The jungle smelled of copper and memory. Wet leaves slapped Elias's shoulders as he followed Jean-Noël's crude map north, away from the sugar fields and toward the old Maroon paths that twisted like veins through the hills. The path was dangerous, but necessary. Jean-Noël had whispered it the night before, a place "the whites don't go, and the spirits go silent."
But Jean-Noël hadn't known the true reason Elias sought it.
Because in the cipher journal, Roe's journal, there had been a note, tucked into the spine like a forgotten thought:
"He left something in the stone tree. M.D. — 1765."
M.D. Elias hadn't made the connection at first. But when the Watcher showed him the date again in a dream, it clicked:
Malik Darwish.
The professor who had once taught Elias about time, about the nature of memory and observation. A man who had vanished without explanation six years prior, rumored dead, lost, disgraced.
Except… Darwish had been here.
Is still here, Elias thought grimly as he pushed deeper into the dense green.
After hours, he found it. A twisted fig tree, grown out of volcanic rock, half-eaten by the earth. Its bark looked almost like carved stone. And there, wedged into its roots, wrapped in wax cloth, was a small leather-bound notebook.
He opened it with trembling hands.
The first page read, in tight, unmistakable script:
"If you are reading this, you have followed the mirror, or the mirror has followed you. Either way, you're not the first. Nor will you be the last. My name is Malik Darwish. I am from the year 2023. And I am, was? trapped."
Elias staggered back, the world reeling.
The next pages were filled with coded entries, mathematical notes, fragments of languages, Arabic, French, Latin, and something older. More than once, the symbols matched those on the mirror and the scarred letters on Elias's arm.
Darwish had been studying the relic, had found it long before Elias.
One entry struck like a hammer:
"The mirror does not send us randomly. It answers memory, not time. It seeks those with rupture. Pain leaves residue. We are dragged by what we cannot forget."
Another passage, scribbled hastily:
"The relic chooses violently. One leap leaves behind a version of you that doesn't die—just… echoes. I've met one. I think it became the Watcher."
Elias's breath caught.
Was that what the Watcher was? A distorted echo of someone who once leapt, but didn't return whole?
The implications crushed him. He closed the journal and stood. The jungle felt tighter around him, as if the trees themselves were leaning in to listen.
He turned back toward the plantation, but the path was gone.
Or had changed.
He was no longer certain what hour, what year, or what moment held him.
And in the distance, through the heat and shadow, he heard something strange, a radio.
A voice crackling in and out: "If you're listening… don't trust the relic. It's not a bridge. It's a—"
The voice died.
He ran.
Because he knew that voice.
It was Darwish.
Still alive.
Somewhere.
And calling to him through time.