Trapped In Elysium: A Virtual Reality Nightmare-Chapter 179: Timeline Changed.

The queen took one last glance at the trembling man who had stumbled through her portal—Devon, as he called himself—but her eyes quickly drifted past him. She had already judged him harmless, at least for now. There was no malice in him, no shadow of intent. His presence was a mystery, but not one she could afford to unravel just yet.

There were heavier matters to attend to.

She turned from the stranger, her regal bearing unfaltering despite the visible toll the portal had taken on her.

"Marcus," she said, drawing the young man’s attention.

He straightened a bit, brushing the sweat from his brow. His hair was damp, his clothes still clinging to him from the rush through the portal, but he nodded without hesitation. "Yeah. I gave it to him."

The others looked to him immediately—Jason, Sophia, Borik, Eleanor, Von. Even the stranger Devon shrank back against the wall, observing the change in tone, sensing something bigger unfolding.

"You’re certain?" the queen asked.

Marcus nodded again, more firmly. "He took it.I stayed hidden. Let the old Marcus handle it. Liam gave him a sandwich. He handed him the pendant. It was natural. He took it."

The queen closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in slowly. A faint ripple of light shimmered across her skin and vanished into the air.

"That was all we needed," she murmured.

Eleanor stepped forward, brows tight. "What now?"

The queen opened her eyes again and looked at them, one by one. "Now... we wait."

Sophia folded her arms, her lips pressing into a line. "Wait for what? I thought that was the fix."

"It might be," the queen said softly. "It might not."

Jason frowned. "I don’t like the sound of that."

"No one does," Von grunted.

Marcus looked from face to face, then back at the queen. "You said giving Liam the pendant willingly would save him."

"Yeah it will," she said. "But the timeline is like a river—when you throw a stone into it, you create ripples. But you can’t always tell what shore those ripples will touch."

She turned her gaze to the glowing symbols that had begun to pulse faintly along the inner wall of the tomb. Runes older than any language written by man. They were lighting up, slowly, one by one. Not randomly—but in a pattern.

"The fact that the portal brought someone else through..." She glanced briefly at Devon, who was still sitting on the floor with his back pressed against cold stone. "It means something was disturbed. A fracture that widened when we interfered. The pendant... the orb... these are not simple objects. They are tied to fate."

Borik exhaled heavily, scratching his beard. "So an unthinkable thing might happen?"

"Yeah," the queen said.

They fell silent.

Even Devon, who barely understood a word of what they were talking about, stayed quiet.

"Only one of us will remember what truly happened here," the queen said, her voice echoing gently through the chamber.

The group turned toward her. Her eyes locked with Marcus’s.

"You," she continued. "You are the traveler. The one who walked against the current of time. The only soul who stood in two versions of the same timeline."

Marcus blinked. "Me?"

She nodded once. "When the timeline shifts—when the rites complete—everything will adjust. Memories will realign to reflect the world as it is now, not as it once was."

Von frowned. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means," the queen said, "when Liam completes the test—when the power of the artifact binds itself to him or rejects him—your memories will all reshape to fit the outcome of that moment. You will remember only what your place in that new version of events would have been."

Sophia stepped forward, tension pulling at her features. "So we’ll forget all of this? The portal? Marcus leaving? That man coming through?"

The queen gave a slow, tired nod. "To you, it will seem as though things happened another way entirely. The mind rewrites itself to protect the timeline from splitting. What was once true... becomes a dream. A shadow. A half-remembered echo at best."

Jason looked at Marcus. "And him?"

Marcus felt the weight of all their eyes pressing down on him. He straightened his back but said nothing.

"He will remember," the queen said. "All of it. Every step. Every word. Every risk he took. Because he broke the stream of time with purpose. The fabric recognizes him as an anomaly—so it won’t correct him."

Marcus swallowed hard. His chest felt tight.

"You’ll carry the burden," she told him. "You’ll know the truth even when the rest do not. And that will be your cost."

Eleanor glanced at him. "You okay with that?"

Marcus didn’t answer right away. His mind flashed back to the alleyway, to the older version of himself, worn and jaded. To the pendant.

Then he nodded once. "Yeah. I can live with it."

The queen managed a faint smile, the kind that didn’t quite reach her eyes. "Good," she said. "Because you won’t have a choice."

Marcus opened his mouth, halfway through a sentence, "But if Liam—"

He stopped.

The queen was gone.

Not just missing. Not walking away. She had vanished, like mist in sunlight—no trace, no fading footsteps, no shimmer of magic. One blink, and the space where she’d stood was simply empty stone.

Marcus’s breath caught.

He turned around sharply, looking for her. "Wait—"

But no one else reacted.

Not even a flicker of confusion on their faces.

Sophia was speaking now, her voice steady, hopeful. "He’s still in there, right? He must be almost done with the test."

Jason nodded, arms crossed. "Yeah. We’ve waited this long. He’s got to be close."

Von paced slowly by the wall. "Whatever’s happening in there, let’s just hope he makes the right choice."

Marcus looked from one to the other, heart thudding. The panic was quiet, but it sat heavy in his chest.

They weren’t talking about the queen. Not even a mention.

They didn’t remember.

The timeline had already changed.