Residential District Streets, Present

  Niche pulls out the book from his coat as he walks. The pages looked blank before, but that was when he was weak. He's regained his strength now – hopefully, after all that rest.

  He reaches out with his element perception first, trying to detect the ink molecules, the material, anything that would let him detect the individual particles and morph them into readable text. His element detection finds nothing. Not hidden. Not masked. The words simply don't register as existing.

  He tries again, pushing harder. Nothing. Like trying to grab air.

  Fine. The hard way.

  He stops walking and closes the book. He holds his palm flat against the flame-ingrained cover. A controlled flame spreads across the surface. The leather doesn't burn. Instead, the heat sinks into it, absorbed completely.

  For a moment, nothing happens.

  Then he feels it. The fire moves through the book on its own, traveling along some internal pathway he can't see. He looks at the side of the book, seeing the first few pages begin to glow. The pages after those are dimmer. The ones near the back barely flicker at all.

  The binding groans. The cover shifts under his hand and flings open.

  Something drops out of the first page and hits his palm. Cold. Heavy. He fumbles it, and it crashed to the ground with a sound like a wine glass shattering on the floor.

  Niche quickly checks the ground to see the damage, but the object lies there perfectly intact, not a scratch. The object is a crystal – similar in appearance to the time crystals Niche found in his father’s room – but different. The colors on this one aren’t flat like the time crystals; rather, colors he can't decipher twist through the crystal, layered on top of each other like someone melted a dozen different stones together and let them harden into one ugly mass. The edges don't match. Some parts are smooth, others jagged where different pieces fused badly, as if someone in a rush broke apart different crystals and fused their parts together.

  He holds it up to the light, trying to count how many went into making this thing. The red bleeds into something orange. The orange sits on top of a deep blue. Under that, green? Purple? The colors keep shifting every time he tilts it. He loses count at six. Maybe seven. Maybe more. A large majority of the agglomerate has the same color as the familiar time crystals.

  What the hell was Takeshi carrying around?

  He shoves the agglomerate in his pocket and looks at the open pages, small traces of fire now between the grooves of the words, detectable by Niche’s only way to navigate in this world.

  Rushed, slanted handwriting in the pages, like Takeshi was writing while moving. The first few pages are clear enough.

  "Date: Fcbnuany 2G”

  Niche ignores this messy date and continues the neater text.

  “Confirmed. Travel is possible. Actual displacement. But interaction dangerous. Simple observation is advised."

  Niche continues.

  "Treaty location found. Oldest structure in the market district. The walls remember."

  A few pages later, the writing gets worse. Shakier.

  "Dangerous. History doesn't want to be touched. But I saw it. The k1n6. The f1nst w0nld. The moment everything broke."

  The next page is too dim to read. Niche tilts the book, trying to catch more of the fading glow. He makes out fragments.

  "...if someone stronger could go back..."

  "...witness the treaty..."

  "...maybe undo..."

  The rest disappears into nothing.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Niche closes the book. His hand goes to his pocket. The crystal is warm now. Warmer than it should be, pressed against his leg through the fabric.

  Remember: travel. Just view. No interaction. Simply observe and come back. Know the cause in the past so I can figure out the solution in the present.

  Old City, Present

  Niche finally gets to the old city that he recognizes. Everyone does. The city promotes it as "authentic historical architecture," slaps it on postcards, and sells overpriced souvenirs to tourists who don't know any better. Half the buildings are reconstructions. The other half are held together by paint and wishful thinking.

  But Takeshi wrote "oldest structure." Not "tourist attraction."

  Niche walks past the main strip, past the restaurants with fake aged signs, past the gift shops selling replica swords. The crystal grows warmer with each block. By the time he reaches the back alleys, it's almost hot.

  There's a building here that doesn't match the others. The architecture is wrong. The angles are older, built before the city standardized construction codes. No signage. No windows on the ground floor. Just a door that looks like it hasn't been opened in decades.

  The crystal burns against his thigh.

  He pushes the door open. The hinges don't creak. They've been recently oiled. Someone's been here.

  Inside, dust covers everything except a path worn into the floor. Footprints. Multiple sets, different sizes, all leading to the same spot in the center of the room.

  Niche follows them.

  The crystal erupts.

  Light pours out of his pocket, white and blinding. When he pulls it out, the thing is vibrating in his hand, colors cycling faster than he can detect. The walls around him seem to pull back, like the building itself is flinching away from what he's holding.

  He holds the crystal up.

  His concerns are answered as he feels the crystal drink his flames. It doesn't just absorb them, but pulls them out of him, hungry, desperate, like it's been waiting for this.

  The floor starts vibrating. No. Not just the floor.

  Everything.

  Don't try to change anything. Just observe.

  The crystal pushes more, making a sound Niche feels in his teeth, in his bones, behind his eyes. His vision splits. Doubles. The room exists in two places at once.

  The world tears like wet paper and—

  ???, Present

  Niche is on his knees, gasping. The disorientation is overwhelming. His body feels wrong, like it's been taken apart and put back together by someone who'd only read a description of how humans work.

  Slowly, when his element detection stabilizes, he looks up.

  The building he’s in is...new. Impossibly new. It looks the same as the run-down building in the Old City, but wood that was rotted seconds ago now gleams with fresh lacquer. It looks like it was built yesterday.

  Niche regains his balance and steps outside.

  A marketplace. People buying, selling, talking. Normal. Except it's not.

  No one's arguing. A merchant hands over fish, the customer hands over payment, both nod and move on. No haggling. No irritation. No tired sighs or forced smiles. Just...transaction. Clean. Easy.

  "Fresh fish! Caught this morning!" A merchant calls in a language Niche somehow understands but has never heard before.

  Niche watches a child bump into a man carrying a crate. The man steadies himself and looks down at the kid. Niche braces for the yelling, the frustration.

  The man smiles. Pats the kid's head. Walks away.

  The kid doesn't even look guilty. Just keeps running.

  What the fuck.

  Everyone moves like they know exactly where they're going. No hesitation. No one checking their pockets, no one glancing over their shoulder.

  The air smells like nothing. Not clean, not dirty. Just...nothing. No sweat, no food, no animal shit. Nothing offensive. Nothing at all.

  He looks up. Where the skyline should be, a palace sits on the hill. Simple. Elegant. Flags he doesn't recognize.

  But that's not what makes his stomach drop.

  It's the sky. The sun is brighter than it should be. Warmer. And for a second, he swears it pulses. It looks…full. Not like that half-assed sun he’s used to seeing that barely even shines.

  Niche notices the effects of the fuller sun.

  This place feels a lot warmer. It’s not cold all the time like back in the present. I wish I could live HERE.

  But this isn’t just the past.

  He looks around again. At the people who don't argue. The streets with no trash. The perfect, frictionless society running like a machine.

  This is before. Before anyone he knows existed. Before everything went wrong.

  "Holy shit," Niche breathes. "Where the fuck am I?"

  He reaches into his pocket. Empty.

  The crystal is gone.

  He checks again and pats himself down. Nothing. Not even fragments.

  Did it shatter? Did the trip use it all up?

  He thinks back to Takeshi's notes. The frantic handwriting. The warnings about instability.

  That fucking Takeshi. The crystal had too much stored. Takeshi stacked on layers and layers of time energy crammed into one unstable mass. That’s why there was so much of the time crystal in that blob; Takeshi put all that to send me so far back in time. He did this all so I’d go back before everything. The government must’ve been doing unfaithful practices for a while if Takeshi overshot the concentration of time crystal THIS much.

  How far back did I go?

  He watches a man hand a loaf of bread to a stranger. No payment. No expectation. Just gives it to him and walks away.

  The stranger doesn't even say thank you. Just takes it like it's normal. Like this is how things work.

  Too far. I went too far back.