The rain didn't fall in New Austin anymore — it hissed. The air itself carried too much static, too much leftover hum from the tech and the magic bleeding together. Every drop sparked faintly before it hit the pavement, leaving little trails of light that vanished before anyone could notice.
Maya Vale noticed.
She always noticed things others didn't. The whisper of a dying hour. The shape of a scream frozen in time. The way grief clung to the corners of a room like perfume.
Tonight, she crouched over a body on the cold concrete of Dockside District, under the fractured neon of a flickering sign that read "TEXAS FUTURES: TIME IS MONEY."
It was always about time.
The corpse was male, mid-thirties, though his skin told several stories — sunburned hands like a man who worked outdoors, but smooth, inked forearms that belonged to a corporate man. His face was calm, as if he'd just exhaled for the last time.What was wrong — what made Maya's pulse skip — was that he was dying again.
Her witch-sight flared; she saw it in a rush of pale blue light. The man's death was repeating. Each minute, his body convulsed — heart stopping, lungs collapsing — and then resetting. Like a scratched record.Over and over.
She whispered, "Echo loop. Jesus."
Her partner, a mortal officer named Briggs, lit a cigarette despite the rain. "He's been doing that for twenty minutes. Our techs are freaking out."
Maya stood, pulling her black trench coat tighter. Her hair — dark with streaks of gray magic — framed eyes that shimmered faintly with gold runes. "Time fracture. Someone tore the moment apart."
Briggs sighed. "You always say that, Vale. You ever gonna tell me what it means?"
She ignored him and knelt again, touching the air an inch above the man's chest. The energy stung her fingertips.Residual chrono-magic.And deep beneath it — a pattern she'd only seen once before.The pattern that had killed her mentor.
She whispered, "Ward."
Briggs frowned. "What?"
"Nothing." She rose and looked toward the skyline — steel and sand, towers leaning into smog. In the distance, the old frontier clock tower blinked thirteen times instead of twelve.
At Temporal Crimes Division, the air always smelled like ozone and coffee. The walls buzzed faintly from the temporal stabilizers buried beneath the concrete. The department existed off the record, a ghost agency of the FBI tasked with containing "chronological irregularities."
Maya moved through the corridors, ignoring the sideways looks. She knew the rumors — witch-born, half-blood, unhinged since her mentor's death. They weren't wrong, not entirely.
Inside her office, the rain outside shimmered through glass reinforced with temporal glass — you could see echoes of other times if you stared long enough. She tapped her terminal, and the case file projected midair.
Victim: Leonard DrakeCause of Death: Temporal RecursionOrigin Trace: Unknown anomaly, Silvermare, 1874
Her breath caught.Silvermare.
A name out of a myth, a ghost town wiped from every historical record. And yet, her mentor — Agent Corbin Hale — had whispered it on his deathbed two years ago.
"Silvermare's the root, kid. Don't fix the hour — break it."
That night, she couldn't sleep.Her apartment was a small, dim place above the railyard. When the city slept, the sky flickered with auroras that weren't supposed to exist. She poured whiskey, opened the file again, and stared at the coordinates embedded in the victim's chrono-signature.
Coordinates that didn't belong anywhere on Earth.They pointed beneath New Austin — directly under the ruins of the old clock tower.
Maya's pulse raced. She grabbed her coat, holstered her revolver, and left.
The old clock tower had been sealed since the Collapse of '99, when a failed time experiment melted the ground beneath it. It was the heart of the city — and its wound.
As she approached, she felt it — the hum of power like a migraine behind her eyes. The tower leaned over her like a dying sentinel.The iron door was locked, but locks didn't mean much to witches. She murmured an old charm, and the air shivered. The door clicked open.
Inside was darkness and dust.The air shimmered with faint blue cracks — threads of light frozen midair.She followed them down a spiral staircase that shouldn't have existed.
At the bottom: a room of glass and brass machinery.At its center, a ring suspended above a pit of light — humming like a heartbeat.The same design she'd seen in the classified sketches of the Chrono-Engine.
And standing before it…a man.
Tall.Broad shoulders beneath a long coat dusted with desert sand.He turned slowly, his eyes catching the light — not glowing, but ancient.Like he'd seen centuries burn.
He smiled faintly. "You made it."
Maya froze. "Who the hell are you?"
"Name's Cassian Reed." His voice was a drawl — smooth, low, Western. "Been waitin' for you, witch."
She raised her weapon. "Step away from the device."
He didn't move. "If I do, time dies."
Lightning cracked above. The machine pulsed harder, the air warping.Maya's runes flared. "You built this thing?"
Cassian shook his head. "No. I was born from it."
The Chrono-Engine screamed.
Every surface in the room lit up, glowing like molten glass. The threads of time itself tore open, showing flashes of another world — deserts, gunfire, a woman in a red saloon dress laughing through blood.
Maya screamed as the floor vanished. She fell through light and shadow, through seconds and centuries.
Then — silence.
She hit the ground hard, dust exploding around her.
The air was dry. Hot.The sky was endless blue.
When she looked up, she saw a wooden sign swinging in the wind:WELCOME TO SILVERMARE — 1874.
And the first gunshot of the past echoed through the future.