore.
Jae-Won leapt from the rooftop and landed with a roll. Beneath the ruined tunnel system, sensors pinged from his scanner: an anomaly moving against the flow of time signatures.
Not a rogue AI. Not Serin. Not a phantom glitch.
It was someone like him.
---
In a long-forgotten subway car, flickering blue lights bathed a hooded figure crouched over a fractured watch.
Jae-Won entered quietly, but his voice cut through the air like a blade.
"You're either lost… or very unlucky."
The figure didn't flinch. Instead, they slowly turned.
A girl—no, a young woman—with one eye cybernetic and the other gleaming violet. She smirked as if she'd been expecting him.
"I was wondering when you'd notice," she said, standing. Her coat shimmered with faded time-seals, each like a war medal. "You're the glitched one, aren't you?"
Jae-Won's fingers inched toward the hidden blade under his sleeve. "Who are you?"
"Rin. I'm a Riftwalker, too. But I'm not from your cycle."
A beat of silence.
"You're… from another loop?" Jae-Won's voice dropped. "How many resets have you survived?"
"Six. Not counting the one that killed my brother."
Jae-Won felt his pulse freeze. She was like him—broken by time, stitched together by revenge.
"And you?" she asked, stepping closer, eyes sharp. "Still trying to fix the world?"
Jae-Won didn't answer. He studied her—her worn coat, the half-finished chrono-pulse rifle, the scars on her knuckles. She'd fought, bled, endured. Not for glory. For survival.
"I'm trying to kill the ones who broke it," he said.
Rin's smile was thin. "Then maybe we're allies."
"Or competitors."
They stood for a moment in silence, two shadows carved from separate timelines, converging.
Then Rin nodded toward the flickering map on the wall. "I followed a tear in Sector 4. The Rift's pattern is unstable. Someone's forcing artificial syncs."
Jae-Won's breath caught. That was Serin's work. Her interference was unraveling more than just the present—she was stitching futures that shouldn't exist.
"Then we stop her," he said.
"No," Rin replied. "We stop whoever trained her to do this."
Jae-Won's expression darkened. "The Engineer..."
They had a name now. A target.
---
Later, standing at the mouth of the underground, Jae-Won stared up at the jagged skyline. Somewhere beyond those lights, Serin was rewriting the threads of causality. And now, another Riftwalker was in the game.
He'd seen enough timelines to know: convergence always came with a price.
"Welcome to the glitch," he muttered.
Rin walked up beside him, hands in her coat pockets.
"Think we'll survive this one?"
Jae-Won smirked. "We won't have to."
He activated the Chrono-Mark. The past and future pulsed with new paths.
"We'll win it."