Steins;Gate - Epigraph of the Closed Curve

In the bleak shadow of the Beta World Line, Rintaro Okabe bears the crushing weight of a future he could not save. Having witnessed the brutal finality of Kurisu Makise's death and abandoned the eccentric mask of his "Hououin Kyouma" persona, he drifts through a hollow present—a world already locked on a collision course with the chaos of global war. Yet even as he attempts to bury his trauma beneath the monotony of daily life, the fragile peace of Akihabara is shattered by the emergence of Amadeus, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence that houses the digital ghost of the very woman he failed to protect. This phantom of lost potential forces Okabe to grapple with his suffocating guilt while raising a haunting question: can the past ever truly be rewritten, or is the future already etched in stone? As the inaugural chapter of the Epigraph Trilogy, this narrative meticulously reconstructs the fragile months between his monumental failure and the inevitable return to battle. Around him, the world's most dangerous powers begin to stir, their intelligence agencies circling the forbidden time-travel theories that still pulse within the walls of the Future Gadget Lab. Torn between the specter of Kurisu's lingering consciousness and the relentless machinery of conspiracy that threatens to consume everyone he loves, Okabe stands at a precipice. The closed curve of fate tightens with each passing day, forcing him to choose between the safety of numb resignation and the agonizing cost of once again challenging the unyielding flow of causality—a choice that will test the very limits of his resolve.