Chapter Five: Reflections Within the Decaying Pages

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A sickly sweet, rotting stench mingled with the acrid scent of chemical agents, like a cold, slimy tongue, violently licking every exposed inch of Kane’s skin. The thick, emerald-green spore fog hung heavily over the ruins of Greenwich Village, New York, soaking the shattered brick walls, twisted fire escapes, and overturned car wreckage in a sinister, slowly flowing dim light. Visibility was less than five meters; each breath felt like swallowing viscous poison, the trachea and lungs burning with a searing sting.

Kane knelt on one knee atop a pile of slippery rubble blanketed by a slimy green fungal carpet. The intense dizziness and tearing sensation from his recent temporal jump had yet to fully subside. The cold touch of his pocket watch pressed against his palm; its crimson digits flickered faintly through the dense mist: 70:22:58:01. Time was slipping away—silent and deadly.

He forced himself to lift his head, eyes straining to penetrate the impenetrable fog as he desperately searched for the coordinate from the fragmented memory. Here—somewhere nearby! That half-collapsed newsstand!

Finally, through the haze, a relatively open patch of ground emerged, revealing a twisted, deformed metal frame. Several shattered plexiglass panes jutted at odd angles into the rubble like the fangs of a beast. The main structure of the newsstand was half-crushed by a massive concrete prefabricated slab, leaning precariously at a dangerous angle, ready to collapse. Exactly as in the memory!

His heart pounded heavily within his chest. Kane fought back the burning pain in his lungs and the overwhelming dizziness caused by the fog, crawling hand and foot over the fungus-covered, mossy rubble. Tiny spore particles, faintly glowing green, floated in the air like deadly dust, clinging to his protective suit—standard issue from the Temporal Bureau, not recalled after the Tokyo mission, now his sole shield—emitting a faint sizzling sound of corrosion.

He lunged before the ruins of the newsstand. In the memory, the crucial newspaper had been buried beneath The New York Times, placed inside the glass window near the ground. He roughly peeled away the scattered magazines and comic books soaked with mold and green slime; the rotting paper crumbled easily in his hands. The overwhelming stench of mildew and the sweet, fishy tang of spores nearly suffocated him.

Found it!

A relatively intact fragment of a color poster depicting an exaggerated rock band adhered partially to a larger shard of glass. Beneath the poster, several newspapers were tangled together, stained by sewage and green fungal threads, their original hues long since lost.

Kane’s heart leapt to his throat. Holding his breath, his gloved fingers trembling, he carefully sifted through the decayed pulp. The paper was fragile, crumbling to dust at the slightest touch. He had to be as gentle as an archaeologist cleaning a millennium-old manuscript.

An edge of a newspaper peeked out. Dark ink, seemingly a front page. But not in the iconic typeface of The New York Times.

He continued to clear away the debris. More fragments peeled away. Suddenly, a bold, incomplete word caught his eye:

…Ring…

Exactly the same word from his memory fragment! And the position matched!

Hope flickered like a faint flame in the thick poisonous fog. He grew even more cautious, his fingernails nearly digging into the fabric of his gloves as he painstakingly brushed aside the sticky grime and fungal webbing.

More letters emerged:

…Ring Project: Temporal Bureau’s Pandora’s Box?!

A headline! The complete headline!

Kane’s heart nearly stopped. He hastened his movements, disregarding the risk of tearing the fragile paper, and pulled the entire newspaper from the rotten pile beneath!

The paper was yellowed and brittle, edges badly torn, the ink blurred by sewage, but most of the front page was still barely legible. The alarming, massive headline stretched across the top:

“Ouroboros Ring Project: Temporal Bureau’s Pandora’s Box?!”

Beneath the headline was a photograph occupying half the page—though somewhat blurred, it was still discernible.

The background of the photo resembled a high-tech laboratory’s signing ceremony. Two suited men shook hands under spotlights. The man on the left looked stern, his gaze sharp as a hawk’s, exuding an aura of absolute control—the very black-clad supervisor of the Temporal Bureau who had sentenced Kane to “formatting!” The caption beneath read: “Dr. Elias Thorne, Senior Advisor, Temporal Bureau.”

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And the man shaking Thorne’s hand on the right...

Kane’s breath froze instantly! His blood seemed to congeal in that moment!

It was an exceptionally young face. Unweathered, unburdened by fatigue, eyes still flickering with a trace of unextinguished idealism. But those familiar brow ridges, the nose’s bridge, the jawline curve... perfectly matched the face in his mirror, the “Professor Carson” in New York, “Sir Evans” in London, “Al-Said” in Cairo, “Dr. Nakamura” in Tokyo—the aged, withered version of himself... All perfectly aligned!

The caption beneath was sharp as a poisoned icicle: “‘Ouroboros’ Project Chief Researcher, Dr. Kane Aldrin.”

Kane Aldrin!

His own name!

The newspaper’s date was glaring—three months before the New York disaster!

Boom!!!

A deep, muffled roar, accompanied by violent tremors shaking the ground, jolted Kane back from his overwhelming shock and soul-freezing coldness! Above him, the prefabricated slab groaned under unbearable weight, emitting a nerve-shredding screech! The shockwave purge had begun! The Temporal Bureau’s standard cleanup protocol, a nuclear blast-level impact designed to obliterate all traces, was about to fall!

“No!” Kane growled, a beast’s guttural roar. The truth was in his grasp! He could not die here! Clutching the rotten, fragile yet weighty newspaper as if it were his last lifeline, he scrambled and crawled toward the outside of the newsstand ruins, seeking shelter. His eyes scanned the surroundings—only collapsed walls and burning car wreckage.

At that moment, from the corner of his eye, a faint reflection flickered on the ground inside the newsstand near where he’d just excavated the newspaper.

Not a shard of glass.

Instinctively, he reached in.

Cold, hard, slender.

He yanked it out abruptly.

An extremely ordinary old brass key! The handle bore no decoration, only faint scratches left by time. It had been trapped beneath a broken wooden plank, exactly at the “mapping point” in his memory fragment where the aged Kane’s finger had touched beneath the control panel!

“Key...” the aged Kane’s whisper thundered in his ears!

Was this the “key” carved into his wrist, pointing to the loop? The one he had left here in the final moments of the New York mission, for himself at this very moment?!

The double shock nearly suffocated Kane! The pressure of the pocket watch countdown, the staggering revelation of truth, the impending deadly shockwave, and now this suddenly appearing cold brass key of unknown significance... All wildly intertwined, tearing at his nerves!

Boom!!!

A second, closer, more terrifying explosion! The prefabricated slab overhead screeched in fracture! Huge chunks of concrete, wrapped in dust and green spore fog, crashed down like a hammer blow!

Kane no longer cared to think. He shoved the crucial newspaper haphazardly inside his protective suit lining, gripped the icy brass key tightly, and summoned all his strength to sprint madly toward a relatively sturdy, half-collapsed apartment building just beyond the shockwave’s expected reach!

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The ground beneath him trembled violently, like the spine of a raging beast. The thick fog churned violently in the turbulent winds, forming deadly whirlpools. Behind him, the destructive white light expanded with terrifying speed, like the gaping maw of hell itself! The scorching heat wave seared his back; his protective suit emitted cries of near-melting agony!

He plunged into the unstable doorway of the apartment building, tumbling inside in a ragged heap. Almost the moment his body crossed into the shadow, a pure, steel-melting destructive force—like the wrathful hammer of divine punishment—smashed down where he had just stood!

Boom—rumble—!!!

An indescribable, massive blast wave mixed with terrifying heat and light instantly swallowed the newsstand ruins, the street, everything in sight! Kane curled up in a corner of the doorway, clamping his ears and shutting his eyes tight, his body trembling violently like a leaf in a storm amid the violent energy aftershocks. The scalding airflow, carrying lethal radiation and spore fragments, surged in through the entrance, battering his fragile protective shield.

The devastating white light seemed to last a century.

Only when the deafening roar and blinding glare began to fade did Kane dare to open his eyes slightly.

Outside, the street that had been shrouded in thick fog was now completely leveled, covered in a layer of glowing, slowly flowing, dark red molten material. The scorching heat warped the air, producing sizzling sounds. The newsstand, along with the patch of earth that had borne a fleeting truth, had utterly vanished, as if it had never existed.

Only the feel of the rotten newspaper clenched in his hand, and that cold brass key, remained real—reminders that everything he had just endured was no illusion.

He had survived. Bearing a truth capable of overturning all understanding, and a “key” whose destination remained unknown.

Kane leaned against the scorching, cracked wall, gasping violently. Each breath burned and tasted heavily of radioactive dust. Trembling, he once again pulled out the newspaper, now even more fragile from sweat, grime, and baking heat.

His gaze fixed unwaveringly on the front-page photo—the young man, Dr. Kane Aldrin himself, shaking hands with the Temporal Bureau’s advisor Thorne, a smile untainted by the world, filled with pure, naive hope for the “Ouroboros” project... or was it admiration?

A bone-chilling realization wrapped around his heart like a venomous serpent:

There had never been a deceived janitor from the start.

He was one of the core architects of the plan.

He, Kane Aldrin, had personally designed this consuming, self-devouring Möbius hell that swallowed countless timelines!

“Heh... heh heh...” A suppressed, blood-tinged laugh escaped Kane’s convulsing throat. The laughter echoed through the ruins still warm from destruction’s baptism, filled with endless absurdity, self-mockery, and... cold fury.

The pocket watch lay in his chest pocket, cold against his skin through the protective suit and newspaper. The crimson numbers continued their ruthless countdown: 70:22:45:37.

The loop continued. And he was both prisoner and the very first jailer.