My Infinite System.

The Citadel’s common room was quiet, the kind of quiet that comes after too much noise. The soft, ambient glow of the walls felt heavy. They’d gotten Lira and Midas to safety, but the win felt hollow. The real missing piece was still out there.

Lucian sat with his head in his hands, staring at the floor. The immense focus of using his Conceptual Sovereignty had left him mentally drained, and now the older, deeper worry was creeping back in. Lucy.

”We’ve scanned every known database,” Reia said, breaking the silence. She leaned against a console, her arms crossed. ”There’s no trace. It’s like she vanished from the universe the day she went after that lead on Eron.”

”We know who took her,” Marc grunted, his voice a low rumble. ”Eron. We find him, we find her.”

”But we don’t know where he is either,” Evelyn pointed out softly. ”He’s a ghost.”

Vyn, who had been observing from a corner, spoke in her calm, measured tone. ”Lucian.” Everyone looked at her. ”Your ability... it deals with concepts, with reality itself. Does it not touch upon space and time? Could you not simply... go back? To the moment she was taken? Or before?”

The question hung in the air, simple and devastating.

Lucian didn’t look up.

Reia was the one who shot it down. ”No. That’s not an option.” Her voice was sharp, clinical. ”Time travel isn’t a trip. It’s a demolition. You go back to save Lucy? Fine. But the moment you change that event, this timeline collapses. A new one branches off. This one, right here, ceases to exist.”

She looked around the room, her gaze cold and precise. ”That means we never went to Varros. We never met Lira. Omni-Stellar never faced justice for Karys-7. Right now, Lira and her uncle are probably dead in a corporate black site, and we’d never know because we’d have erased ourselves to save one person.”

The weight of her words settled on them. The cost was unthinkable.

Silas, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, scratched his head. ”Okay, but... what if he didn’t go back to save her?”

Everyone turned to look at him. He shifted uncomfortably under the sudden attention.

”I mean, Reia’s right, we can’t change the past. But what if Lucian just... went back to look? Like a ghost. No talking, no touching, no saving. Just... see who grabbed her. Get a face, a ship ID, something. Then he comes back here, to now, and we have a real clue. That wouldn’t break anything, would it?”

The room was utterly silent. Silas had, in his own clumsy way, stumbled onto a loophole.

Reia’s analytical mind was already working, her eyes losing focus as she processed. ”Pure observation... A closed temporal loop where information is the only transferred entity.” She nodded slowly, a look of grudging respect on her face. ”Theoretically, it’s possible. The risk of paradox is minimized if the observer exerts zero influence on the timeline.”

She then looked at Lucian. ”But for him? It would be... difficult. His ability is about imposing his will on reality. To go there and do nothing, to be a passive witness to his sister being taken... It would be a special kind of torture. The urge to intervene would be overwhelming.”

Lucian finally lifted his head. His face was drawn, but his eyes were clear. He didn’t refute Reia’s assessment. He just gave a single, grim nod. He would do it. He would endure that torture for a chance, any chance, to find her.

”I can do it.”

The voice was Marc’s. It was quiet, but it cut through the room.

They all turned to him. He was leaning against the far wall, his massive arms crossed over his chest.

”What?” Lucian asked, his voice rough.

”I said, I can do it,” Marc repeated. ”I can time travel.”

A stunned silence fell.

”How?” Reia demanded, her voice laced with skepticism. ”Your profile is reality warping, teleportation, enhanced durability. There’s no temporal component listed.”

Marc’s jaw tightened. ”Reality warping is what they called it because they didn’t have a better word. If I can bend space, why not time? They’re part of the same thing.” He looked away, a shadow of old pain in his eyes. ”I’ve... done it before.”

The admission landed like a physical blow.

”When?” Lucian asked, his voice barely a whisper.

”When I was with Eron,” Marc said, his gaze fixed on a point on the wall, seeing a different time. ”After I learned what he’d done to me. What he’d made me believe. I was so angry. I thought... I thought if I could just go back, to the day his men came for me. I could warn my parents. I could stop it from ever happening.”

He took a slow, heavy breath. ”I managed it. For a few seconds, I was there. I saw the street where we lived. I saw myself as a kid, playing in the yard. I saw our mom watching from the window.” His voice grew thick. ”And I saw Eron’s men, hiding in the alley, waiting.”

He closed his eyes. ”I was right there. I could have stopped them. I could have saved myself. Saved all of us the pain.”

”Why didn’t you?” Evelyn asked, her voice gentle.

Marc opened his eyes, looking directly at Lucian. ”Because I saw mother pregnant. You were there too, Lucian. You were just a little kid, running out of the house to call me for dinner. And I realized... if I stopped it, if I changed that day, then the you I knew, the man you became... you might never have existed. The brother I just found... I’d be erasing him to save myself. I couldn’t do it.”

The raw honesty in the room was stifling. Marc had lived with this secret, this pain, for years.

”So I let it happen,” he finished, his voice flat. ”I let them take me. And I came back to my own time.”

He pushed off the wall. ”But this is different. I don’t have to change anything. I just have to look. I can be a ghost. I’m good at being a weapon. I can be still when I need to be.”

He looked at Lucian, a silent understanding passing between them. Lucian had carried the weight of leadership; Marc had carried the weight of a past he chose not to alter.

Lucian gave a slow, weary nod. The plan was insane. The risks were incalculable. But it was a thread of hope, and right now, it was all they had.

”Alright,” Lucian said, his voice firming with decision. ”We do it. But we do it smart. Reia, you work with Marc. Figure out the exact coordinates, the precise moment. We get in, we get the intel, we get out. No deviations.”

Reia was already nodding, her mind racing through the temporal mechanics. ”Understood.”

Marc simply nodded, his expression grimly determined. The search for their sister had just taken a turn into the past, and the brother they thought they knew had just revealed he was the only one who could walk that path.