The world outside Elara's orbit had not stood still. The biweekly visits to Alistair Finch's laboratory were a jarring descent from the sunlit intimacy of his office back into the sulfurous gloom of the alchemist's lair. Each time he crossed the threshold, the chemical-laden air felt thicker, more oppressive, a tangible reminder of the other, more sinister loop that bound him.
Finch had noticed the change in him. The alchemist's sharp, birdlike eyes missed nothing. "Your focus wavers, boy," he remarked one afternoon, his voice a dry rasp as he watched Lysander mechanically grind a piece of lapis lazuli into a fine powder. "The mundane world distracts you. The pursuit of gold, of status... it is dross compared to the pursuit of the Azoth, the world soul."
Lysander kept his head down, the mortar and pestle providing a rhythmic counterpoint to his thudding heart. "A man must live in the world, Master Finch, even as he seeks to understand it."
"A feeble excuse," Finch sneered, moving to his furnace. "The world is an illusion. A consensus of shared delusion. We," he gestured between the two of them, "are meant to perceive the reality behind the veil. You, especially. I have never encountered a mind so pre-equipped for the Great Work."
The phrase "pre-equipped" sent a chill down Lysander's spine. It was the closest Finch had come in this cycle to acknowledging the unnatural source of his knowledge.
"You speak in riddles, sir," Lysander deflected, his tone carefully neutral.
"Do I?" Finch turned, his gaze burning with a new, unsettling intensity. "Let us speak plainly, then. Your 'inspirations,' your 'deductions'... they are not that. They are recollections. You do not learn; you access."
The pestle slipped from Lysander's fingers, clattering onto the stone floor. The sound was deafening in the sudden silence. He stared at Finch, his carefully constructed composure shattered. The alchemist was not guessing; he was stating a fact.
Finch smiled, a thin, bloodless stretching of lips. "Do not look so shocked. Did you think I would not notice? That I would not run my own experiments? Every philosophical concept, every scientific principle I have presented to you, you have not analyzed them. You have recognized them. Like a man recalling the lyrics to a song he has not heard in years."
He paced around Lysander, a predator circling its prey. "At first, I thought you were a spy from the Royal Society, or a prodigy touched by God. But you are something else. You are a temporal anomaly. A consciousness out of phase. You are living proof of my theories."
Lysander found his voice, though it was a ragged thing. "Theories?"
"That time is not a river, but a sea!" Finch's voice rose, fervent and fanatical. "That all moments coexist! That a soul, properly prepared, can navigate its currents! My initial experiments were crude, attempts to perceive a single moment ahead or behind. But you... you are not perceiving. You are submerged. You have lived this life before."
The truth, spoken aloud in this reeking chamber, was more terrifying than Lysander could have imagined. Finch didn't see him as a person; he saw him as validation. As the ultimate successful experiment.
"What do you want from me?" Lysander whispered.
"Confirmation," Finch said, his eyes gleaming. "Data. You are the key to mapping the currents of time. Together, we can perfect the art. We can achieve what the ancients only dreamed of, not just the transmutation of base metal, but the transmutation of fate itself! We can become masters of causality!"
This was the alchemist's gambit. Not a threat, but a seduction. An offer of partnership in a quest for ultimate power. Finch was offering him the chance to not just endure the loop, but to control it.
The temptation was a physical ache. To never feel helpless again. To bend time to his will, to ensure he and Elara were never parted. It was everything he had ever wanted.
But he looked at Finch, at the sunken, feverish eyes, the hands stained with the residue of forgotten experiments, the soul so consumed by hubris it had lost all humanity, and he felt a profound revulsion. To master time with this man would be to become him. Isolated, paranoid, seeing other human beings as variables in an equation.
He thought of Elara's hand in his, warm and real. He thought of the trust in her eyes. That was a different kind of power. A fragile, human power built on truth, not manipulation.
"I am not your key," Lysander said, his voice gaining strength. "I am a man. And I want no part of your... mastery."
Finch's fervent expression collapsed into something cold and dangerous. The seduction was over. "You misunderstand your position. You are not a guest here. You are a specimen. And a specimen does not get to refuse its purpose."
He walked to a locked cabinet and withdrew a small, ornate box made of dark wood. He opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, was a pendant. It was a perfect ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail, crafted from a strange, nonreflective metal that seemed to swallow the light.
"This is Orichalcum," Finch said, his voice low. "A metal of my own creation. It resonates with... unique energies." He lifted the pendant by its chain. "You will wear it. It will help me measure the fluctuations. It will help me anchor you."
Lysander took a step back. "I will not."
"You will," Finch said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Or the fascinating Miss Vance, who has so captured your distracted attention, might find her father's workshop suddenly plagued by a most unfortunate and mysterious fire. Accidents happen so easily in a city of wood and flame."
The threat was as precise as a surgeon's knife, aimed directly at his heart. Finch had been watching him far more closely than he'd realized. He knew his vulnerability.
A cold, murderous rage flooded Lysander's veins. For a moment, he was not a businessman or a time-lost soul, but a primal creature defending its mate. He wanted to lunge at the alchemist, to wrap the chain of that vile pendant around his neck.
But he saw the certainty in Finch's eyes. He was a man who would not hesitate to burn the world to the ground for a single data point.
Slowly, mechanically, Lysander extended his hand.
Finch smiled his thin smile again and dropped the cold, heavy pendant into his palm. The metal felt unnaturally cold, a pocket of absolute zero against his skin.
"Good," Finch purred. "Now, let us begin the real work. Tell me, from where does your knowledge come? What year is it, in the life you remember?"
As the oppressive weight of the orichalcum settled against his chest, Lysander felt the walls of his prison not just close in, but become sentient. He was no longer just trapped in a loop; he was a laboratory rat, and the scientist had just plugged him into the machine. The game had changed, and the stakes had become mortal. He had chosen Elara over power, and in doing so, had made her a target. The dance with the alchemist was over. The war had begun.