In this episode, we explore the chilling idea of time as a battlefield—wars fought not with weapons, but with alterations to the past. A single change, like a missed meeting or a delayed train, can shift the course of history dramatically. These "retroactive strikes" reshape reality so subtly that only memory feels the scars.

The episode examines the three major models of temporal conflict: fixed timelines, where actions were always part of history; mutable timelines, where every intervention creates ripples that rewrite the future; and multiverse branches, where each change forms a new universe at the ethical cost of abandoning the others.

We encounter the tools of such wars—chronal recon, causality dampers, memory anchors, and ethical AI engines—and the human casualties: people who are "unmade" from existence and soldiers who suffer version fatigue, carrying conflicting memories from altered timelines. Custodians work to repair history after the fighting, stitching fractured narratives back into coherence.

Ultimately, the episode asks whether such wars should ever be fought. If changing the past prevents tragedy but erases millions of lives that followed, which reality deserves to survive? The episode concludes that the greatest victory might be a present so ethical and compassionate that history never needs correction.