Damien Virelli stood in the sub-basement of Virelli Tower, thirteen floors beneath the world's largest quantum data hub. The walls pulsed with heat, not from servers—but from something older, hidden behind a vault dated 1947.
This was no ordinary archive. It was Project Chronos, a shelved Cold War initiative abandoned by DARPA and forgotten—until Virelli's AI, RIVEN, unearthed a time-locked subroutine within the Pentagon's network. Something about the Singularity Coil and Temporal Elasticity Maps had intrigued him.
"Are you sure this is it?" Damien asked, brushing his gloved fingers across the vault's encrypted panel.
RIVEN's voice was smooth, eerie. "Positive. Probability of active ChronoCore: 92.7%."
With a hiss, the vault opened, revealing a metallic sphere levitating silently—unmarked, untouched by time.
Damien smiled.
He saw not a machine, but a throne.
"We're not going back to make things better, RIVEN.""We're going back to make them mine."
And so, the world began to fracture.