Grace hadn't changed.
Not yet, at least.
She lay sideways on Aveline's bed, flipping through an old magazine like they were still twenty-five and time was something distant and lazy. But to Aveline, time was now a hunted thing—a thread she had to untangle before it snapped again.
"So," Grace said, "you want to tell me what this second-chance nonsense is really about, or are you gonna sit there looking like you saw a ghost all night?"
Aveline hesitated. The truth was impossible. She couldn't tell Grace she'd jumped five years backward to stop a death no one else even knew was coming. Not yet.
She tried a half-lie. "I had this… dream. It felt real. Like I lost someone important. And when I woke up, I just—"
"Panicked," Grace finished for her. "Yeah, I get that. You've been tense lately. Even before today."
That surprised her. Had she seemed different already, even in this time? Had some part of her grief bled through her smile?
Grace sat up. "Is this about Lucien?"
Aveline's breath caught. "Why would you say that?"
"Because you've had a crush on him since forever and you both keep pretending it's casual when it's so not," Grace said bluntly. "He texted you today and you looked like your soul left your body."
"I haven't—" Aveline started, then stopped herself. She didn't have the strength to lie again.
She looked down at the silver pocket watch lying beside her. The glow had faded for now, but the ticking remained—a quiet, constant reminder that time was watching.
"I think something's going to happen to him," she said softly.
Grace tilted her head. "Like what?"
"I don't know yet. But it's bad. And I have to stop it."
A long pause.
Grace finally said, "Okay, this is either the setup to a Lifetime movie or a mental breakdown, but either way—I'm here for it. So where do we start?"
Aveline exhaled slowly. "The past."
Later That Night
The night air was sharp with the scent of rain.
Aveline walked alone through the streets of their quiet town, her jacket pulled tight around her, heading toward a place she hadn't been in years: the university library.
Back in 2017, Lucien had done guest lectures on creative writing there. That was around the time she started noticing something in him had changed. He stopped showing up for random dinners. He pulled away. His smile—always quick and full of mischief—grew thinner, stretched. At first, she'd thought it was stress. Deadlines. Life.
But maybe… it was the beginning of the end.
She passed the rows of amber-lit windows and slipped into the library through the side door with her old student keycard—something she'd forgotten she still had in this version of her life.
Everything looked the same. Wooden shelves. Dust in the corners. The clunky old elevator humming like a tired machine.
She made her way to the second floor—to the writing archives. She remembered Lucien keeping copies of his lecture notes and drafts here, tucked into a personal file cabinet the university had let him use.
And just as she remembered, it was there.
She flipped through his files, her fingers trembling with each page she touched. Essays, notes, short stories. So many stories.
And then—she found it.
A journal entry. Not a draft. A real entry, dated October 17, 2017—just six days from now.
"Saw Dr. K this morning. MRI results aren't great. Still not ready to tell Aveline. She looks at me like I can still be saved. Like I'm not breaking. But I am. Slowly."
Aveline's blood ran cold.
Dr. K?
An MRI.
He had been sick. That early?
She hadn't even known until years later, when the headaches got bad and the truth surfaced. By then it had metastasized. There was nothing they could do.
"No," she whispered. "You knew. You knew and you didn't tell me."
Her hands shook as she clutched the page to her chest.
That had to be it—the beginning. The moment he began to die. Not when the illness took him, but when he started hiding it.
The glow returned to the pocket watch, pulsing brighter this time. A sign. A warning.
Tears blurred her vision. She staggered back, her heart pounding against her ribs like a fist.
"I can stop this," she whispered. "I can make him tell me. I can make him fight sooner."
But something deeper echoed in her chest.
Would he believe her?
Would changing it too soon scare him off?
What if the illness wasn't the only danger?
Elsewhere, In the Shadows of Time
Far from Aveline's reach, in a place where clocks never stop, the old man with the pocket watch stood before a wall of time threads—golden lines stretching through space.
He touched one—Lucien's.
It shimmered, but it had started to fracture.
"She's already turning the tide," he murmured.
Behind him, a second figure stepped into the light.
A woman with eyes like frost. Cold. Calculating.
"She's playing with fate," the woman said. "And fate does not play nice."
The old man nodded solemnly. "She wants to save him. But she hasn't yet asked—who must be sacrificed… to make that happen?"