Jonas's POV
The air in the cave was thick and damp, but it was nothing compared to the suffocating weight in my chest. Every step I took away from 1986 felt like I was leaving a piece of my soul behind with Mikkel.
I could still see him sitting on a bench outside the hospital, talking to a younger version of my mother. My father. Not the man who had hung himself in our attic, but the little brother of the girl I loved. The realization was a physical ache. If Mikkel didn't stay here—if he didn't grow up to become Michael Kahnwald—then I wouldn't exist.
"You can't take him back," the man had said.
I closed my eyes for a second, seeing the Stranger's face again. He was older, scarred, and his eyes were filled with a weary kind of grief that I didn't yet understand. He had told me that some things cannot be changed. To save Mikkel was to erase myself.
How was that a choice? How was I supposed to just leave him there, so that I could continue to exist?
The cave walls seemed to close in on me as I reached the narrow crawlspace. My flashlight flickered, casting long, distorted shadows that looked like grasping hands. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to wake up in my room, find my father downstairs making breakfast, and realize this was all just a fever dream brought on by the grief of his death.
Then, I heard the sound of wings flapping. It should have been impossible. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see through the gloom, and saw something heading straight for me. In my panic, I took a sharp step back and slipped on the wet stone.
"Ow! Fuck!" I scrambled to find my footing, finally getting a good look at what was coming at me.
It wasn't just a bird. It was a raven—and it was angry. It dove at me, its beak snapping at my eyes. I threw my arms up to protect my face, screaming as the bird let out a guttural, mocking sound that almost sounded like a human word.
"Fool! Fool!"
I tumbled backward, my spine slamming into the cave wall. "Get away! Get off me!"
I was so focused on the bird that I didn't notice the light approaching from the tunnel until it was blinding me. Through the chaotic flapping of black feathers, I saw a silhouette—a man I didn't recognize.
"I caught you, you little shit!" The man lunged forward, grabbing the raven while it struggled and shrieked in his grip.
The man kept the flashlight pointed at my face for a moment before letting the beam wander around the tunnel and then returning it to my eyes. I shielded my vision with my hand, but in that brief second of exposure, I could've sworn I saw his eyes. They weren't normal; they seemed to glow with a faint, predatory red.
"Well, isn't this interesting?" the stranger said. His voice was rough, edged with a cynical curiosity. "What is a teenager your age doing this deep? You wouldn't happen to be a time traveler, would you?"
I flinched in surprise. How did he know?
"Oh, so I am right," he muttered. "From the look on your face, you don't look like one of those kids who was kidnapped. So, either you're an idiot who found the passage by accident, or you were given directions. I'm a fan of the latter; personally, I think it makes for a better story. So, tell me... is your name Noah?"
What is he talking about? Who is Noah? I stared at him, my breath hitching in my throat.
"Interesting. From your confusion, I assume you have no idea what I'm talking about." I heard him sigh heavily. "Dammit. I thought I'd found the root of it all, and instead, I got a kid fresh out of puberty. So, what's your name, kid?"
"Jonas," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I was tired—tired of the lies, tired of the caves. I just wanted to go home and talk to my mom.
"Jonas. That's a nice name. Well, I'm Arthur. Now, do you want to tell me what the hell you're doing in 1953?"
1953? My heart skipped a beat. "Uh... it's 1986."
The flashlight in his hand trembled slightly. The silence that followed was heavy.
"The fuck, you mean it's 1986?" Arthur's voice was no longer curious; it was irritated, almost sharp. "I thought the passage went to 1953." He paced a small circle, his boots crunching on the gravel. "How did Ulrich reach 1953 if the passage connects to 1986? Unless... kid, when you went through the tunnel, which direction did you choose?"
He must have meant the intersection. I swallowed hard. "The right?"
The man didn't answer immediately, but the raven in his hand began to make a sound that was eerily similar to human laughter. Arthur pointed the light directly at the bird, growling under his breath.
"Shut up. This is your fault."
Arthur's POV
Of all the godforsaken times I had to choose to make a wrong turn at an intersection, it just had to be while I was time traveling. I felt like there was a lesson in there somewhere, but I had no idea what it was. Personally, I blamed the raven. The bird had seemingly given up trying to escape my hand, though I was still trying to figure out how the hell it had managed to enter the passage in the first place.
The kid, Jonas, was interesting. Just from looking at his face, I could tell he was going through some serious shit. Beyond that, he felt... weird. Familiar, but not in a "I've seen this person before" way. It was more complicated, like a resonance I couldn't quite put my finger on.
"So, going back to my question," I said, leaning against the damp cave wall. "Want to tell me what you're doing in 1986?"
Jonas seemed to squirm under my gaze. "It's... complicated."
I blinked and tilted my head. "No shit it's complicated. It's time travel. So, uncomplicate it."
He started rubbing his right arm, looking squeamish before eventually letting out a long, ragged sigh. "It all started when me and my group of friends decided to go into the woods to find a stash that we knew was hidden there..." He paused, trying to dance around the subject.
"Drugs?" I offered.
Jonas blinked in surprise. "How did you know?"
I gave him the most deadpan expression I could muster. "Kid, you're a teenager. It was either drugs or sex."
Jonas scratched the side of his neck. "Yeah. So, after we found the stash, we ran into someone else who got there first. After a small confrontation, we started hearing noises coming from the cave. Our flashlights started flickering, so we just bolted. Along the way, we lost someone... and everything just began spiraling after that."
He started scratching his head in frustration. "Next thing I know, I'm reading a letter from my dad in which he admits to being Mikkel—the boy who went missing that night. Somehow, he traveled back to 1986. Then, I found myself here. I met a younger version of my mother, and then I found Mikkel. Just as I was about to take him home, a stranger I met in 2019 appeared. He explained that I have a bigger part to play in what's to come... and that if I took my dad—I mean, Mikkel—home, I would never be born."
Jonas was breathing heavily now, the words tumbling out like a landslide. "And in between everything, I realized that the girl I like is my biological aunt, and my mother has been fucking the man who I now realize is my grandfather! Fuck! I just want to close my eyes and wake up to find that everything after my father's death was just a stupid nightmare."
Holy shit. This kid was a living paradox.
I processed the family tree in my head. His father was Mikkel Nielsen, whose father was Ulrich... who was also sleeping with the kid's mom. I knew I had a good reason not to like that prick, beyond the shit he pulled at the hospital.
Jonas eventually gave up on standing and just slumped onto the floor. I heard him sniffle. From a certain point of view, I could sympathize with him. His entire world hadn't just been turned upside down; it had been shredded and set on fire.
Looking down at the raven in my hand, I finally let it go. I watched it fly off into the darkness of the upper tunnels before sitting down near the boy. We remained silent for a long time.
"We're stuck in a time loop," I eventually said, once his breathing had leveled out.
"Of course we are. Things just keep getting better," he replied, his voice hoarse from his earlier rant. "Why are you even telling me this? We just met."
I bit my cheek. I was never good at talking to others about this kind of thing. Most of the time, I just repressed my emotions until I could burn them off in private, faking a calm and collected attitude for the rest of the world. Honestly, ever since I woke up in that cave, I had wanted to panic. But some part of me—some cold, distant core—was forcing me to stay calm and analyze the situation.
"I'm from a parallel reality," I admitted. "A world where Winden doesn't exist. One day I woke up inside these caves, and since then, I've been trying to find a way home. I found a rabbit hole and immediately jumped in headfirst, which led me here."
I was leaving out some of the stranger details—the visions, the names—but that wasn't important right now.
"Look, I can relate, to a small degree, to what you're going through. I want to say that it will get better, and it probably will... eventually. But honestly? It will probably get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Until then, all we can do is keep marching forward until we reach the end."
A silence followed my words. It wasn't the awkward, heavy silence from before; it was peaceful. We both stayed there, two anomalies in the dark, until Jonas finally broke it.
"What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to find the origin of this loop and find a way home," I said, the determination hardening in my chest. "And you, kid? You seem like you have a lot to deal with back in your time."
Jonas merely scoffed. "That's the biggest understatement I've heard recently. But yeah."
We both stood up. I offered him a handshake, which he took. His grip was shaky, but it was there.
"I wish you luck, Jonas."
He nodded at me, a flicker of something like resolve appearing in his eyes. "You too, Arthur."