The Time Gambler's Curse

Chapter 7: The Fracture Deepens

Damian stumbled out of the alley, his head swimming with disorientation. His last jump had brought him back—he was certain of it—but everything felt wrong, like the world was an illusion struggling to maintain its form. The familiar city streets of New York stretched out before him, but the ground felt unstable beneath his feet, as if reality itself was trembling.

The first sign that something was off came in the form of a faint hum, buzzing at the edges of his mind, barely perceptible but unshakable. Damian's breath caught as he glanced at the people moving past him. They looked normal at first—businessmen hurrying to meetings, shoppers, street vendors—but there was something... wrong beneath their appearances. Every so often, a passerby would flicker. Just for a moment. A suit changed from gray to brown, a hat disappeared only to reappear a heartbeat later, a man's face became a blur and then sharpened again, as if the world was rewriting itself on the fly.

Damian's heart sank as the reality of it set in. The fracture.

His mind flashed back to Elias's warnings, now chillingly clear: Time's fighting back. It wasn't just the careless jumps he'd made—it was the accumulation of his meddling. Every selfish decision, every reckless leap through time had torn at the fabric of reality, and now the cracks were starting to show.

The fractures were widening.

He forced himself to keep moving, each step heavier than the last. Every sound, every color seemed distorted, as if the world was losing its cohesion. He ducked into a nearby coffee shop, hoping to find a brief respite, a moment to think. The warmth of the café enveloped him, but even that felt muted, as though the world outside was seeping in, contaminating the normalcy within. He took a seat in the corner, pulling Weaver's journal from his coat, his hands trembling as he flipped through the pages.

The scent of coffee, normally so grounding, was thin and weak. The patrons around him were mere flickers, their conversations distorted as though they were drifting in and out of time. Damian forced himself to focus on the journal, each word swimming before his eyes.

One entry stood out among the chaotic scrawls—circled in deep red ink, it looked almost desperate:

The fracture begins not with one act, but with accumulation. Too many jumps. Too many disturbances. Time will resist. And when it does, it will break.

Damian's stomach lurched. The fracture wasn't just a ripple—it was a rupture, and he was at the center of it. Every trade, every bet had torn another hole, and now, the cracks were threatening to pull everything apart.

His eyes darted around the café, and the flickers were worsening. A man at the counter shimmered—one moment standing, the next seated with a cup of coffee in his hand. A woman at the table next to him blinked out of existence for half a second, only to reappear in a different chair. Time was no longer a straight line. It was unspooling, twisting in on itself.

He clenched the journal tighter, his pulse pounding in his ears. How far back do I need to go to stop this? Was it the first bet? The stock market trade? Or had the fracture begun even earlier?

His thoughts were interrupted as the café door swung open. Damian froze. His blood ran cold.

The Eraser.

It was no longer a flicker at the edge of his vision—it was real, solid, gliding through the room with an eerie calm. Its featureless face scanned the shop, and though its hollow sockets had no eyes, Damian could feel its gaze locking onto him. This wasn't a creature of flesh and bone—it was something far worse. It was the embodiment of time itself, come to correct his mistakes.

Damian's breath hitched. The Eraser didn't flicker like the others. It was unaffected by the cracks in time. It was part of the fracture, the hand of the universe sent to erase the damage. He couldn't let it get close, not yet. He hadn't figured out how to stop it—how to undo everything that had led him here.

The Eraser moved with a slow, deliberate grace, its skeletal frame cutting through the flickering chaos of the coffee shop. Damian felt the cold pressure of its presence, like reality itself was bending around it, twisting in its wake.

Run.

Damian bolted from his seat, knocking over his coffee as he scrambled toward the back door. The patrons around him continued their distorted lives, oblivious to the chaos around them—half of them flickering in and out of existence as the fracture deepened. He shoved through the door, into the alley behind the shop, gasping for breath.

His thoughts were a tangled mess. I need to fix this. But how? The journal didn't have the answers—only warnings. Weaver had seen the cracks forming, but even he hadn't found a way to mend them.

Damian glanced at his wrist, at the damaged time device. The dials were worn, the copper scorched from overuse. But it still worked—barely. He could jump again. He could go back. But to where? What moment could undo this mess? His first trade? Or further back? There has to be a starting point. A moment where everything went wrong.

A cold shiver ran through him. The Eraser was close. He could feel it, the weight of its presence pressing down on him like gravity. The flickers in the alley were intensifying—street signs shifted, walls blinked in and out, pedestrians appeared and vanished in the blink of an eye. Time was coming apart at the seams, and the Eraser was closing in.

I don't have time.

With a shaking hand, Damian reached for the time device, twisting the dials as fast as he could. He needed to make one final jump—back to the beginning. Back to the moment his greed had blinded him, the moment the fracture had started. If he could stop himself from ever placing that first bet, maybe—just maybe—the cracks would heal. The Eraser would stop hunting him. Time would repair itself.

His fingers fumbled over the dials, setting them to the date that had haunted him ever since—the day of his first reckless gamble. His heart hammered in his chest as the device whirred, the gears groaning in protest.

The Eraser was nearly upon him, its hollow gaze fixed on him like the judgment of the universe itself.

Damian pressed the button, and the world folded in on itself once more.

As he tumbled through the void, the sensation of falling through time swallowed him, pulling him deeper into the fracture. Reality twisted around him, colors blurring, sounds warping. His mind screamed with the strain of it all, but he couldn't stop now.

Not until he made things right.