Date: November 11th, 1884
Day: Wednesday
Time: 4:44 AM
Location: The Fog District, Unnamed City (between Victorian London & Ancient Kyoto)
Timeline Anchor: Cycle 0000-α
Ouch... My skull... it's like something's burrowing inside it—twisting nerves like violin strings pulled taut until they scream.
A violent throb stabbed through Elias Rehn's left temple. His eyes snapped open.
A dream? No... not again.
The moment he stirred, the world around him warped. The ceiling swirled with a reddish hue, like dried blood lacquered onto glass. His limbs were leaden. His tongue was dry. And his mind—fractured.
"Is this the forty-third… or the forty-fourth?"
Thoughts fluttered past like moths to flame—blurred, whispering, unfinished.
Elias lay on his side, unmoving, barely blinking. His right eye twitched involuntarily. The coppery taste of iron pooled in his mouth. He didn't need a mirror to know—he had bitten his tongue again.
Pain tethered him to reality.
And yet, that reality... was wrong.
The air felt thick, as if time itself had condensed into vapor. The flickering candlelight—no, the shadows—moved on their own. Everything reeked of something not dead, but not living either. Like rot made from memories.
4:44 AM.
The clock didn't tick.
It throbbed.
Elias sat up, groaning. His spine cracked in protest. He blinked at the mirror facing his bed.
And there it was—again.
Fogged. Warped. Breathing.
The glass curved unnaturally as though trying to inhale him.
"No. Not this again. I must be hallucinating. Stress. Just stress."
He rubbed his temples, fingertips brushing a small, old scar.
"Coincidence. Circadian rhythm. Nothing worth feeding fear," he muttered, repeating the lie he'd memorized.
But his eyes—sunken, cracked with veins—knew better.
He rose on trembling legs. The floor was damp beneath his feet.
It hadn't rained.
Not in weeks.
He shuffled forward, one sluggish step at a time, drawn toward the mirror like a moth hypnotized by flame.
The mirror whispered.
Not with words.
But with breath.
Then it blinked.
Late.
"That's not me."
Elias froze. The mirror's version of him tilted its head—off by a degree. Too human. Too perfect. Like a taxidermied soul.
The figure smiled.
But Elias didn't.
"You don't remember yet, do you?" the reflection said, voice calm, patient… ancient.
Elias's chest tightened. "I—I don't understand."
The reflection's voice deepened, as if echoing from a well older than language itself.
"I'm you. From tomorrow."
That sentence hit like a hammer.
No footsteps. No wind. But everything in the room shuddered.
Elias backed away. "No… No, that's impossible. You're not real. You're a projection. A... psychosis."
The reflection stepped forward. The glass didn't resist. It rippled.
"I came to warn you," it said. "You're asking questions. In your sleep. In the space between moments. Questions that Time doesn't like."
Elias's lips quivered. "Warn me of what?"
"If you keep asking… you'll find the truth. But once you do—"
The lights died. The candles hissed like choking children.
"—it won't let you leave."
The mirror cracked—this time with a scream.
A high-pitched, feminine voice, screaming from nowhere. Or perhaps... from inside him.
A sudden wind surged. Paper flew. Books burned without flame. His ears rang with bells he hadn't heard in decades.
Then—
Blackness.
He awoke.
Gasping. Bleeding. Cold sweat soaking the bed.
4:44 AM.
Same bed.
Same mirror.
Except—
He was inside it.
He turned. A new Elias stirred in bed.
"No," he whispered. "No no no—"
He pounded the glass. It didn't shake.
The new Elias sat up.
Looked around.
And froze.
Elias screamed.
But no one heard.
Not even God.
The loop began.
A new version each day.
Some cried.
Some cut their throats the moment they saw him.
Some laughed and called him a dream.
But they always asked.
And Time always reset.
He didn't.
Elias, the original, if such a thing existed, rotted behind the glass. Century by century. Breath by breath. A soul decaying in a prison made of self.
Once, a little girl came to the door. Pale. Hollow-eyed.
"Don't talk to the mirror," she sang. "He remembers too much."
And vanished.
Then, one day—a version of him stood at the mirror and whispered:
"Who are you?"
And for the first time—
He said nothing.
Just stared.
Eyes black.
Smile—broken.
The mirror cracked.
From within.
And the world stopped.
Not paused. Stopped.
He didn't wake up at 4:44 that morning.
He didn't wake up at all.
Because he was no longer in time.
He was Time.
The scream behind the silence.
The corpse in the mirror.
The mind that asked too long—and became the question itself.
"He was the anomaly. The riddle. The punishment. The answer asking to be forgotten."
---
To be continued in Chapter 2: The Clock That Counts Backwards