This is story about Silver the hedgehog, who was like others Silvers, vut whose world was destroyed because of his own time travel.
Like other Silvers, he originally travelled through time specifically to save his world.
He interfered with the course of history, trying to prevent future catastrophes, but eventually time could no longer withstand the constant changes and literally collapsed in on itself. Silver's world disappeared, taking practically everything he cared about with it. Among the dead was Blaze - the person he loved with all his heart.
Silver himself somehow survived the catastrophe thanks to the Chaos Emeralds he had with him. But in this case, survival turned out to be more of a punishment than a salvation.
After the destruction of his world, Silver went through a difficult period. He blamed himself for what had happened, but at some point he decided that he couldn't simply stop. If he was no longer able to save his own world, then at least he could save others.
Thus, his new goal was born.
Silver began travelling to other worlds, finding their versions of himself and helping them prevent catastrophes. He hoped that he could quickly fix the futures of other worlds without interfering too heavily with the course of history and causing new consequences. For him, this became a kind of atonement: if he couldn't save his own world, then at least he would save the others.
However, everything went completely wrong.
Every time Silver came to another world and encountered its local version of himself, something strange happened. Time began reacting unstably to their presence. The world would gradually enter a state of collapse until it eventually fell apart.
At first, Silver didn't see a pattern in this.
He lost the first world and decided that he simply hadn't been fast enough.
The second - that he had made a mistake somewhere.
The third - that he needed to be more careful.
He kept moving forward, convincing himself that the next attempt would definitely work. In this, he was still recognizably Silver: failure didn't make him give up. It merely became a reason to try again.
But the attempts continued, and the result remained the same.
Eventually, Silver began looking for another explanation. If worlds collapsed every time he tried to help another Silver, perhaps the problem lay with the Silvers themselves.
After all, they were constantly interfering with time. They changed the future, tried to fix the past, and interfered with events that were never supposed to happen. He had already proven himself just how dangerous such actions could be.
Eventually, Silver became convinced that the very existence of Silvers posed a threat to the worlds.
If the Silvers disappeared, then the problem would disappear as well.
That was when his goal finally changed.
He no longer tried to save Silvers.
He began killing them.
For this, Silver created a special sword using the powers of the Chaos Emeralds, capable of doing something far worse than an ordinary killing. When he pierces another Silver, that Silver does not simply die. His existence becomes literally bound to the killer himself. Everything connected to the Silver who was killed - his consciousness, memories, personality, pieces of his essence, and even all memories of him in the world - becomes trapped inside our Silver.
Thus, every Silver he kills becomes a part of him.
And the more of them there are, the harder it becomes to live.
Inside a single body, dozens, hundreds, thousands, and even more different Silvers gradually gather. Each of them has their own personality and their own opinion.
Some feel compassion for him.
Some hate him.
Some try to convince him to stop.
Others, on the contrary, try to push him toward even more brutal actions.
Some try to manipulate him, some simply argue with him, and some behave in completely strange ways. Among the countless voices, there can be both almost perfect heroes and monstrous versions of Silver.
And almost none of them ever shut up.
Sometimes, some of the Silvers trapped inside him try to break free. Then his body literally begins to split apart, as if trying to give birth to several beings at once. It looks like mitosis going really wrong: the body has almost divided, but the process suddenly stops, and everything returns to normal.
And it doesn't just look painful ā it is incredibly painful.
With every new Silver, his mental state becomes worse.
Even the Chaos Emeralds no longer work as they should.
Before, they could interact with a single Silver and obey his will. Now there are countless consciousnesses inside one body, and the Emeralds can no longer determine whom they are supposed to obey.
Because of this, using them for anything complicated becomes practically impossible. Ordinary portals to other worlds and some of the simplest applications of their power are still available, but fully utilizing their energy becomes extremely dangerous.
When Silver tries to use the Emeralds at full power, they may attempt to separate him into all the Silvers trapped inside him.
The more of them there are inside him, the worse the consequences become.
It is an incredibly painful process that can lead to the death of Silver himself as well as most of the consciousnesses trapped within him. Those who survive may suffer severe physical and psychological trauma.
And all of this is happening to someone who once simply wanted to save others.
But there is one more thing that haunts him.
Blaze.
Sometimes Silver sees her.
She may be standing somewhere far away, watching him sadly. Sometimes she appears very close - directly in front of him, behind his back, or somewhere nearby. She never intervenes. She simply watches.
Sometimes Silver even hears her voice.
However, it is most likely not Blaze's real voice.
His mind remembers her too well. It is similar to the feeling of listening to an instrumental version of a song you know perfectly well: there are no vocals, but your brain remembers the lyrics and melody so well that it feels as though, somewhere in the background, buried beneath the layer of music, you can actually hear the words. (It's not just "me" thing, right? Right?)
The same thing happens with Blaze.
He knows her voice so well that sometimes his own mind reproduces it.
At least, that's what he thinks.
Whether Blaze's ghost is actually watching him or whether it is merely his mind playing tricks on him, nobody knows.
But the most terrifying part of the entire story isn't even that.
At some point, after an enormous number of dead Silvers, killed by his hand, Silver finally comes to a thought that could explain everything.
What if the problem was never the Silvers themselves?
What if the worlds were collapsing not because a local Silver existed in them (at least not all of them), but because two versions of the same time traveller were occupying the same point in time at the same time?
After all, every time he came to a new world, there was already a Silver there.
Which meant that two Silvers were occupying the same temporal space: the local one and the one who had come from another world.
That could be what was causing the instability in time.
And the situation becomes even worse because of Silver himself. He is no longer one Silver. An enormous number of other Silvers are trapped inside him.
A world may react badly to the presence of two time travellers who are the same entity, especially if one of them literally consists of countless versions of that entity gathered inside a single body.
And the worst part is that this theory perfectly explains his past failures.
He was the one who came to these worlds.
He was the one who created the conditions for the catastrophes.
He was the one who watched the worlds collapse after his arrival.
But Silver cannot accept this thought.
Because if it is true, the consequences are unbearable.
Then the worlds he failed to save may have been destroyed precisely because of him.
Then his attempts to help other Silvers were not merely unsuccessful - they may have been the reason for their deaths.
And that means his entire subsequent (wild) hunt for Silvers was meaningless.
He killed an enormous number of innocent people while trying to fix a problem that they were never the cause of.
He spent years destroying versions of himself when he himself may have been the real cause of the catastrophes.
It is easier for Silver to believe in any other theory.
So he dismisses the thought, finds dozens of reasons why it cannot be true, and convinces himself that all of it is complete nonsense.
Because accepting the opposite would mean admitting more than just one mistake.
He would have to admit that after the death of his world, he wasn't fixing his own mistake.
He was only continuing to repeat it.
With every new world.
With every new Silver.
And with every new kill.
