For the first time in years, Amira dreamed of the day she first met Rayan.
It was late autumn. She had spilled her coffee on his lecture notes in the university courtyard. Instead of getting angry, he laughed. That soft, lopsided smile she would one day memorize.
"Time isn't linear," he'd said, helping her gather the soaked pages.
She had thought he was joking.
But now, with everything that was happening—with Ishan's strange behavior, with Dr. Greaves' sudden arrival, with the shadow of something bigger moving in the background—she wasn't so sure anymore.
The next morning, Silas stood in her office holding a thin folder. His face was pale, lips pressed tight.
"They broke into the backup server," he said.
Amira's blood froze.
"They took something?"
Silas opened the folder.
Inside were printouts of access logs. Timestamps. IP traces.
"Whoever it was, they knew exactly where to look. They accessed Rayan's encrypted files—the last of the temporal mechanics models. The time machine specs."
Amira's hands trembled. "You told me they were gone."
Silas lowered his gaze. "I lied. I backed them up. In case you changed your mind."
Her voice was ice. "You kept the one thing Rayan swore would bring disaster."
"I kept his last chance," Silas replied. "He risked everything for her, Amira. For the cure. For love. That machine wasn't just about time. It was about regret."
"Regret doesn't need a blueprint."
"But redemption might."
Meanwhile, Ishan stood alone in the observatory's main hall. The domed ceiling above him shimmered with the artificial night sky Rayan had designed long ago—stars mapped to real constellations, projected through lenses of polished quartz.
Ishan walked slowly, arms stretched out, spinning.
Then he stopped beneath a single point of light.
His fingers twitched.
"It's almost here," he whispered.
A voice answered from the shadows.
"You see more than a child should."
Ishan turned.
Dr. Greaves stepped into the faint starlight, glasses reflecting constellations.
"You're not supposed to be here," Ishan said quietly.
Greaves smiled. "I'm not supposed to do many things. But here I am."
There was a long silence.
"What do you want?" Ishan asked.
Greaves crouched beside him. "There's a key inside you, boy. I don't know how you got it—perhaps through the serum, perhaps something else—but I can feel it. A signature that doesn't belong to this time."
Ishan frowned. "You're not supposed to touch that."
Greaves leaned in, his voice like a knife. "But I will. I will peel away every layer until I reach what's left of Rayan's soul."
Before Ishan could speak again, Greaves stood and disappeared into the shadows, his footsteps silent.
The boy was trembling.
That evening, Amira ordered full lockdown.
The observatory gates were sealed. Outer motion sensors activated. Backup generators checked. The children were moved to the east wing.
Silas ran diagnostics all night.
Ishan was kept under observation—but not because he was dangerous.
Because he might be the only hope left.
Amira sat beside him in the secured lab room. He looked exhausted, curled under thick blankets. But his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling.
"Did you dream again?" she asked softly.
He nodded. "He was crying."
"Who?"
"Rayan. But... he didn't look like the picture on your desk. He was older. Sadder."
Amira swallowed hard. "What did he say?"
Ishan's voice barely carried.
"He said he didn't mean to die. He just wanted to fix it. He just wanted to love you longer."
In the depths of night, Greaves returned.
Not through the gate.
Not through any door.
He came through the old tunnel beneath the east cliff, long forgotten, where sea spray slicked the rocks and salt choked the air.
He brought with him a briefcase lined with insulated lead. Inside was a shard of something that pulsed—dim blue, like frozen lightning.
A fragment of failed time.
Stolen from another lab. Another world.
He knew how to finish Rayan's machine. All he needed was one final equation.
And he knew where it was hidden.
Silas was the first to spot the breach.
Alarms didn't trigger.
But a silent power spike—just one—appeared on his console. An energy signature that matched the time distortion data Rayan had once mapped.
Something unnatural had entered the perimeter.
He ran.
Amira met him in the control corridor just outside the vault. Her face was pale. "Ishan's missing."
Silas cursed under his breath. "Check the observatory."
They found the boy standing at the center of the time chamber—once Rayan's personal project lab. Where a broken ring of brass and glass lay dormant, covered by a dust tarp.
The ring was glowing.
Ishan's hands hovered over its inner coils.
"You can't touch that!" Amira cried.
"I didn't," Ishan whispered. "He did."
They turned—
Dr. Greaves stood behind them, the briefcase open, the shard connected to the ring with glowing cables.
"You shouldn't have buried this," he said calmly. "You should have used it."
"What are you trying to do?" Silas asked, raising a fire suppressant rod like a weapon.
Greaves didn't flinch. "What your Rayan couldn't."
He turned a dial.
The ring spun.
Energy cracked like thunder through the room.
Ishan cried out and collapsed.
The ring activated for just 4.2 seconds.
Long enough to fracture reality.
Long enough to show them a glimpse of something not meant to be seen.
A second world.
A version of the observatory where everything was burning. The sky torn open. Amira standing in the ashes, cradling something in her arms.
And Rayan—older, broken—facing a collapsing void.
Then it was gone.
The ring shattered.
Greaves screamed. Blood poured from his nose.
And in the center of it all, Ishan whispered one word:
"Clockmaker."
They sedated Greaves. Silas administered an amnesiac agent. Enough to wipe two weeks of memory.
They dumped the broken ring into the ocean trench.
Burned the notes.
Deleted the backups.
Amira stood on the edge of the cliff at sunrise, watching the seagulls dance in the golden light.
She didn't know what they had just unleashed.
But one thing was certain.
The past wasn't finished with them.
And time was no longer their ally.
To be continue...