The hospital corridor smelled like antiseptic and overboiled coffee.
People moved in currents — nurses weaving through families, patients shuffling slowly, a wheelchair squeaking somewhere behind her. The ceiling lights hummed faintly. Someone coughed twice near the reception desk. A baby cried, sharp and sudden, then stopped.
Ariana walked through it all like she was walking through a recording she’d already watched.
Her MRI wristband scratched lightly against her skin. She turned it once around her wrist, reading the printed code again.
Room 3B. 14:42 intake. Technician: Sharma.
She would remember it forever.
A nurse caught up beside her. “You handled the scan really well,” she said, adjusting her mask absently. “Some people panic in there.”
“It’s just magnets and radio waves,” Ariana replied.
The nurse gave a polite laugh. “Still. Being trapped inside a machine can feel scary.”
“Only if you imagine the worst,” Ariana said calmly.
The nurse adjusted her mask again.
“You’ve touched your mask four times in the last minute,” Ariana added.
The nurse blinked. “I— what?”
“Five.”
The nurse stopped touching it.
They walked a few more steps in silence.
Near the vending machines, a little boy stared at her, wide-eyed. “Did it hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
“Are you sick?”
Ariana considered that. “Not in the way you think.”
The boy’s mother gently pulled him back with an apologetic smile.
Ariana kept walking.
At the far end of the corridor, the doctor who had supervised her scan flipped through a thin file as he approached. “Miss Verma,” he said. “The results will be ready next week.”
“I know.”
“You don’t seem worried.”
She glanced at the wall clock.
3:17 PM.
“I’ve already calculated the possible outcomes,” she said.
The doctor gave her a long look. “Most people with hyperthymesia struggle with the emotional weight of it.”
“I remember everything,” Ariana replied evenly. “That doesn’t mean I have to react to everything.”
A stretcher rolled past them. The wheels clicked twice over a seam in the floor.
Click. Click.
She would remember that too.
The automatic doors ahead of her slid open with a soft mechanical sigh, letting in a rush of warm afternoon air.
“Take it easy this week,” the doctor said.
Ariana stepped toward the light outside.
“I always do.”
The doors closed behind her with a quiet finality.
And for just a fraction of a second — so brief it could have been imagination — the hum of the hospital lights flickered out of rhythm.
She noticed.
Of course she did.
Outside, the air felt heavier than it should have.
Not humid. Not cold. Just… dense.
The hospital doors sealed shut behind Ariana with a soft hydraulic click. She stepped down onto the pavement, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder.
The sky was pale blue. Almost too pale.
Cars moved normally. A bike sped past. Someone argued over a parking ticket near the gate.
Everything looked fine.
She paused anyway.
A delivery truck idled near the entrance. The driver checked his phone, scratched his beard, then looked up.
Ariana watched him.
Three seconds passed.
Four.
Five.
He scratched his beard again. Same motion. Same angle. Same absent expression.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
The truck engine made the same uneven revving sound.
A couple walked past her on the sidewalk.
“I told you we should’ve left earlier,” the woman muttered.
Her partner sighed. “It’s fine. We’re not late.”
They walked by.
Ten seconds later, they walked by again.
Same pace. Same words.
“I told you we should’ve left earlier.”
“It’s fine. We’re not late.”
Ariana didn’t move this time.
She didn’t turn her head.
Her pulse did not quicken.
She simply observed.
The traffic light at the intersection ahead flicked from red to green.
Then back to red.
Then green again.
Too fast. No transition delay.
The delivery truck engine cut out.
Then started again.
The driver looked up.
Scratched his beard.
Same motion.
Same angle.
Same absent expression.
Ariana finally blinked.
Once.
The world didn’t stutter like this.
Not unless—
The sky flickered.
Not visually.
Conceptually.
Like a frame had been replaced incorrectly.
A pigeon took off from the pavement.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Mid-flight, it froze.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Then continued.
No one screamed.
No one reacted.
The arguing man at the parking gate was still mid-sentence, finger raised.
“…and I’m telling you this is ridiculous—”
He reset.
“…and I’m telling you this is ridiculous—”
Ariana’s breathing remained steady.
She spoke softly, almost experimentally.
“This is repetition.”
The wind stopped.
Completely.
No sound.
No motion.
And then—
Everything resumed at once.
The traffic light stabilized.
The couple did not pass again.
The truck drove off.
The pigeon vanished into the sky.
Normal.
Perfectly normal.
Ariana stood there alone on the pavement, the hospital building reflecting sunlight behind her.
She looked up at the sky.
“This isn’t a neurological hallucination,” she murmured.
Because if it were, she would remember previous distortions.
And she didn’t.
This was new.
For the first time in years—
Something had happened that she had no memory of happening before.
And that was impossible.
Ariana stepped off the pavement and toward the intersection where the traffic light had flickered.
If there was a pattern, it would repeat.
If it repeated, she would catch it.
Her shoes touched the edge of the road.
The wind shifted.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
The air pressure dropped so fast her ears rang.
Somewhere in the distance, a sound rolled across the city — low, deep, like a building exhaling.
She looked up.
The sky had darkened.
Not with clouds.
With density.
A line appeared on the horizon.
Straight.
Too straight.
Her brain processed it before her body did.
Water.
A wall of it.
People around her hadn’t reacted yet.
A man was still mid-step. A woman still scrolling her phone.
Ariana inhaled sharply.
“This is not meteorologically possible,” she whispered.
The line became a roar.
Cars began to honk.
Someone finally screamed.
The water hit the outer buildings first — glass exploding outward in a spray of glittering shards.
Then it reached the street.
The force was beyond scale. Beyond reason.
It swallowed sound.
It swallowed light.
It swallowed people.
The impact knocked Ariana off her feet before she could even turn fully. Icy water crushed into her lungs as she was dragged under instantly, violently, the pavement vanishing beneath churning debris.
She didn’t thrash wildly.
She observed.
The temperature: shockingly cold.
Visibility: near zero.
Pressure: rising.
Her bag was torn from her shoulder.
Something hard struck her ribs.
Her body spun, weightless and powerless.
Up was indistinguishable from down.
Her lungs burned.
She tried to orient.
Count seconds.
One.
Two.
Three—
A car door slammed into her side underwater. The impact forced what little air remained from her lungs.
Darkness crept inward at the edges of her vision.
So this is how it ends, she thought.
No.
Correction.
So this is how it resets.
The last thing she saw was light refracting through dirty floodwater like shattered glass.
Then nothing.
No sound.
No cold.
No body.
Just—
Black.
She wasn’t floating.
She wasn’t sinking.
There was no sensation at all.
Only darkness.
Endless. Weightless. Silent.
Ariana opened her eyes.
There was nothing to see.
And yet—
She was conscious.
“I’m not dead,” she said softly.
Because she would remember dying before.
And she didn’t.
Somewhere ahead, faintly—
Two colors began to glow.
Red.
Blue.
Felix was mid-argument with a vending machine when the world ended.
“This is robbery,” he muttered, smacking the glass lightly. “I paid. You saw me pay. Give me my chips.”
The packet hung there. Tilted. Mocking him.
He crouched slightly to shake the machine—
The lights flickered.
He paused.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned the universe.
The convenience store went silent.
No fridge hum.
No traffic outside.
No cashier flipping magazine pages.
Felix straightened slowly.
“Okay… that’s new.”
The fluorescent lights above him blinked once.
Twice.
Then froze.
Not off.
Frozen.
Like someone had paused a video.
The cashier behind the counter was mid-blink. Completely still.
A coin he had just placed on the counter hovered in the air — not falling, not moving.
Felix stared at it.
“…What.”
He waved a hand in front of the cashier’s face.
No reaction.
He snapped his fingers.
Nothing.
He stepped outside.
The street was locked in place.
Cars frozen mid-motion. A pigeon suspended in the air. A man laughing with his mouth open and soundless.
Felix slowly turned in a circle.
“Okay. Either I finally broke reality… or this is above my pay grade.”
The sky darkened.
Not gradually.
Like someone lowered the brightness setting.
He looked up.
A crack split across the sky.
Thin at first.
Then widening.
Light leaked through it — not sunlight. Something deeper. Colder.
Felix blinked.
“Yeah, no. That’s illegal.”
The crack shattered.
Water poured through it.
Not rain.
Not a wave from the horizon.
From the sky.
An ocean falling downward.
He didn’t even get time to run.
The first impact knocked him flat against the asphalt. The force drove the air from his lungs instantly.
Water swallowed the city whole.
He tried to push upward, but there was no direction anymore. Just violent spinning and debris.
Something hit his shoulder.
His ears rang.
His chest burned.
“Okay— not ideal—” he tried to say, but water filled his mouth.
He thrashed once. Twice.
Then instinct faded.
The world dimmed.
The last thing he saw was the vending machine from across the street ripping free and tumbling past him underwater, chips still trapped inside.
Unfair.
Darkness consumed everything.
He inhaled sharply.
And breathed.
There was no water.
No body.
No up.
No down.
Just black.
Felix blinked.
“…I knew it,” he said to absolutely nothing. “I’m too cool to die normally.”
Silence.
Then—
Two lights appeared in the void.
Red.
Blue.
They hovered at equal distance from him, glowing softly.
Felix squinted.
“…Oh. This is that kind of situation.”
He drifted slightly closer, hands in his hoodie pockets out of habit — even though he wasn’t sure he had a body.
“Red feels dramatic. Villain arc. Fire. Destruction. Very aesthetic.”
He leaned toward the blue glow.
“Blue feels… cold. Strategic. Quiet. Suspiciously calm.”
The void didn’t respond.
He grinned.
“So. Is this a personality test? A moral alignment thing? Or did the universe just finally give me a character selection screen?”
The lights pulsed faintly.
Felix tilted his head.
“Alright. Fine. Surprise me.”
He reached out.
There was no sound.
No wind. No breath. No heartbeat.
Only awareness.
Ariana opened her eyes into absolute black.
Not the kind of darkness created by absence of light. This was deeper. Structural. Like space before stars existed.
She did not panic.
She tested first.
She tried to inhale.
Air entered her lungs.
Interesting.
She lifted her hand.
She could feel the motion — though she could not see it.
“I drowned,” she said quietly.
The statement did not echo.
Memory replayed with precision:
The wall of water.
The impact.
The pressure.
The moment oxygen ran out.
She remembered death clearly.
Which meant this was not hallucination during it.
Two lights ignited in front of her.
Red.
Blue.
They did not brighten the void. They simply existed within it.
Equidistant. Equal size. Floating at eye level.
Ariana went still.
“I know this,” she whispered.
Not from experience.
From fiction.
Her favorite game.
The opening sequence no one unlocked without triggering a hidden catastrophic route. Two choices in a black void. A moral alignment split disguised as aesthetic preference.
Most players picked red.
Red was dramatic. Emotional. Powerful.
And in the original game—
The red route ended in a tragic death.
Not immediate.
Not obvious.
But inevitable.
The protagonist gained explosive strength, unstable abilities, aggressive political leverage.
And then died alone at the final arc.
A scripted downfall disguised as glory.
Her pulse remained steady.
“So this is that,” she murmured.
The red light flickered slightly brighter, as if reacting to recognition.
The blue did not flicker.
In the game’s lore, blue was the “unremarkable” path. Slower growth. Strategic alliances. Political navigation.
Harder.
Less flashy.
But survivable.
She stepped closer.
The red glow pulsed irregularly. Warm. Tempting.
The blue remained cool. Even. Controlled.
“If this world follows similar mechanics,” she reasoned softly, “then red is accelerated power with structural instability.”
And instability always collapses.
She did not need power.
She needed information.
She needed time.
She reached toward the blue.
For a fraction of a second, the red flared violently — as if in protest.
Then her fingers touched blue.
Cold.
Not painful.
Precise.
The light didn’t explode outward.
It folded inward — pulling her through it like slipping between layers of reality.
The darkness shattered into white.
Darkness pressed in from every side.
No sound. No floor. No air. Just that strange weightless suspension like the universe had paused mid-thought.
In front of Felix, two lights hovered.
Red.
Blue.
They didn’t flicker. They waited.
He exhaled slowly. “So this is how we’re doing this.”
No dramatic speech. No overthinking.
Blue looked calm. Predictable. Safe.
Red looked alive. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat under skin.
Felix tilted his head, studying it. “You look like trouble.”
The red glow seemed to throb a little brighter.
He smirked.
“Yeah. Definitely trouble.”
He didn’t know why his chest felt tight looking at it. Didn’t know why the air—if there even was air—felt warmer on that side.
He reached out.
For a split second, his hand hovered between both lights.
Then he moved decisively.
Red.
His fingers closed around it.
The moment he touched it, heat surged up his arm—not burning, but intense, like grabbing a live wire of pure energy. The darkness cracked with a sharp, glass-like sound.
Light exploded outward.
Not gentle.
Not welcoming.
Violent.
The void fractured into shards of red brilliance, and Felix felt himself falling—not down, but through.
Through heat.
Through sound.
Through something that felt like a memory trying to surface.
As the world around him began to form—
Stone walls.
Smoke.
A banner whipping in harsh wind—
A thought struck him.
That interface.
Those two choices.
The color contrast.
The pulse of the red light.
His eyes widened.
“No way…”
A distant echo in his mind. A menu screen. Countless replays. Heated forum arguments at 2 a.m. about which ending was canon.
His favorite game.
The one with the infamous branching choice at the beginning.
Red route.
Blue route.
He landed hard on stone, breath knocked from his lungs.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at a ceiling of dark beams and drifting ash.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he whispered.
Somewhere in his memory, a scene replayed—
The red path wasn’t the easy one.
It wasn’t the stable one.
It was the one that spiraled fast. Power gained quickly. Consequences even quicker.
The tragic ending route.
He slowly sat up.
A torn crimson-and-black banner hung across the hall. A wolf insignia burned into the fabric.
Northern Kingdom.
His pulse quickened.
He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
“…Oh.”
He looked down at his hands. Steady. Stronger than before.
He remembered now.
He always chose red on replays.
Because it was chaotic.
Because it was intense.
Because it hurt in the most dramatic way possible.
And because he loved that ending.
Felix pushed himself to his feet, dust falling from his shoulders.
“Well,” he murmured, staring toward the open doorway where distant shouting echoed through the corridor.
“If we’re doing this…”
A slow grin spread across his face.
“Let’s see how bad it gets.”
