Chapter 1

Let me start from the very beginning.

Lily was never a normal child. Ever since she learned to speak in complete sentences around the age of three, she would occasionally make a prediction to a family member before breakfast.

For instance: "Mom, don't drive to work," or "Dad, don't eat the croissant."

That day, Mom took the bus to work instead. Later in the afternoon, we saw on the news that a horrific multi-car pileup had occurred on the highway she usually took, completely paralyzing traffic for six whole hours.

And Dad skipped the croissant provided in the company breakroom. However, a colleague of his—who was also severely allergic to peanuts—was rushed away in an ambulance. Somehow, a small smear of peanut butter had gotten onto the bottom of that croissant.

This pattern proved true time and time again. Lily’s predictions allowed our family to dodge trouble on a regular basis. Honestly, the first time she made a prediction, the whole family was terrified.

Whenever it happened, she would slip into a trance-like state. Her eyes would roll upward until no iris was visible at all. Her breathing would drop to a barely perceptible whisper, and her voice—lowered by half an octave—would turn into a flat, emotionless murmur.

Lily had no memory of anything she said. The moment a prediction left her lips, she would snap right back to normal, blink her eyes, and start begging for chocolate milk or blueberry pancakes.

We grew accustomed to it, depended on it, and loved her deeply for it. We were convinced Lily was special.

Until my parents had to go on a three-day business trip, and I was left alone with Lily for the first time. Although I had to cancel a trip with my friends, I was actually looking forward to it. Lily rarely made predictions for me; most of the time, she was warning our parents. Up until then, I had only received two or three mundane warnings, like "don't drink the juice."

It did save me from a glass of spoiled juice, but I still hoped for something… cooler. Escaping from the jaws of real danger always feels far more satisfying than just a false alarm, right?

For the first two days, Lily said nothing. I had almost given up hope. Then on the third day, as I was pouring coffee in the kitchen, Lily walked in dragging her favorite plush rabbit. Her footsteps suddenly stopped behind me.

I knew this was the prelude to a prediction. I turned around, expecting to hear some minor warning about a broken brake light or spoiled milk, only to find Lily staring dead at my throat with lifeless, glazed eyes.

"Jesse, don't kill me."

The mug slipped through my fingers and shattered into pieces on the wooden floor. Scalding coffee splashed all over me, but I couldn't feel the burn at all.

Lily blinked, and the gloom surrounding her vanished almost instantly. She flashed a bright smile at me and hopped onto a high stool.

"Good morning, Jesse! Did you drop your cup? What did I just say that scared you like that?"

My heart slammed against my chest so violently it nearly suffocated me. I looked at her small, fragile body—her slender wrists, messy blonde hair, and a face full of pure innocence.

How could I possibly kill her? Why would I kill her? How could I ever want to murder my own little sister?

I couldn't tell her the truth; it would terrify her. Swallowing hard, I forced a stiff smile.

"You just said… not to confess to the girl next door. I guess it's because I'd get rejected."

She giggled, dangling her legs under the stool as she reached for the syrup on the table.

"Maybe the prediction is wrong! Jesse, maybe she’ll actually like you."

Yes, maybe the prediction was wrong. I slid the pancakes from the pan onto the plate in front of Lily. She happily enjoyed her breakfast, chirping away like a little sparrow, while I could do nothing but obsess over the meaning of that warning.

Lily’s predictions were always declarative statements meant to stop us from doing things we might or were about to do. But what on earth could happen to create a possibility where I would kill her?

Over the next twenty-four hours, I fell into a state of extreme paranoia. I didn't dare step a single foot out of the house. Every time I picked up a butter knife, every time I walked past her, anxiety gnawed at my insides like a viper, making my skin feel stretched and swollen with tension.

That night, after tucking Lily into bed, I returned to my room, locked the door tight, tied myself securely to the bed with rope, and stayed awake all night.

The next day came, and nothing happened. Lily was alive and well, I hadn't touched a single hair on her head.

That was the very first time her prediction hadn't come true. You might think, "Hey, were you actually planning to do something to her? "

No, that's not what I mean. Lily’s predictions always had a "consequence." Think about what happened before: Mom avoided a car accident, and Dad dodged a potentially fatal allergic reaction. Their fates were borne by others. But what about me? I followed the instruction, so what was the consequence of doing so?

Most people might laugh it off, thinking that since nothing happened, there was no need to dwell on it. But I couldn't. This wasn't over. It suddenly struck me that none of us had ever been curious about the source of Lily’s predictive abilities.

I searched online for everything related to prophets, whether they were genuine possessors of strange abilities or frauds chasing fame. But not a single person could make predictions as flawlessly accurate as Lily's. I began organizing every single statement Lily had ever uttered, alongside the consequences they brought us. I built a spreadsheet on a hidden USB drive, cross-referencing past statements from the last four years against dates, traffic reports, local news, weather data, and household incident logs.

I must admit, the truth is always terrifying.

Lily was not predicting the future at all.

Predicting the future implies seeing possibilities that have not yet occurred. But her warnings were not abstract visions; they were highly targeted, causally explicit directives. She wasn't seeing what might happen in the future.

She was seeing the past.

Every morning, Lily was briefly replaced by a version of herself from another timeline. A Lily from that timeline had just suffered a terrible tragedy in her world—a trauma so unbearable that she forcefully wedged herself into our universe just to use those brief three seconds to scream out a desperate warning after the fact.

Think about it carefully. When she told Mom not to drive to work, it was because in Timeline A, Mom had been crushed to pieces in that multi-car pileup. The Lily of Timeline A then bled her consciousness into our intact Timeline B, solely to say: "Mom, don't drive to work."

Mom changed her route. Timeline B was saved, and we remained on a safe branch.

Every single time our family avoided a fatal accident, an embarrassing mistake, or a tragic illness, it was because in a neighboring parallel reality, another version of our family had suffered that exact same fate and written us a warning in blood.

And when Lily said, "Jesse, don't kill me," it meant that on the timeline she originally came from…

I had already killed her.

The deduction sent a violent wave of nausea through my stomach. Looking at my hands, I could almost see invisible blood staining my skin.

Was I going to suffer a sudden mental breakdown? Was I going to contract rabies? Or was it just a terrible accident that a Lily from another timeline mistook for murder?

I began desperately trying to prevent it from happening. I cleared all heavy and sharp objects from the common areas; I covered every furniture corner with soft padding; I refused to drive her anywhere; I didn't even dare to touch her, terrified that a single misstep would send her tumbling down the stairs.

Naturally, my parents noticed my bizarre behavior. I refused to tell them why, but they didn't pay too much attention to me because Lily’s condition was visibly worsening. She looked exhausted, with dark, bruise-like circles around her eyes. Aside from her occasional trance-like predictions, she stopped talking to anyone altogether.

My parents were frantic. They took Lily to see one doctor after another, but no one could offer a cure. We had no choice but to keep her at home. I did my best to avoid being alone with her, but plans don't always hold.

Taking a deep breath, I opened her bedroom door. Lily was sitting in the middle of the room with her back to me, surrounded by her drawings. Aside from her silence, she looked no different than usual. But as I drew closer, I realized the papers were covered in chaotic scribbles of black crayon.

Every single page was filled with intricate, jagged lines. In the blank margins, she had written over and over again in crooked handwriting:

There are too many of me here.

There are too many of me here.

They can't stop.

"Hey, Lily, what are you doing?"

I kept my voice as gentle as possible to avoid startling her. She didn't look at me, her black crayon snapping in half from excessive pressure.

"Every time you stop… another me can never go back."

"…What do you mean by that, Lily?"

"…She stayed here. They're all here, deep inside my head. They can't leave."

Gasping heavily, my body inexplicably froze, unable to move. I could only watch helplessly as she stood up, backed toward me, and spoke in a voice as soft as a faint exhale.

"Jesse… how many rooms do you think are inside my head? It's getting so crowded in here. They're all screaming together right now, and they all want to tell you what you did to them."

Her neck twisted around to face me. Her shoulders didn't move—only her neck rotated at a sickening, unnatural angle. Her eyes rolled back, staring dead at me with nothing but the whites.

When she opened her mouth, the voice that emerged was not her own. It wasn't even a single person's voice; it was a chorus of hundreds—dozens of distinct timbres, some sharp and high-pitched, some deep and muffled, some echoing as if echoing through a deep iron pipe. Overlapping entirely, they produced a horrifying, unified chorus from her small throat.

"Every time the future is changed, the old world doesn't vanish into thin air. The broken worlds still exist. Every abandoned Lily bleeds continuously into this body, every single time. We are full now, Jesse. There is no room left for the original Lily here."

She took a step toward me, the joints in her limbs making spine-chilling clicking sounds.

"Do you want to know what actually happened on the timeline where you killed me?"

Lily’s voice suddenly turned gentle and soft, almost a whisper.

"You didn't mean to… You just wanted to cure us. You wanted to use a knife to cut these voices out of our head while we were sleeping. Jesse, that's what you did. You always do things like that. So many times we've lost count."

A violent spasm of pain hit my stomach. I sank to my knees, dry-heaving uncontrollably as tears blurred my vision. No, no, no.

"Now do you want to know what happens on this timeline, Jesse?"

The monster occupying my sister's body stopped a mere two inches from my cheek. I could smell it—a stench of rust and wet dirt.

She bent down, pressing her cold, clammy palms tightly against my cheeks, forcing me to look straight into her eyes.

"On this timeline… we won't warn you anymore."

With a violent shudder, Lily went completely limp and collapsed into my arms. Trembling, I held her tiny body and placed a finger beneath her nose. She was still breathing, but her skin was terrifyingly cold. I carried her back to bed, pulled up the covers, and backed out of the room.

I didn't tell Mom and Dad. How could I? What could I even say? "Hey Mom, Dad, your daughter is a crowded graveyard of timelines, and I am destined to lose my mind and mutilate her"?

After I have dealt with everything, I packed my bags, grabbed my keys, and drove away from that house. I believed that as long as I left, as long as I vanished completely, the cycle would be broken. If I wasn't there, I couldn't hurt her. I could just disappear, drift along the open road, and let her be a normal little girl.

I’ve been driving for almost six hours now. The sun set long ago, and I stopped at a rest station to buy some drinks and food.

When I got back in the car, my phone sitting on the passenger seat began to vibrate.

It was a text message. Sent from Lily's iPad—the one she usually uses to watch cartoons.

With trembling fingers, I picked up the phone and tapped the notification.

She had sent an audio file. I pressed play, and Lily's voice came through the phone's speaker—her own, true voice, echoing in the silent cabin:

"Jesse, don't look back."