Chapter 2 The Rogue in the Fog

London, 1885, did not feel like a past preserved in textbooks. It breathed. It reeked. It pulsed with grime and grit and stories waiting to be rewritten.

Elara stumbled after Elias Blackwood, dodging puddles and gaslight shadows, her sneakers slipping on slick cobblestones. The fog was alive around them, swallowing streets as quickly as it revealed them. Behind her, echoes of the two attackers faded-but not the panic.

"What the hell is a Warden?" she panted, still gripping the pocket watch like it could explain itself if she squeezed hard enough.

"Later," Elias said, sharp and fast. "Right now, we put distance between you and that ripple you caused."

"I didn't cause anything!"

"You opened the watch. You are the ripple."

They turned down an alley flanked by leaning brick buildings, their upper stories sagging like tired shoulders. Somewhere nearby, a woman screamed. A bell clanged. A dog barked and didn't stop.

Elara's voice cracked. "Where are we going?"

"Where the past keeps its secrets," Elias said dryly. "My bookshop."

He stopped in front of a black door beneath a crooked sign:

**BLACKWOOD & SONS - RARE BOOKS AND RARER TRUTHS**

The "& Sons" was crossed out.

He unlocked the door with a key shaped like an hourglass and ushered her in.

The shop was chaos wrapped in velvet. Piles of yellowed maps and crumbling tomes covered every surface. Clocks ticked on every wall, each set to a different hour. Some ticked backward. A globe rotated with no hands. The air smelled like cedarwood, ink, and secrets.

Elias peeled off his coat and tossed it onto a chair shaped like a raven's wing. "Sit. Touch nothing."

Elara sat. She touched everything with her eyes.

He poured tea from a kettle that hissed like it held more than steam.

"You said you knew my grandmother," she said at last.

He glanced at her. "Eliza Quinn. Brilliant. Stubborn. A better liar than she liked to admit."

Elara's throat tightened. "She died last week."

"I know."

She blinked. "How?"

"She wrote to me. Ten years ago. Told me the watch would find you. Told me what she'd done. What you'd have to finish."

A pause stretched.

"I don't understand," Elara said. "Why didn't she ever tell me about any of this?"

"Because once you know the rules of time, you can't pretend they don't apply to you," Elias said, pouring two cups. "She wanted to protect you from it. And now you're tangled in it anyway."

Elara's hands curled around the teacup like a lifeline.

"Tell me everything," she said.

Elias studied her for a beat. Then, with the weariness of a man who's explained the end of the world too many times, he began.

"Time isn't linear," he said. "Not really. It folds. It loops. Sometimes it bleeds. Every now and then, someone stumbles into the crease. Your grandmother did, in 1856. She wasn't the first. She won't be the last."

"And you?" she asked.

"I was born here. But I... keep watch. There are others like me. We're called Anchors. We try to protect the timeline from those who want to reshape it."

"Who would want to reshape time?"

He gave a humorless laugh. "Anyone with enough pain, power, or ambition. But right now, your problem is Arabella Vale."

The name hit like a drop of ink in water. It bled.

"She's not just a traveler," he went on. "She's a disruptor. A manipulator. And she's searching for the original timepieces-artifacts created when the veil between eras was still thin. The watch you carry is one of them."

Elara looked down at it. The glass face now showed faint, glowing glyphs. Circles within circles. Moving slowly. Breathing.

"She wants this?"

"She'll do worse than want it. She'll *feel* it. Time does that. And if she finds you..."

He didn't finish.

"What happens if she does?"

"You stop existing," Elias said. "Or worse-your future changes shape until it doesn't recognize you. Until you don't recognize *yourself*."

Elara stood abruptly. Her voice shook. "No. I'm not some 'chosen one.' I had a job interview. A life. A *plan*. You're talking about time manipulators and secret wars like this is all normal."

Elias crossed the room and opened a drawer. He pulled out a journal bound in deep blue leather and set it in her hands.

Her grandmother's handwriting filled every page.

Drawings of the watch. Diagrams. Timelines. Notes in frantic loops.

And sketches.

Of *Elias*.

Dozens of them.

"I don't know what she didn't tell you," Elias said softly. "But I know she loved you more than time itself. And I know she was afraid you'd come here."

Elara looked up. "Why?"

"Because you were never supposed to leave your time. You were her anchor. Her reason not to fall apart."

Her hands trembled on the journal. "Then why leave this for me? Why the letter? Why the warning?"

"Because she couldn't stop what's coming," he said. "Only *you* can."

Outside, the wind howled. Clocks rattled.

The watch on the table began to glow brighter.

Elias moved toward the window, peering into the fog.

"She's here," he murmured.

"Who?"

He turned. "Arabella."

---

### **Chapter Three Preview**: *Whispers in the Wardrobe Room*

When Arabella appears in a new disguise, Elias forces Elara into hiding with a woman who knows more than she should-a seamstress with a mirrored past and a silver needle that stitches time. But even as secrets unravel, Elara begins to question the biggest danger: not what she's running from, but what she's becoming.