The Time Gambler's Curse

Chapter 10: The Flicker Grows

Damian's body hit the ground hard, pain shooting through his limbs as the impact rattled his bones. He groaned, pushing himself up from the cracked pavement, his mind a whirl of disorientation. He had jumped again—another leap through time, another chance to fix the growing fracture. But as he blinked and the world came into focus, a cold realization seeped into him.

Something was different this time.

The air around him was thick—dense and suffocating, as though the very atmosphere was pressing in on him from all sides. He struggled to catch his breath, each inhale feeling heavy, like he was breathing through water. His eyes darted around the streets, the familiar landmarks of the city now bent, twisted, and flickering like the dying light of a faulty bulb.

Damian's heart sank. The flicker had gotten worse.

Buildings warped and melted, their shapes distorting as they shimmered in and out of existence. People moved through the streets in jittery, staccato bursts—fragmented marionettes yanked by invisible strings. The sky above flickered between night and day with every blink, time itself unraveling in chaotic bursts. Damian's chest tightened. Reality was no longer stable—it was a broken machine, and the gears were slipping faster than ever.

He staggered to his feet, his pulse hammering. He was back in the city, but it wasn't 1929 anymore. At least, not entirely. The boundary between past and present had been obliterated, leaving him adrift in a warped reflection of both. Each street, every face, every sound felt like an echo of something long lost, a distorted memory teetering on the edge of collapse.

His eyes dropped to the time device strapped to his wrist. The copper dials flickered, the numbers cycling erratically, jumping between decades. The once reliable device was failing, its mechanics broken by the damage he'd caused. It mirrored the world around him—a world slowly dissolving, unraveling with every second.

The fracture's grown too big.

Damian staggered through the streets, his eyes scanning the warped landscape for something—anything—that remained untouched by the flicker. But there was nothing. Everywhere he turned, reality shimmered like a mirage, constantly shifting. He passed a park where trees bloomed and withered in rapid succession, shifting between spring and autumn in the blink of an eye. Cars sped by, flickering between sleek modern machines and rickety relics from a century past, their engines roaring and falling silent in an instant.

Panic gripped him like a vice. This can't be it. There has to be a way to stop this.

The hum returned—a deep, ominous sound that sent a chill down Damian's spine. He froze. The Eraser was close. Of course it was. The more time fractured, the more inevitable its approach became. But now, it wasn't just hunting him. It was hunting the entire world—the entire reality that was crumbling under the weight of his mistakes.

Damian spun around, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he ducked into a side alley, the cold brick walls pressing against his back. The flicker followed him, twisting the alleyway, warping the ground beneath his feet. Time and space bled into one another, the bricks dissolving and reforming as reality fought to hold itself together. He closed his eyes, trying to block it out, but the chaos seeped into his mind, unraveling his thoughts.

I need a way out.

His hands shook as he pulled out Weaver's journal, the pages worn thin, the ink smudged from the constant handling. He flipped through the entries, scanning the frantic scrawls for something—anything—that could guide him. His vision blurred as the words twisted and warped on the page, the flicker even affecting the ink on the paper.

And then, his eyes locked onto a single line, scribbled in the margin:

When time begins to flicker, the past and present will collide. The fracture feeds on echoes, on decisions that were never meant to be made.

Damian's breath caught in his throat. Echoes. That's what he had been seeing—those distorted versions of himself, the people flickering in and out of time, the streets shifting through eras. They weren't just fragments. They were the consequences of every wrong decision, every reckless jump. His mistakes weren't just tearing time apart—they were fueling the flicker, feeding the fracture.

And now, it was consuming everything.

He slammed the journal shut, frustration boiling inside him. The city around him continued to shimmer, the flicker growing more violent, more erratic. He had to act now. He had to find the heart of the fracture—the exact moment when everything had gone wrong. But how could he do that when time itself was unraveling around him? How could he pinpoint a single moment in a world that had become a chaotic swirl of past and present?

The hum grew louder. Damian's pulse quickened. The Eraser was closing in. He didn't have time to hesitate.

He bolted from the alley, his feet pounding against the cracked pavement. The streets were a blur of shifting architecture and flickering figures, time flashing by in rapid-fire bursts. One moment, he was racing past towering modern skyscrapers, and the next, he was dodging horse-drawn carriages and flickering streetlights from the past. His mind spun with the sheer weight of it all—he was losing his grip on what was real and what was simply an echo.

Suddenly, the ground beneath him shifted, and Damian stumbled, falling to his knees. The flicker surged around him, and for a terrifying moment, everything went black.

When his vision returned, Damian found himself standing in a place he knew too well—the speakeasy where it had all begun.

But this time, the room was empty. The tables, the bar, the patrons—gone. Only shadows remained, flickering in the dim corners like distant memories. The air was thick, almost unbreathable, and the hum was deafening now. Damian could feel the fracture pulling at him, drawing him deeper into the chaos.

He rose to his feet, his eyes scanning the darkened room. There, in the cracked mirror behind the bar, he saw it—himself. But not just one version. Dozens. They flickered in and out of view, each one a different Damian from a different moment in time. Some were younger, full of arrogance and confidence. Others were older, weighed down by regret and fear. Each one trapped in a loop, an echo of a decision that had gone horribly wrong.

Damian's breath hitched. This is what it's been about all along. My choices. Every jump, every gamble had deepened the fracture, each wrong decision feeding into the flicker until reality itself could no longer hold.

But there was still time. There had to be.

The shadows twisted violently, and Damian's reflection wavered in the mirror, the many versions of himself staring back with hollow eyes. He had one last chance to fix it all—one last jump. If he could find the heart of the fracture, he might be able to collapse the flicker, reset time before it all crumbled away.

The hum reached a fever pitch, and Damian turned toward the doorway.

The Eraser stood there, motionless. Its hollow eyes locked onto him, and the shadows around it twisted like smoke caught in a vortex. The flicker swelled, consuming the room, growing darker, stronger.

Damian's hand hovered over the time device. His heart pounded in his chest. This was it—his final move. The dials on the time device flickered, barely holding together. He knew this jump would be his last.

With a deep breath, Damian twisted the dials.

The flicker exploded around him, and the world collapsed into darkness.