The rain had turned into a gray curtain by the time Elias and Rae ducked into the narrow alley beside his building. Cobblestones glistened like spilled ink, reflecting streaks of yellow lamplight and the red pulse of a distant traffic signal. Every step echoed too loud in the silence between them.
They didn't speak. Not about the figure at the window, not about the way the mirror had glowed, or the way Elias had seen something, a memory, a future, a hallucination? that didn't belong to him. There was no time for fear, not in that moment. Only movement.
Elias knew this alley. He'd taken this shortcut dozens of times when he wanted to avoid the eyes on the main street. But tonight it felt foreign. Not wrong, exactly, but unfamiliar in a way that unsettled him. Like walking through a replica of your own home, every detail precise, yet soulless.
Rae was the first to speak.
"That wasn't you."
Elias slowed just slightly, eyes scanning the shadows. "I know."
"I mean, he looked like you. Moved like you. But his eyes… weren't yours."
Elias didn't answer. She was right. There had been something in the gaze of the man on the fire escape. An emptiness. Not hate, not malice, worse. Understanding. Like he knew what Elias was going through. Like he'd already lived it.
They emerged on the backside of Hatton Garden. The old jeweler's row was mostly shuttered at this hour, except for a pub with its windows papered over and a heavy chain across the front entrance. Renovations. Perfect.
Rae yanked a small black tool from her coat and knelt by the service door.
"You're way too good at this," Elias muttered.
"I paid off my university loans in crypto and bad choices."
The lock clicked.
They stepped inside.
The air was thick with plaster dust, stale alcohol, and the lingering scent of varnish. Tables stacked in corners. Bar stools overturned. A ladder leaned against a wall like someone had been mid-task and simply vanished. Elias bolted the door behind them and scanned the room, fingers twitching. He needed something real to hold on to.
Rae set the mirror down gently on the nearest table and stripped off her damp coat.
It didn't look like a relic. Just a round slab of old bronze with an obsidian surface. Not glowing. Not whispering. Still.
Elias slumped into the booth and stared at it.
"This thing, whatever it is, it's trying to show me something."
"Or erase something," Rae countered. "You said you saw a child. Fire. Soldiers."
He nodded slowly. "It felt like I was him. Not watching, being. The way the air smelled, the fear in my chest. His chest. I felt it all."
Rae sat down opposite him. Her eyes were sharp again. Calculating. Not just scared, but alert. Useful.
"I ran Roe's archives through my filter again," she said. "Found a name that wasn't in the public files. Dr. Lys Kalden. German physicist, once affiliated with a shadow project in Geneva. Last known appearance: 2019, then she ghosted."
"Temporal Echo Physics," Elias murmured, remembering the phrase from Roe's notes.
Rae looked up, surprised. "Exactly. She believed objects could carry emotional resonance strong enough to warp time, under the right conditions. She theorized that people like you, people who've experienced trauma so severe it leaves a psychic imprint, could act as catalysts if exposed to one of these relics."
Elias blinked. "You mean this thing works because I'm broken."
"Not broken," Rae said. "Just… raw. Open."
He laughed bitterly. "That's a fancy way of saying broken."
Rae pushed the mirror gently toward him.
"You touched it once," she said. "What if we control the next one?"
"I don't even know what happened the first time."
"Well, we find out. I'll monitor your vitals. Record everything. We take it slow."
He hesitated.
Then, without a word, he reached forward. His fingertips grazed the edge.
Nothing.
Then—
Heat.
Sound.
And then the fall.
Sand. Shouting. Smoke curling into a copper sky.
Elias gasped, suddenly inside someone else's body. Damon, they called him. A teacher. A scribe. A man fleeing the fires that would one day become legend.
The scrolls in his satchel clattered as he ran, barefoot, through the stone corridors of the Great Library.
The soldiers had come faster than expected. The harbor was a battlefield. Books, thousands, smoldered in piles.
"Damon!" someone cried. A woman, blood on her sleeve. "The child!"
He turned. A boy, his son, stumbled toward him, clutching a wooden horse.
My son.
He picked the boy up and ran.
A blade caught his shoulder. Pain ripped through him. Blood. Screams. Fire above. Ash falling like snow.
He looked down and saw his own hands.
But for a second, only a second, he didn't know his own name.
Elias lurched back in his seat, soaked in sweat.
"Three minutes," Rae said. "You flatlined for five seconds. What the hell did you see?"
He couldn't answer. Not yet.
Something inside him was still there. Still Damon. Still burning.
He finally spoke. "Alexandria. The Library. I watched it burn."
Rae stared at him. "You were there?"
He nodded slowly. "I was someone there. A man named Damon. He had a child. He died."
"You died?"
"I think so. Not here. There. In the past."
"Jesus."
Elias wiped his face with a shaking hand. "And for a moment… I forgot who I was."
Rae didn't say anything.
Then she leaned forward. "You said he had a child."
He nodded.
"Did it feel like yours?"
He didn't answer.
He didn't know.
And that terrified him.
The night wore on.
The rain softened to a whisper. Somewhere in the pub's darkened hallways, something creaked that neither of them investigated. They sat in silence for a while, the mirror lying between them.
Elias finally asked, "Do you think… that wasn't the first time?"
Rae looked up.
"What do you mean?"
"What if I've already traveled back before? What if I'm not remembering things because they never belonged to me to begin with?"
Rae's eyes glinted. "We need to find Kalden. Now."
Elias nodded. "And we need to find out what this mirror is. Where it came from. And why I'm the one holding it."
Outside, in the empty alley, the rain stopped.
And far above, on the fire escape of the flat Elias had abandoned only hours earlier…
the other Elias stood. Watching.
Smiling.
Waiting.