The underground chamber trembled as dust from the collapsed ChronoTech Institute settled like a funeral shroud. Above ground, sirens screamed and lights fractured the night, but below, beneath stone and secrecy, time felt slower. Thicker. Breathing.
Elias stood in front of the mirror relic. It wasn't the same as before. Its surface had become a storm of colourless motion, blurring silhouettes, impossible shapes, and pulses of dim white that flickered like dying stars.
Rae stood a few steps behind, holding Roe's final journal. Her voice was calm, but her eyes darted over the page with growing tension. "These symbols," she muttered. "They're not just coordinates or dates. They're instructions. Roe left behind a ritual."
The mirror pulsed at her words. As though it agreed.
Elias approached it with cautious reverence. Every step closer made the air heavier, pressing against his skin. He could feel it again, that presence. Not a god, not a voice in his head, but something watching. Waiting. The same something that always arrived when the mirror was near.
A whisper touched his mind like the corner of a dream:"You've been here before. Not like this, but here. It's time you remembered."
He turned, but Rae didn't react. Of course she didn't. The voice, the Watcher, only ever spoke to him.
"Let's begin," Elias said, almost to himself.
They set the relic on the stone platform Roe had outlined. Rae opened the journal fully, revealing a symbol at the bottom of the page that made her hand tremble. A circle of seven segments, the central one engraved with a jagged E.
"What is it?" Elias asked, sensing the shift in her breathing.
She showed him. "Every time the mirror activates... this symbol repeats. I think it's part of something bigger. A cipher. Maybe... maybe the first letter of a message?"
Elias stared at the E, etched like a wound. Familiar. Wrongly familiar. He touched it.
The relic flashed.
Wind burst through the chamber, though there were no windows, no doors. Rae fell to one knee, shielding her face. The mirror vibrated against the pedestal as if resisting them. Or calling.
Elias dropped to his knees before it and placed his palm against its surface.
The moment his skin touched the glass, the chamber disappeared.
A sea of visions swallowed him:A library burning.A battlefield drenched in rain and blood.A woman whispering a name into the dark.A hand, his?, etching that same E onto a wooden box.
Then a voice, closer than breath:"You're not a man unraveling time. You're a knot inside it."
The relic surged. Symbols on its edge began to rotate like gears finding alignment. Rae shouted something, he couldn't hear her. Only the voice.
"Each time you touch history, it takes a piece of you. Did you wonder why remembering hurts now?"
Elias gritted his teeth. "Who are you?"
The Watcher responded, gently,"The question isn't who I am. It's who you were."
Suddenly, the mirror's symbols locked into place. A violent tug hit his chest. Rae screamed his name, lunging forward, too late.
A blinding pulse. Then silence.
He awoke coughing on smoke. Wet soil beneath him. Night sky above, stars draped in smoke. Drumbeats echoed. Torches flickered through the mist.
Voices chanted in Creole. He blinked, disoriented. People in ritual garb surrounded him. A boy approached reverently, placing a bloody knife in his hand.
"Papa," the boy said. "The offering is complete."
Elias looked down. His body wasn't his. His skin was darker, his clothes unfamiliar, ceremonial. The blade felt heavy. Real.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice came first.
"And now, we begin again."