Mr. Alder exhaled sharply.

"That," he muttered, "wasn't good."

Elias turned to him, his hands trembling. "Who—what—was he?"

The old bookseller rubbed his forehead. "A warning."

Elias felt his stomach twist. "A warning about what?"

Mr. Alder looked at him then, really looked at him.

"The burden of knowing," he said simply. "The moment you saw the fire before it happened, Elias, you stepped into a world you don’t understand."

Elias shook his head. "I didn’t ask for this."

"Doesn’t matter." Mr. Alder’s voice was quiet. "Now that you've seen beyond time, time has seen you back."

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Something about those words made Elias’s chest tighten. "I don’t want it to."

The old man sighed, turning to the display case at the back of the shop. His fingers hovered over the fractured watch—the one frozen at the impossible time. Twenty-six minutes past thirteen.

"This happened before," he murmured.

Elias’s breath hitched. "To who?"

Mr. Alder’s fingers pressed against the glass. "To someone who thought they could change fate."

Silence stretched between them.

Elias looked down at his own pocket watch. His reflection in the glass surface stared back at him, but something felt off. The more he looked, the more it seemed like the reflection wasn’t quite in sync with him. Like it was just a fraction of a second too slow.

Then—it moved.

Just slightly.

Elias yanked his gaze away, his breath coming in short, shallow bursts.

Mr. Alder watched him carefully. "Your gift isn’t just about seeing the future, Elias."

Elias clenched his jaw. "Then what is it?"

Mr. Alder hesitated. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he said:

"It’s about knowing which future is real."

Elias’s fingers curled around the watch.

He thought he understood what was happening to him. But he didn’t.

Not yet.

But he was starting to see—time wasn’t just something to predict. It was something that could be broken.

And someone, somewhere, was already breaking it.