The tram didn't move.
The passengers didn't blink.
They just stared — dozens of Elara Quinns, each face identical to hers but subtly wrong. One's eyes were too dark, another's smile too wide, another's skin too pale. Some wore her clothes from the library, some wore dresses from the 1800s, one even wore a silver jacket that gleamed like liquid metal.
The worst part was the way they breathed in unison.
In. Out. In. Out.
Perfectly timed.
Her throat felt tight. "Casimir?" she whispered.
No answer.
The tram doors creaked open, and the passengers stepped down one by one. Not hurried, not aggressive — just deliberate, their feet in sync, their eyes never leaving her.
She took a step back, the journal slick in her palm.
It was already writing.
"You are in 1900+X. The year between years. Leave before you match them."
Her breath caught. "The year between—what does that—"
The nearest double of her tilted its head, as if listening to her thoughts.
She turned and ran.
The cobblestones under her feet changed as she moved — first 1920s brick, then older stone, then something smooth and black that gleamed like obsidian. The buildings shifted too, their facades melting into different decades as she passed — gaslamps becoming neon signs, brick becoming glass, windows vanishing entirely.
At the end of the street, the familiar marketplace from the Lost Hour opened before her… only now it was full.
People bustled between stalls, their clothes a jumble of centuries — powdered wigs beside polymer bodysuits, medieval cloaks brushing against silk ties from the 1950s. The air smelled of spices, ozone, and something faintly sweet like burnt sugar.
A man in a tricorn hat brushed past her, muttering in a language she didn't know.
A child ran past chasing a brass wind-up bird.
A woman in a feathered mask leaned over a stall selling clocks with three hands.
Elara's pulse raced. This wasn't 1923. It wasn't anything.
It was all times at once.
"Elara!"
She spun — Casimir was striding toward her from between two stalls, his satchel slung across his body. Relief broke through her fear.
"What—where were you?" she demanded.
"Not here," he said sharply. "This place—" He grabbed her arm, steering her away from a stall where an old man was selling bottled shadows. "—it's not safe for Anchors. You linger too long, and the market starts trading in you."
They wove through the crowd, Casimir keeping one hand on her arm. She caught glimpses of strange goods as they passed:
A book that erased its words as you read them.
Coins stamped with dates centuries into the future.
A compass whose needle spun only when you lied.
The journal grew hot in her hand again. She glanced down.
"You've already been here."
She stopped walking. "Casimir… it says I've been here before."
His expression flickered — the smallest sign of discomfort — before returning to calm. "You might have. Or will. Either way, we can't—"
The words cut off.
Every sound in the market died at once.
Vendors froze mid-motion. A spilled coin hung in the air. The brass bird the child had been chasing hovered mid-flap.
Only Elara and Casimir moved.
Casimir's jaw tightened. "She's here."
A shadow fell over the stalls. Not a cloud — there was no sky here — but a slow, creeping darkness that bent around corners and ignored light. It didn't cover the market all at once. It spread, like the cracks in the city, only this time there was no gold light — only black.
From that shadow, a shape emerged.
Tall. Coat brushing the ground. Not the man she'd seen before. Not quite her reflection. Something in between.
"Elara," Casimir said without looking away from the figure, "no matter what she says, don't—"
"Still running?" the figure said, in her own voice.
"Or have you finally remembered what you did?"
The journal's ink burned onto the page so fast it blurred.
"Do not remember here."
The figure stepped closer, and the shadow around her moved with her — not like fabric, not like smoke, but like an ocean following a single tide.
Her voice was still Elara's voice, but weighted, like it carried years of things unsaid.
"You're wasting time," she said. "Do you know what they'll take from you here?"
Casimir's hand tightened on Elara's arm.
"Don't," he muttered, "answer her."
The journal pulsed hot, ink etching itself in jagged script:
"Every answer is a trade."
Elara's throat was dry. "Trade… for what?"
The other-Elara smiled faintly — and that tiny curve of the lips felt more dangerous than a blade.
"For what you're keeping," she said. "Your hours. Your days. The little moments you think are yours to waste."
One by one, the vendors in the marketplace turned their heads toward her — slow, mechanical. Their eyes gleamed faintly gold, like coins catching light. The goods on their stalls shifted. Where there had been books and coins and compasses, there were now… moments.
She saw them. Her moments.
The first time she'd touched the strange journal in the library.
The time she'd sat on the old stone bridge as a teenager, feet dangling over the river.
A birthday morning in the kitchen with her mother's hands in flour.
The moments shimmered like bubbles on the surface of water, each trapped in a small glass sphere.
The man with the bottled shadows gestured toward one. "One memory," he rasped, "for safe passage."
Casimir yanked her back a step. "No."
"Why not?" she demanded.
"Because once you give them a moment, you forget it. And without enough… you stop knowing who you are."
The other-Elara's voice drifted through the stillness.
"You think you'll remember the bridge? You won't. You'll forget the way the light hit the water, the sound of the wind. And then one day you'll look in a mirror and see someone you don't know."
Elara's chest ached. "Why are you—"
But her question cut off when the crowd shifted.
The market vendors weren't still anymore. They were moving toward her, their bodies rigid, their gold-coin eyes unblinking. The spheres in their hands flickered like candle flames.
Casimir swore under his breath. "We need to go."
"Where?" she demanded.
His voice dropped. "The back of the market. There's a clock door there — not like the one before. It leads… further."
"Further where?"
"Somewhere even she won't follow."
The other-Elara's smile deepened. "Won't I?"
They ran.
The vendors didn't chase like people — they drifted, fast and soundless, appearing at the edges of her vision and vanishing just as quickly. The stalls they passed seemed to bend, the aisles stretching longer the faster they moved.
Elara clutched the journal to her chest. It burned so hot it almost hurt, but the ink kept writing even as they ran:
"The longer you stay, the more of you there will be."
At the farthest end of the market was a wall of black cloth. Casimir shoved it aside to reveal a massive standing clock — not wood, not brass, but something like carved obsidian shot through with veins of light.
Its hands spun wildly, the pendulum swinging so fast it was a blur.
"This is it," Casimir said.
The other-Elara's voice floated across the stalls, almost gentle now.
"If you step through that, you won't come back the same."
Casimir didn't look at her. "She's right. But it's that, or we don't leave at all."
Elara hesitated, the obsidian clock's light pulsing against her skin.
The journal seared one final line:
"Choose quickly. The market is starting to remember you."
Elara's fingers tightened on the journal until her knuckles whitened.
Behind her, the market had gone silent again — too silent. She didn't dare turn around, but she could feel the stares.
Casimir's voice cut through the pressure in her chest. "Step into the pendulum's swing. Don't touch the frame."
She nodded once and stepped forward.
The moment she passed the pendulum, the world bent. The market, the gold-eyed vendors, the shadow-wrapped reflection — all stretched thin like painted glass… and shattered.
She stumbled into blackness.
---
It wasn't a void — she could see, but there was nothing to see in. No walls. No sky. Just a faint, endless gray light.
Her footsteps didn't echo, but the air felt dense, almost liquid. It pressed against her skin, making every movement deliberate.
Casimir stepped through behind her. The pendulum door vanished the instant he crossed.
Elara turned in a slow circle. "Where… is this?"
"This," Casimir said, "is before. Not the past. Not even a year. Just… before."
She frowned. "Before what?"
He hesitated. "Before anything knew what it was."
The journal warmed in her hands — but no words appeared. Blank pages stared back at her, as if even it didn't know what to say here.
At first, she thought the ground was tilting. Then she realized it wasn't the ground at all — she was being pulled. Not by gravity. By something quieter, subtler.
It was like a memory of being called by name. A thread tugging at the back of her mind.
Casimir caught her wrist. "Don't follow it."
"I'm not—"
"Yes, you are," he said sharply. "Everyone does. That's how they're lost."
"Lost to what?"
He looked into the gray distance. "The beginnings."
The light shifted, faint shadows gathering in the distance until they formed a shape. Tall, human-like, but shifting constantly — sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes… her.
Elara's breath hitched. "Is that—"
"No." Casimir's grip tightened. "It's not anyone. Not yet. That's the danger."
The figure beckoned.
The journal flared hot. Words seared into the blank page:
"You were here before you were you."
Her stomach flipped. "Casimir… I think I've been here."
His eyes were unreadable. "Yes."
The figure started walking toward them, each step rippling the gray like a stone dropped into water.
Casimir pulled her back. "We keep moving. There's an exit. Not a door — a change in the light. If we reach it, we can step into another point."
"And if we don't?"
"You won't have to worry about years anymore," he said.
Her chest tightened. "That's not comforting."
"Wasn't trying to be."
As they moved, the gray light ahead fractured — not like glass this time, but like cloth tearing. Through the rip, she glimpsed color: warm sunlight, green leaves, a sky so blue it hurt her eyes.
"Is that—"
"Yes. Go."
They ran.
The figure behind them didn't speed up, but every step it took brought it closer, as if distance didn't matter here. She could feel its gaze — heavy, curious, inevitable.
The rip widened. She reached for it—
—
She fell forward into heat, into the sound of crickets and the smell of summer grass.
And when she turned, Casimir wasn't there.
The journal burned again.
"This is where you left him."