Gods of the Dying Branch

A mission designed to move humanity forward instead fractures reality itself.

When Marcus Hale and his team step into the chamber, the procedure is supposed to be routine. Controlled. Proven. They've done it before. They will do it again.

But something is off.

The silence arrives first. Then the delay. Then the reflection that doesn't belong.

After the jump, everything appears stable. Systems read clean. The crew returns to work. No alarms. No visible damage.

Only subtle inconsistencies begin to surface.

A movement that finishes too late.
A voice that arrives too early.
A reflection that does not wait.

Lena Voss is new to the program, which means she hasn't learned how to ignore it yet.

As the fractures spread, a divide emerges between those who continue jumping and those who refuse. The quiet ones understand something the others do not:

This isn't a malfunction.

It's accumulation.

Each jump doesn't just move them. It leaves something behind. It brings something with it. And eventually, the difference between versions stops being theoretical.

It becomes visible.

It becomes personal.

And it begins to choose.

Gods of the Dying Branch is a psychological science fiction thriller about identity, recursion, and the cost of moving forward when reality itself stops agreeing.