Lucien didn't call that night.
Aveline didn't expect him to.
She lay in bed listening to the sound of the rain returning like it hadn't fallen already—like time itself was on loop. Her fingers traced the edge of the silver pocket watch on the nightstand. It ticked rhythmically now, calm after the surge, as if mocking her.
What had she done?
She had told him too soon. That wasn't part of the original timeline. Back then, she hadn't confessed her love until much later. Back then, he hadn't looked at her like she was a stranger wearing familiar skin.
She closed her eyes and whispered into the dark, "Please… don't let this break us."
The watch didn't answer.
But something else did.
A knock.
Not at her door—at her window.
Aveline shot upright, the breath caught in her lungs. Her room was on the second floor. No balcony. No fire escape.
The knock came again. Soft. Fingertip-light.
Cautiously, she stepped to the window and drew back the curtain.
There was no one there.
Just rain.
But in the mist-fogged glass, something had been written in the condensation.
"Wrong time. Wrong way."
Her chest tightened. She stumbled back from the window, heart pounding like thunder.
The words melted slowly into nothing.
The Next Morning
Aveline found herself at the university hospital.
She didn't know what pulled her there—instinct or guilt—but her feet carried her to the quiet, clinical hallways where she knew Dr. K worked. She hadn't met him in the original timeline until Lucien's illness was full-blown. But maybe she could find him now. Confirm what she already feared.
"Excuse me," she asked at the reception desk. "Is Dr. Alan Keene in today?"
The nurse nodded. "Room 418. But he's with a patient at the moment."
"Is there any way I can leave him a message?"
She scribbled down her name and number, hesitating before adding a line at the bottom:
"It's about Lucien Vale. It's urgent."
As she left the hospital, the sky had cleared, but the world still felt... heavy.
Elsewhere
Lucien hadn't slept.
He hadn't eaten.
He sat at his kitchen table, her words playing over and over in his mind like an unsolvable riddle.
"I'm not from this time.""You die.""I came back to save you."
It should've sounded insane. And yet…
It didn't feel like a lie.
He remembered moments—brief flashes—where Aveline knew things before he'd said them. Where she looked at him with a grief that didn't belong to the present. And that pocket watch… it was no ordinary thing.
Still, part of him resisted. Because if she was telling the truth…
Then his life had already ended once.
He glanced down at the notebook in front of him.
Blank pages. No words.
He picked up his pen. After a moment's hesitation, he wrote:
If time gave you back your life… would it take someone else's instead?
And the ink bled strangely into the page—spreading outward, like veins or cracks.
Lucien stared at it, chilled.
Then, across the room, his lamp flickered.
A whisper in the silence followed:
"Time does not give without taking."
That Afternoon
Aveline returned to the café—hoping, praying, Lucien would be there. He wasn't.
But Grace was.
She spotted Aveline instantly and waved her over. "Well, you look like you got hit by an emotional truck. Everything okay?"
Aveline sat down slowly. "I told him."
Grace blinked. "Told him what?"
"The truth. About the future. About what I'm trying to change."
Grace dropped her coffee spoon. "Wait. Are you serious?"
"He didn't believe me. I think… I might've scared him."
"Gee, you think?"
"I couldn't keep it in anymore. He's hiding the early signs even now. I found his old journal entry. I couldn't sit back and let it play out again."
Grace looked at her quietly for a moment. "I believe you. I don't understand it. But I believe you."
Aveline's eyes welled. "Thank you."
"But, Aves," Grace said softly. "If you're messing with time… who says the past will bend the way you want it to?"
Aveline looked out the café window.
The sun had come out.
But a single drop of water rolled slowly down the glass.
Across the City
In the abandoned railway station, where no trains had run for years, a figure stood at the platform.
Tall. Pale. Dressed in a long coat stitched from clock hands and shadow.
The Observer.
Another figure approached him—female this time. Wrapped in ash-colored robes that billowed without wind.
"The tear has begun," she said, her voice like falling sand.
"She confessed too early," the Observer replied. "He believes just enough… and that is the most dangerous amount."
"She will fracture the weave if left unchecked."
"And yet," he said, slowly. "She loves him. That kind of love… is the most powerful distortion."
The woman looked up. Her eyes were hourglasses.
"What do we do?"
The Observer closed his palm around a floating thread of silver.
"We wait," he said. "Time always balances itself. One way or another."