The journey to Central Asia took nearly two weeks.
For most of that time, Elias had begun to believe there were no new surprises left in the world.
He was wrong.
The world had spent the last few months unraveling itself. Cities disappeared and returned. Echo zones appeared overnight and swallowed entire neighborhoods. Remnant colonies continued expanding across multiple continents while governments struggled to maintain control. People no longer asked whether reality was breaking.
They only asked how much worse it could get.
As it turned out—
Much worse.
The convoy moved across the barren Kazakh steppe beneath a sky filled with dark clouds.
Three heavily modified transport vehicles crawled over the empty landscape.
Inside the lead vehicle, Elias sat beside Sola while the rest of the Underground team monitored scanners and satellite feeds.
Nobody was talking much.
The atmosphere had grown tense ever since London.
The Archivist remained hidden inside Elias's Echo device.
The Aegis considered him a threat.
DTS considered him a target.
And somewhere in the future, humanity apparently considered him one of the most important people who had ever lived.
Elias still wasn't sure how he felt about that.
"How much farther?" he asked.
The driver glanced at a navigation display.
"Two hours."
Elias nodded.
Outside the window, the landscape stretched endlessly.
Empty grasslands.
Rolling hills.
Abandoned villages.
Nothing unusual.
At least not yet.
Then the scanner alarms activated.
Everyone immediately became alert.
"What happened?" Sola asked.
One of the technicians stared at his screen.
His face had gone pale.
"We found it."
The cabin became silent.
Elias frowned.
"Found what?"
Nobody answered immediately.
The technician simply pointed forward.
At first Elias saw nothing.
Then the horizon appeared.
And everything inside him froze.
The world ended.
Not metaphorically.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
A colossal wall stretched across the entire horizon.
It divided Earth in half.
Elias couldn't even comprehend its size.
The structure extended beyond sight in both directions.
North.
South.
East.
West.
It simply continued forever.
The convoy slowed automatically.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody could.
The wall shimmered beneath the afternoon sunlight like a sheet of transparent crystal.
It stood thousands of feet high.
Perfectly smooth.
Perfectly motionless.
Perfectly impossible.
"What the hell is that?" Elias whispered.
Sola stared through the windshield.
"The Glass Border."
The name suddenly felt far too small.
Because this wasn't a wall.
It was a scar across reality itself.
The convoy continued forward carefully.
The closer they got, the stranger the world became.
Birds vanished.
Wind disappeared.
Even sound seemed quieter.
As though the air itself was afraid.
Elias noticed something else.
The clouds above the wall weren't moving.
Not slowly.
Not drifting.
Not at all.
They hung motionless in the sky.
Frozen.
His stomach tightened.
"No…"
The vehicles finally stopped several hundred meters away.
Everyone exited carefully.
Silence greeted them.
True silence.
Not the normal absence of noise.
Something deeper.
Something unnatural.
Elias walked forward.
Every instinct screamed at him to stop.
But curiosity won.
It always did.
As he approached the wall, details became clearer.
The surface wasn't glass.
It only resembled glass.
Inside it—
Things existed.
Things trapped.
Things frozen.
His eyes widened.
A bird hung suspended inside the barrier.
Its wings were spread mid-flight.
Every feather perfectly preserved.
Motionless.
Nearby, a military helicopter floated half inside the wall.
Its rotors had stopped in mid-spin.
A missile remained suspended beside it.
Frozen forever.
"What happened here?" Elias asked.
One of the Underground scientists swallowed nervously.
"We don't know."
Another shook her head.
"No one does."
Elias stepped closer.
The surface reflected his face back at him.
But something felt wrong about the reflection.
It moved a fraction of a second too late.
Like reality itself couldn't keep up.
Then he saw deeper.
Far beyond the transparent surface.
A city.
Entire skyscrapers stood trapped inside.
Cars.
People.
Aircraft.
Animals.
Thousands.
Millions.
Everything frozen.
The world beyond the border had been paused.
Like someone had pressed a cosmic stop button.
Sola approached beside him.
"It appeared twenty-three years ago."
Elias looked at her.
"Before the Lapse?"
She nodded.
"Long before."
His eyes widened.
"Then this wasn't caused by Echoes."
"No."
"Chronite?"
"We don't think so."
That answer somehow felt worse.
Because if Chronite hadn't created this—
Then something else had.
Something far more powerful.
A faint voice suddenly echoed from Elias's device.
The Archivist.
"Temporal anomaly detected."
Everyone turned.
The device screen illuminated.
"The Glass Border."
A pause.
Then:
"Classification: Omega-Level Event."
The scientists exchanged worried looks.
Elias frowned.
"You know what this is?"
Another pause.
Then the Archivist answered.
"Yes."
Nobody liked how quickly it said that.
The digital voice continued.
"This location is one of the oldest temporal wounds in human history."
A chill spread through the group.
"Wound?" Sola asked.
"Correct."
The Archivist paused again.
"Reality was damaged here."
Nobody spoke.
The windless silence felt heavier than ever.
Elias looked back toward the endless wall.
"Damaged by what?"
The answer came immediately.
"The first failed synchronization attempt."
The world seemed to stop.
Even though it already had.
Elias stared at the device.
"What synchronization attempt?"
Silence.
Then:
"The prototype predecessor to Project Echo-Sync."
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
The words felt like a hammer strike.
Sola slowly turned toward Elias.
Her expression had become unreadable.
The Archivist continued.
"Approximately nine thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years in the future."
Elias felt his pulse quicken.
"No…"
"The experiment failed."
The endless wall shimmered.
"The resulting temporal rupture expanded across multiple timelines."
The device screen flickered.
"Containment was only partially successful."
Everyone stared at the impossible horizon.
The Archivist delivered the final blow.
"The Glass Border is not a natural anomaly."
A pause.
Then:
"It is the oldest surviving scar created by Project Echo-Sync."
Elias felt cold.
Very cold.
Because every new answer kept leading back to the same thing.
The satellite.
The Lapse.
The future.
Project Echo-Sync.
And him.
Always him.
As the sun slowly lowered behind the frozen horizon, Elias found himself staring into the impossible wall.
And for the first time—
He realized something even more terrifying than the future might be invading the past.
The future might have already broken it.