The countryside stretched out in wintry silence, a landscape bruised with fog and the smell of wet stone. The manor layed at the end of a winding gravel road, nestled in the hollow of a wooded valley. Once, it had been an estate owned by an aristocrat whose name was lost to history. Now, it was Roe's, or had been, until his assassination.
Elias stepped out of the car with Rae close behind him. They stood for a moment in front of the tall wrought-iron gate, half-eaten by vines.
"This was Roe's private retreat," Rae said, checking the map on her phone. "No one's been here since 2022. He had it scrubbed from his corporate records."
The gate creaked open with the weight of age. Beyond it, a narrow path lined with wild heather led to the main house, a grey stone building with shuttered windows and a collapsed ivy trellis.
"I don't like this," Elias murmured.
"You don't like a lot of things lately."
They entered through the back, into a kitchen that still smelled faintly of thyme and old wood. Dust lay thick on the counter. The air was heavy with silence, too deep for an abandoned house.
Even silence leaves fingerprints.
Elias found a hallway lined with framed photos. He froze.
The images were black-and-white at first, Roe as a younger man, standing with various researchers. But then he saw a color photo. A blurry candid shot. It showed a man in a crowd at a Berlin protest in the 90s. Tall, pale, with haunted eyes.
Elias's face.
He blinked. No. That wasn't possible.
Rae came up behind him. "What?"
He pointed.
She stared. Said nothing.
They moved deeper into the house, stepping through a parlor filled with worn books and outdated tech. Rae opened a cabinet near the fireplace.
"Look at this."
Inside were rolls of microfilm, file folders labeled with strange titles, Reactor 4 Artefact, Host Transference Logs, Project Chronofold. And at the bottom, a locked wooden box.
Elias took it gently. The lock had already been picked.
Inside: Polaroids. Dozens of them.
Each one was a different decade.
Each one showed Elias. Not someone like him. Not similar features.
Him.
One with 70s grain. One dated 1919. Another, sepia-toned, labeled 1863. In each image, his expression was just slightly wrong, distant, uncertain. Like he hadn't expected the photo to be taken.
"Do you get it now?" Rae whispered. "This isn't about solving Roe's murder. You're not just a bystander. You're—"
"—Part of it," Elias said.
He sat down slowly, gripping one photo, the 1863 one. He was in a Union uniform, standing beside a man who bore a striking resemblance to Inspector Kray.
The mirror hummed in his bag.
What do you call a man who outlives his name? Forgotten. But not gone.
Rae paced the study. "This changes everything. You said you studied history. Maybe you didn't. Maybe you lived it."
She glanced at him. "Are you even Elias Vale?"
He had no answer.
Later that night, after Rae had locked herself in a guest room, Elias sat alone in the old study.
The air was thick with firelight and memory. He had laid out the photos on the floor, making a timeline. But it didn't form a line. It formed a circle.
The mirror layed on the desk beside him.
He reached for it.
Touched it.
And the room tilted.
One more breath, and the veil thins.
The firelight seemed to move differently. Shadows deepened in the corners. And from somewhere behind the walls, he swore he heard breathing, not his own.
He stood.
Moved toward the wall with the fireplace.
There was a faint seam. A hidden door.
He pressed against it, and it gave.
A narrow staircase led down into darkness.
No lights. Just stone.
He descended.
The underground chamber was circular, lined with old computers, cracked monitors, ancient projectors. On one side, a projection flickered automatically to life, displaying rotating symbols, ones he'd seen before, carved into the mirror.
Seven symbols. Seven dates. One glowed softly: 1791.
He stepped closer.
A final photo lay on the console. One he hadn't seen above.
A man kneeling in firelight, surrounded by masked figures.
In his hand, a knife.
In his eyes, Elias's own haunted reflection.
He reached out to touch it.
The mirror activated in his bag.
He didn't hear the door close behind him.
He didn't feel the world shift.
He only saw the flame, and the face in it.
Soon, even his reflection will lie.