Chapter 1: The Fall Through Time

The sky cracked.
Not thunder. Not a storm. Something deeper—like the Earth itself splitting open, bleeding light and screaming silence.
Kael Ibarra clutched his head as pressure roared through the air, the experimental station shaking violently beneath his feet. Red emergency lights stuttered above. Alarms blared. Scientists ran in chaos through the halls of Chrono-Seismic Station IX, their screams muffled by the deep rumble of something ancient awakening far below.
“Shut it down!” someone yelled.
“I can't! The quantum stabilizer’s collapsing!”
Kael stumbled into the observation deck, heart pounding. Through the reinforced glass window, he saw it: the Temporal Core—a sphere of white-gold energy spinning faster and faster, coils of lightning spiraling around it like snakes. It wasn’t supposed to behave like this. They were only supposed to tap into a sub-crustal seismic layer for clean energy, not...
Not tear open a rift in time.
Kael was just an intern. A seventeen-year-old prodigy from nowhere, handpicked for this experiment because of his theories on "bio-temporal resonance." He didn’t think it would work. He prayed it wouldn’t.
And now?
Now everything broke.
The Temporal Core detonated in silence, a shockwave of invisible force rippling outward. The glass exploded inward. Time seemed to pause mid-shatter.
And then—
—nothing.

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He awoke to buzzing.
A high, alien frequency, like glass wings rubbing against bone.
Kael groaned, coughing dust from his lungs. His body lay half-buried in warm moss, a thick humidity wrapping around him like a living blanket. He blinked, dazed.
Jungle?
Not the Arctic wasteland where the station was built. This place was alive.
He sat up, gasping at the sight before him.
Towering trees stretched into the sky—trees he didn’t recognize, with glowing spores drifting through the air. Massive leaves shaped like fans rustled overhead, and vines pulsed faintly with bioluminescence.
But it was the sky that made his heart stop.
Two moons.
One cracked and glowing red, like a bleeding eye. The other pale blue, covered in faint ring-like patterns.
“This… this isn’t Earth. Not the Earth I knew,” he whispered.
His communicator was dead. No GPS. No signal. Just static. The only other sound was the ever-present hum, the chorus of insects.
Something buzzed past his ear—fast. Too fast.
He ducked instinctively.
From the undergrowth emerged a shape. Human-sized. Six limbs. Black and red carapace glinting like polished obsidian. Its eyes glowed amber. It stood on two hind legs and carried what looked like a spear made of hardened silk and bone.
An insect.
No—not just an insect. A sentient one.
It tilted its head.
Kael froze.
The creature didn’t attack. Instead, it reached to its chest, touched a glowing organ beneath its thorax, and a distorted, clicking voice echoed from a device wrapped in moss.
> “You… not from Hive. You… human?”


Kael’s breath caught in his throat.
“You speak English?”
The being stepped closer, wings twitching.
> “No. You remember language. That is… rare.”


Behind the first figure, two more emerged—one beetle-like with thick armor, and another tall and mantis-shaped, its eyes constantly moving.
Kael backed up, terrified.
“Where am I? What year is it?”
The leader buzzed again. Its mandibles clicked as it spoke.
> “You have fallen into the Chitin Age.Your kind has not walked this world for… millions of cycles.You are a ghost of the old flesh.”



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Kael was taken—gently, not violently—into the heart of the jungle. Strange creatures observed him from the trees. A centipede the size of a car slithered overhead on a branch. Spiders the size of wolves hung silently in glowing webs strung between fungal towers.
The insect beings called themselves Myrminians—an empire of evolved ant-kin who ruled through logic and memory. Their capital was a living city, carved into a titanic termite mound that pulsed with warmth and light. The tunnels were shaped by pheromone-guided builders, and the air smelled of honey, soil, and rust.
He was brought before the Queen Regent, a creature larger than a van, her body embedded into a throne of living resin and crystal.
She spoke directly into Kael’s mind.
> You are the past… walking in the now. You are not supposed to be here.


Kael whispered, “Neither are you. You shouldn’t exist.”
A pause.
> And yet we do. Because of you.


The chamber went dark.
A vision appeared in Kael’s mind—cities burning, swarms of insects pouring over human laboratories, a dying Earth. Humanity had tampered with insect genes, building bio-weapons to control nature.
But nature had evolved beyond control.
Kael wasn’t in the future.
He was in the result.

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END OF CHAPTER 1