The storm started just after midnight.
Jonah sat cross-legged on the wooden floor of Bellamy's back room, surrounded by open journals, schematics, and glass containers filled with bizarre clock parts. Outside, rain beat steadily against the windows. Thunder rolled over the rooftops like distant drums.
The shop had become a different world. The ticking of the clocks had faded into a background rhythm—a strange comfort.
But what he was reading was anything but comforting.
> Timebreakers
Those who fracture the present for personal gain. Often unknowing. Always dangerous.
That's what the title of the page read in Bellamy's tight, slanted handwriting. Below it were charcoal sketches of people frozen mid-motion—some looking backward, others staring directly out of the page.
Thorne was across the room, carefully reassembling one of Bellamy's memory pendulums. He hadn't spoken in a while, lost in his own quiet storm of thought.
Jonah cleared his throat. "So… there are other people. People who can do what the Heartwind does?"
Thorne didn't look up. "Not do. Cause. Timebreakers aren't engineers. They're echoes. Living contradictions. Sometimes it starts with a decision so strong it leaves a scar in time. A regret, a wish, a fear…"
He looked up at Jonah.
"Sometimes it starts with a boy activating a mechanism that should have stayed buried."
Jonah felt the weight of that.
"But if I didn't activate it," he said slowly, "would it still be broken?"
Thorne sighed and leaned back. "That's the thing about time—it bends toward inevitability."
Jonah looked down at the next journal entry.
> February 3rd, 1921.
Local girl vanished during mirror hour. No trace. Searchers claimed to see copies of her moving in opposite directions. Memory pendulum reacted violently.
Jonah felt his stomach twist. "She disappeared?"
"Worse," Thorne said. "She split. Part of her continued on, unaware. The other… became a shadow."
Jonah shut the journal. "Okay. So this Revenant—he's not just some nightmare. He's a split?"
"No," Thorne said, standing. "He's what happens when time tries to erase itself and fails."
Lightning flashed.
Jonah flinched, but Thorne moved toward the window and pulled aside the curtain. A figure stood across the street.
Still.
Watching.
"Is that him?" Jonah asked, voice small.
"No," Thorne said after a moment. "But it's someone new."
Jonah rushed to his side and stared through the rain-smeared glass. The figure was tall, dressed in black, and entirely unmoving. Then, just as lightning flashed again, they were gone.
No footsteps.
No trace.
Thorne turned to Jonah. "The fracture's spreading. They're being drawn to you."
"Why me?"
"You hold the key. The last key. And now that time's bleeding again, those broken by it are waking up. Some will want to fix it." His eyes darkened. "Some will want to feed on it."
Jonah took a shaky breath and reached for his coat. "So what do we do?"
Thorne didn't hesitate.
"We go to the source of the first crack."
Jonah blinked. "You mean the Heartwind?"
"No." He picked up a lantern and opened the door to the shop. "I mean the place where Bellamy failed to stop time the first time."
Jonah followed him out into the storm, the clocks in the shop fading behind him.
"Where is it?"
Thorne's answer was quiet. Almost reverent.
> "The field of clocks."