Elian didn’t wave back.

Casen stepped in front of her.

The man stopped moving, still standing near the invisible seam in the air where he’d appeared. His coat didn’t sway in the breeze. His boots didn’t disturb the dust. He wasn’t just quiet—he felt like silence itself.

“Who is he?” Casen whispered.

“I don’t know,” Elian said. “But I’ve seen him. In that place. The glass world. The memory that wasn’t mine.”

Casen kept his eyes on the stranger. “Then how do you know it wasn’t your memory?”

“Because I died somewhere else.”

The air seemed to still further.

Casen blinked. “You remember your death?”

“Not clearly. Just the end. I was running. Someone pulled me back. And then... the clock-door. I wasn’t supposed to come through. Not then.”

The man moved.

One step forward.

Not a sound.

Casen’s heart jumped. “We need to leave.”

“He’s not chasing us,” Elian said, voice barely above a whisper. “He’s... waiting.”

“For what?”

“For me to remember more.”

Casen slowly backed them deeper into the shadows. “You said the door was alive. That it bled. Are you sure it wasn’t a hallucination?”

“I wish it was.”

They didn’t speak for a long time. The man just stood there, occasionally tilting his head like he was listening to something distant.

Finally, Elian whispered, “Casen. Do you believe in overlapping timelines?”

Casen blinked. “What?”

“Timelines. Realities. Different versions of the same people. I think something cracked open when I came back. I think I was supposed to die at a different moment... and I ended up here instead.”

Casen frowned. “And he’s from where you should’ve gone?”

She nodded. “That place I saw—the glass, the reflections—I think that’s where the dead wait before they return. But only the ones who are supposed to. And I wasn’t. I slipped through a crack.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But I think he does.”

The man suddenly turned—and walked away. Not back into the shimmer. Not toward them. Just down the street, like he was part of the world again.

Casen exhaled.

“That’s it?” he said. “He’s just walking off?”

“No,” Elian said. “He’s leading us.”

“What makes you think that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t. But I don’t think I have a choice.”

They followed.

The man led them into deeper parts of Sector 4, where the lights barely worked and buildings leaned in over the streets like watchers. At some point, Casen realized they weren’t just following a person—they were following a pattern.

Symbols on walls. Arrows scraped into old stone. The further they walked, the more the city felt... layered. Like beneath the ruins was another place. An older one.

Elian ran her fingers along a mural. “I’ve seen this before.”

Casen raised a brow. “Where?”

“In the glass place. But it wasn’t broken. It was glowing.”

“Did you live here? Before?”

“I think I will live here.”

Casen paused. “Future tense?”

She touched her head. “I told you. My death hasn’t happened yet. Not in this version. I remember pieces of something that hasn’t happened... because I came through the wrong time.”

“So you’re from the future?”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m from the wrong version of now.”

Casen didn’t know what to say to that.

They reached an old train station—abandoned, rusted, but untouched by graffiti or scavengers. The man was already there, standing at the edge of the platform, staring at the tracks.

Elian stepped forward. “Tell me what I am.”

The man didn’t turn. But he spoke.

“You’re a fracture.”

His voice was like static.

“Something broke,” he said. “And the world let you slip through. You remember things you were never meant to see. That makes you dangerous.”

Casen stepped up beside her. “Dangerous to who?”

The man turned then. “To everything.”

A sound echoed in the distance—a train horn. But there were no trains.

The man stepped back onto the tracks.

“Don’t follow me,” he said. “Not yet.”

Then he vanished.

Not into light. Not into shadow.

He just stopped being there.

Casen stared at the empty space.

“What now?” he asked.

Elian looked down the tracks. “We wait. And we remember.”

She turned to him. “Because the past is coming for us next.”