The family had dressed for what was meant to be a quiet, uneventful day. Fabio adjusted his tie in front of the mirror, his reflection trying to project a calm that he did not fully feel. Lena knelt on the carpet, gently tying Stefan's small shoes while the boy wriggled and laughed, his giggles echoing softly against the high ceiling of the hotel room.
Jean Morel stood near the door, his polished shoes planted firmly, posture as impeccable as ever. His expression wore the mask of composure he had cultivated over decades, but his eyes betrayed his vigilance. They flicked toward the hallway beyond the door every few moments, as if expecting movement. Even the bodyguards—two men who seemed carved out of granite—appeared slightly more relaxed than usual. The ordeal of arrival, with its suffocating security checks, had passed, and for the first time since landing in Madrid, the air felt a little lighter.
Outside, the city was already awake. Through the window, Stefan glimpsed balconies decorated with flowers, neighbors leaning out to gossip, children darting between doorways. The streets shimmered in the warm light of late spring. It was to be a simple day: a stroll through the neighborhood, a chance to breathe before the parade of official duties later in the week.
Stefan's small hand clung to his mother's fingers as he looked around, his eyes bright with curiosity and something deeper. Behind that toddler's gaze, his mind carried the weight of decades, memories from another life layered over the innocence of his present one.
Jean cracked a dry joke in French, earning a small laugh from Fabio, and even Lena's lips curled with amusement as she smoothed Stefan's golden hair. The sound of their laughter filled the room for a fleeting instant—until the world ripped itself open.
The explosion came without warning.
A deafening roar split the air, rattling the walls of the hotel as though the very earth had cried out in anguish. The glass panes of the window trembled violently, light fixtures swayed, and a muffled shockwave reverberated through the floor beneath their feet. For one terrible heartbeat, silence followed—an unnatural pause, as if reality itself had inhaled sharply. Then the chaos poured in.
Car alarms shrieked in uneven tones. Dogs barked madly. From the streets below rose the unmistakable sound of human panic: screams, shouts, hurried footsteps pounding on pavement.
Stefan's young body froze, every muscle locked. His heart hammered, a frantic rhythm that his tiny chest could barely contain. His mind, however, leapt immediately elsewhere.What? This… this shouldn't be happening.
He remembered history—decades of unrest across Europe. The "Years of Lead" in Italy, violent clashes, kidnappings, bombings that punctuated the 1970s. Spain too had known its share of turmoil: strikes, separatist violence, the tightening grip of dictatorship. But May 1969? His memory held no trace of such an explosion, no record of this day marked in fire and smoke.
This is new. This is something outside the script I thought I knew.
Lena gasped, pulling Stefan against her chest so quickly he could feel her heartbeat racing against his cheek. She clutched him tightly, whispering his name as if the sound itself could shield him. Fabio's face drained of color. He darted to the window instinctively but stopped short of drawing the curtain aside. His instincts warred between curiosity and fear, between wanting to know and not daring to expose his family.
Jean reacted with a sharp clarity that betrayed long training. His voice rang out in French, crisp and commanding:"Positions! Protect the family!"
The bodyguards snapped into motion. In a blur they were already moving—one shielding Fabio and Lena, the other bracing against the door, pistol holstered but ready, muscles tense like coiled springs.
"Three streets over," muttered one of them after a brief pause, his trained ear gauging the direction. "Not here, but close."
Outside, the city wailed. Sirens began almost immediately, their shrill notes overlapping—police, ambulances, maybe even the military mobilizing.
Stefan's ears still rang from the force of the blast, but another sound throbbed louder: the drumming of dread in his chest. It wasn't only fear of the explosion itself. It was something heavier, more disorienting—the knowledge that history was bending, slipping from the track he thought he had memorized.
His rebirth had given him an advantage: foresight, a map of events to come. Knowledge was supposed to mean control. Yet this—this was a fracture.
If history itself is changing, what good is memory?
His small hands clutched at Lena's dress, fingers digging into the fabric. In a trembling whisper, almost too faint to hear, he said:"Mama… something's wrong."
Lena kissed the crown of his head, her lips trembling against his hair. "It will be alright, Schatz," she whispered in German, though her voice cracked, betraying her own uncertainty.
Fabio turned sharply to Jean, his jaw taut. "The embassy," Jean said immediately, already thinking ahead. "We stay inside until we know more. I'll have them contact us. No movement, no risks." He adjusted his glasses, though his hand trembled slightly. Sweat glistened on his brow, betraying the tension he otherwise kept hidden.
The following minutes blurred into a haze of hurried voices and heavy footsteps. Radios crackled with clipped Spanish phrases. Down the corridor, hotel staff knocked frantically on doors, urging guests to stay inside their rooms, their voices edged with fear. Somewhere, a child cried, a sound that mingled with the rising sirens outside.
Stefan pressed against the window ledge despite Lena's protests, peering out through the narrow gap in the curtain. He caught a glimpse of it: a thin column of smoke rising against the clear blue sky, twisting lazily in the breeze. The sight made his stomach knot.
In my other life, there was no attack today. No smoke. No column of fire. Did my arrival… change something? Or is there another hand rewriting this story?
It wasn't mere paranoia. He knew instinct when he felt it—an old, familiar warning rising in his chest. This was not an isolated accident. It was the opening of something larger, something that would ripple outward.
Fabio placed a hand on Lena's shoulder, steady but firm. "We wait," he said, his voice low. "We don't make a move until we understand." His attempt at calm was undercut by the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers dug into her shoulder just a little too hard.
Jean nodded quickly, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. Yet, for a fleeting instant, his gaze flickered toward Stefan. The boy's wide eyes were fixed on the smoke, reflecting it like mirrors. There was something unchildlike in that gaze—something watchful, heavy, almost knowing. Jean blinked and looked away, dismissing the thought. But the impression lingered.
The sirens outside grew louder, sweeping past the hotel in rapid succession. Madrid's voice had changed in a single instant. Where before there had been laughter, casual chatter, and the hum of daily life, now there was tension, a pulse of fear that seemed to spread street by street.
Stefan felt it too, the city's heartbeat quickening, the weight of uncertainty pressing down.
If history bends here, what bends next?
As he leaned his forehead against the cool glass, he made a silent promise. It was not a dramatic oath of vengeance, not the loud declarations of a storybook hero. It was quieter, steadier.
I need to pay attention. I can't rely only on what I remember. If history is changing, I must be ready to adapt. Knowledge isn't enough if the world itself refuses to follow its script.
Behind him, Lena smoothed his hair again, trying to comfort him as much as herself. Fabio sat rigidly on the edge of the bed, listening intently to the muted radio reports. Jean murmured into the hotel phone, speaking rapidly in French, his tone clipped, professional, but underscored with urgency.
The smoke outside still lingered, curling upward like a dark scar against the horizon.
And so, beneath the quiet grandeur of Madrid, a fracture in history had been carved. None of them knew how deep it ran, or how far its cracks would spread.
But Stefan felt it—deep in his bones, in the rhythm of his racing heart. The world had changed, and with it, the fragile illusion of certainty he had clung to.