POV: Maya Chen
I'm drowning in fire.
No—I'm floating. Weightless. Every nerve in my body screams, but I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't open my eyes.
Am I dead?
A voice cuts through the roaring in my ears. Distant. Angry. Male.
"—burn the witch at dawn! She speaks the devil's tongue!"
Witch? What witch?
My eyelids feel like concrete, but I force them open. Everything's blurry. Shapes move above me—people, I think. The air smells wrong. Not hospital antiseptic or burning lab chemicals. It smells like... sweat. Animals. Smoke.
"She wakes! The demon wakes!"
Someone screams. Not me this time—them. The shapes scramble backward.
I try to sit up. Pain explodes through my chest and I gasp, which makes everything hurt worse. My vision clears enough to see rough wooden planks beneath me. Straw. A small window showing gray sky.
This isn't a hospital.
"Where..." My voice comes out raw, like I swallowed glass. "Where am I?"
The people—three women in strange long dresses—cross themselves and back toward the door.
"She speaks the demon words!" the oldest one hisses. "Priest! We need the priest!"
They run out, slamming a heavy wooden door behind them. I hear a bolt slide into place.
I'm locked in.
Panic claws up my throat. I force myself to breathe, to think like a scientist. Assess the situation. Gather data.
One: I'm not dead, despite the explosion.
Two: I'm not in a hospital or any building I recognize.
Three: These women wore medieval costumes and spoke... wait. Spoke what? English, but strange. Old-fashioned.
Four: They called me a witch.
I look down at myself. My business suit is gone. Instead, I'm wearing a rough brown dress that feels like a potato sack. My arms are covered in scratches and bruises, but no burns. No glass cuts from the explosion.
How long was I unconscious?
The door crashes open. A tall man in black robes strides in—a priest, I realize, seeing the wooden cross around his neck. Behind him, a crowd presses close, their faces twisted with fear and fascination.
"You," the priest points at me with a bony finger. "What manner of creature are you? Speak!"
"I'm not a creature. I'm a doctor—"
Wrong thing to say. The crowd gasps. Someone shouts "Witch!" Again.
"I'm a person," I try again, speaking slowly. "My name is Maya Chen. There's been some kind of mistake. I need to call—"
"She speaks in tongues!" a man yells. "Demon words! Maya Chen—what devil name is this?"
My blood runs cold. They don't understand me. Or no—they understand some of it, but my name sounds foreign to them. And "doctor" and "call" apparently mean nothing.
Where am I?
"When were you born, witch?" the priest demands.
"1998. January fifteenth, 1998."
The silence is absolute.
Then everyone starts talking at once. Shouting. The priest raises his hands for quiet.
"She claims to be from the year 1998," he says slowly, and even he looks shaken. "We are in the year of our Lord 1434. This creature is not of our world. She is a demon sent to test our faith!"
The number echoes in my head like a gunshot.
Time travel. I've traveled back in time. Six hundred years.
My knees give out. I collapse onto the straw, gasping. This is impossible. Impossible. Time travel doesn't exist. It's theoretical physics, science fiction, not—
The lab. My research. The quantum elements I was using in the bioengineering process. The explosion happened in the middle of all that equipment, all that energy...
Oh God. Did the explosion somehow create a temporal rift? Did I fall through time itself?
"Seize her," the priest commands. "We burn her at dawn. May God have mercy on her demon soul."
"No!" I scramble backward, but there's nowhere to go. Rough hands grab me, drag me out of the room into harsh daylight.
I'm in a village square. Dozens of people crowd around, staring at me like I'm a monster. Children cry. Women clutch their babies. Men grip crude weapons—pitchforks, axes, clubs.
They drag me toward a wooden pole planted in the center of the square. A stake. My stake.
At the base, someone's piled branches and straw.
They're really going to burn me.
"Please!" I fight against their grip, desperate. "I'm not a demon! I'm a scientist! I can help you—I know about medicine, about diseases, about—"
"Enough of your devil's lies!" The priest backhands me across the face. Stars explode in my vision. Blood fills my mouth.
They tie me to the stake with rough rope. It cuts into my wrists, my waist. I can't move. Can't run.
The crowd closes in, forming a circle. Some look excited. Some look scared. None look like they'll help me.
"Wait!" I'm crying now, beyond pride or dignity. "Please wait! I can prove I'm not a demon! Test me! Ask me questions! Give me a chance!"
The priest picks up a torch. The flames dance, bright and hungry.
"May the fire cleanse this evil from our land," he intones.
James's face flashes in my mind. His smile as he pressed the button. He tried to kill me once. Now history will finish what he started.
I survived ten years of grueling research. Survived my father's death. Survived betrayal and frame-up and explosion. I traveled through time itself.
And I'm going to die in a medieval village square because they think I'm a witch.
The priest lowers the torch toward the kindling.
"Please," I whisper one last time. "Please don't do this."
The kindling catches. Smoke rises. Heat licks at my feet.
Then I hear it—the thunder of horse hooves. Dozens of them, moving fast.
The crowd turns, confused. The priest pauses, torch still in hand.
A man on a massive black horse explodes into the square. He's wearing black armor, a sword at his hip, and his face—God, his face. Half of it is brutally scarred, but the other half is devastatingly handsome. His eyes are the coldest blue I've ever seen.
Behind him, twenty armed soldiers spread out, surrounding the square.
The villagers fall to their knees. Even the priest bows his head.
"Your Majesty," the priest stammers. "We did not expect—"
"Silence." The man's voice cuts like a blade. He dismounts in one fluid motion and stalks toward my stake. Those ice-blue eyes lock onto mine.
He studies me for a long moment. I stare back, too terrified to look away.
"What is her crime?" he asks without turning from me.
"She is a witch, Majesty," the priest says quickly. "She speaks in demon tongue, claims impossible birth year, possesses forbidden knowledge—"
"What knowledge?"
"She speaks of... of tiny invisible creatures in water that cause sickness. Of unnatural healing. Of devil magic that sounds like—"
"Like intelligence," the man interrupts. He steps closer to me. Close enough that I can see flecks of silver in his blue eyes. "You. Speak."
My mouth is dry. My whole body trembles from fear and smoke inhalation. But I meet his gaze.
"Your water is killing you," I rasp. "You put your waste upstream from where you drink. The... the tiny creatures I mentioned are called germs. They're real. They make people sick. If you'd just boil your water, test it properly, you could save half your population from dying of diseases that shouldn't exist."
Silence.
Then the man—the king, I realize—smiles. It's not a kind smile.
"Chain her," he commands his soldiers. "She comes with me."
"Your Majesty!" the priest protests. "She is a convicted witch! The church demands—"
"The church can demand it from me directly." The king's voice drops to something dangerous. "This woman is now under royal protection. She will be tried in my court, not burned in a village square. Anyone who touches her answers to me personally."
The soldiers move fast. They cut my ropes, clamp iron shackles around my wrists. I'm too shocked to resist.
The king mounts his horse and looks down at me.
"You claim to have knowledge that can save my dying kingdom," he says coldly. "You'll have one chance to prove it. Fail, and I'll burn you myself."
He signals his men. They drag me toward a horse-drawn cage—a prisoner's cart.
As they lock me inside, I catch the king watching me with those merciless blue eyes.
I just traded one death for another. But at least this time, I have a chance.
I grip the cage bars, my scientist's mind already racing. If this is really 1434, I know things these people won't discover for centuries. Germ theory. Basic medicine. Simple engineering.
I can survive this. I will survive this.
And somehow, some way, I'll find out if James and Lisa ended up in this time period too.
Because if they did, I'm going to make them pay for every single thing they took from me.
The cart jolts forward. The crowd watches us leave, murmuring prayers and curses.
I don't look back at the stake. At the flames still burning in the kindling.
I only look forward.
Toward the dark castle rising in the distance.
Toward the Demon King who just saved my life.
And toward whatever hell comes next.