The planet they had chosen for their quiet retirement was called Haven. It was a simple name for a simple, beautiful world. Life here was measured in sunrises and tides, not in galactic crises and countdown timers.

For Ryan and Scarlett, after a lifetime of noise, the quiet was the most beautiful music they had ever heard.

This particular morning, a new and terrifying sound was echoing from their small, simple house by the sea. It was the sound of a smoke alarm, screaming as if it were being murdered.

Ryan, the man who had once held the power of a god, stood in the kitchen, surrounded by a cloud of black smoke. He was at war with a pancake.

And the pancake was winning. He held a spatula in his hand like a weapon, looking down at the smoking, black disc in the pan with a look of pure, baffled defeat.

"I don't understand," he said, poking the charcoal-like object. "The instructions seemed so simple."

Scarlett walked in, a towel wrapped around her wet hair, a small, amused smile playing on her lips. She took in the scene: the smoke, the screaming alarm, the look of utter confusion on the face of the man who had once stared down the end of the universe.

She walked over, casually picked up the smoking pan, and tossed it into the sink, where it hissed angrily. With a practiced flick of her wrist, she silenced the smoke alarm.

"Maybe let me handle the cooking from now on, hero," she said, wrapping her arms around him from behind and resting her chin on his shoulder. "You handle the... you know... looking handsome and staring thoughtfully at the ocean."

He leaned back into her embrace, a real, easy laugh bubbling up from his chest. "Deal," he said.

This was their life now. It was a life of small, perfect, and wonderfully boring moments. The great war was over. The universe was safe. The Matriarchs were ably guiding their new, chaotic alliance. And here, on this quiet little world, two weary soldiers had finally found a place to rest. They were happy. It was a quiet, simple, and deeply earned happiness.

It was, of course, too good to last.

A soft, polite chime echoed through the house. It was not a red alert or an incoming transmission. It was the simple proximity alarm they had set up at the edge of their property, a gentle warning that someone had landed a ship.

They looked at each other, their peaceful morning instantly shattered. In a fraction of a second, the relaxed, happy couple was gone, replaced by the two deadliest people in the galaxy.

Scarlett's eyes went cold and sharp, her hand already moving toward a small, sleek pistol she kept hidden on a nearby shelf. Ryan's posture straightened, his gaze fixed on the front door, his mind already running through a dozen different possibilities.

They had chosen this world for its obscurity. No one should have been able to find them.

A single figure appeared, walking slowly up the sandy path toward their house. It was a man, walking with an uncertain, stumbling gait. His expensive-looking suit was wrinkled and stained, and he looked thin and exhausted.

He was not walking like a soldier or an assassin. He was walking like a lost man, a man who didn't know where he was or how he had gotten there.

As he got closer, their blood ran cold. They knew that face. It was a face that was burned into their memories, a face associated with charm, and betrayal, and a grand, insane plan to rewrite the universe.

It was Jaxon Ryder.

But it wasn't him. Not really. The usual confident smirk was gone, replaced by a deep, tired confusion. The sharp, intelligent light in his eyes had been replaced by a lost, haunted look.

This was not the charming spymaster who had tried to steal destiny. This was the man Carmella had rewritten: a nobody, a ghost, a forgotten data clerk with a face that no longer matched his story.

He stopped at the edge of their porch, looking at the two of them with a strange, foggy sense of recognition. He looked like a man trying to remember a dream.

"I... I'm sorry to bother you," he said, his voice quiet and raspy, a pale imitation of the smooth, confident voice they remembered. "I don't... I don't know how I got here. I just... I had these coordinates. On a data chip. In my pocket."

Scarlett raised her pistol, her aim steady, her expression like ice. "You have five seconds to explain what you want, Jaxon," she said, her voice dangerously low.

The man flinched at the name, as if it were a word in a language he barely understood. "Is that... is that my name?" he asked, a look of genuine, heartbreaking confusion on his face. "People keep calling me that. But it doesn't... it doesn't feel right."

He looked from Scarlett's cold fury to Ryan's more measured, curious expression. "I feel like I'm supposed to know you," he said, his voice a pleading whisper. "I have these dreams. I'm on a big ship, a beautiful ship.

I'm... I'm important. People listen when I talk." His gaze became distant. "And there's a woman... her laugh sounds like a ship's engine starting up. She has a smile that could stop a pirate raid." A flicker of a real, painful memory crossed his face. "I feel like I'm supposed to be with her. But I don't know who she is."

He was a man haunted by a life he couldn't remember. Carmella 's conceptual rewrite had erased his memory, but it hadn't erased the echoes, the feelings, the shape of the hole that his old life had left in his soul.

He took a half-step forward, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not here to hurt anyone," he said, his eyes now fixed on Ryan. "I just... I'm so tired of not knowing. The dreams are getting stronger. It feels like my head is trying to tear itself in two. Please... just tell me who I am."

His plea was not a trick. It was not a con. It was the desperate, genuine cry of a lost soul, a man who had woken up in the middle of a story he didn't recognize.

Ryan looked at this broken, confused man, this ghost of his old enemy. He saw the genuine pain in his eyes. He, who had just been through his own journey of finding his true self, felt a flicker of empathy. He lowered Scarlett's pistol with a gentle hand.

"We should call the council," Ryan said, his voice quiet. "We need to tell Carmella ."

But as he spoke, Jaxon let out a sharp gasp of pain. He clutched his head, his body trembling violently. And then, something impossible began to happen.

His hand, the one he was holding out in his plea, began to flicker. For a split second, it became transparent, like old glass. Then it solidified again. His whole body began to shimmer, phasing in and out of reality like a bad hologram.

"It's... it's happening again," he gasped, before his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the sandy path.

Carmella 's shot had done more than just rewrite his memory. It had destabilized his very existence. Jaxon Ryder's story had been so fundamentally broken that reality itself was no longer sure if he was supposed to be there at all.

Ryan and Scarlett looked down at the flickering, unconscious form of their former enemy. Their peaceful, quiet retirement was officially over. They now had a new, and very complicated, problem. They had to figure out what to do with a man who was literally coming undone at the seams.

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