Jas lay still, the lantern's flicker catching the soft lines in Ivy Mae’s face, the silver streaks in Roman’s beard. It was strange—they looked older, but not impossibly so. Not like people who had lived through a full century. And yet...
They closed their eyes again, letting the sensation of time slide over them like cold water. The dream—or whatever it had been—wasn't just fragments of imagination. It had been a message. A key.
“Something’s off,” they murmured. “Time doesn’t feel... right.”
Roman raised a brow. “You’ve had a head injury and a high fever. Of course things feel off.”
“No,” Jas insisted. “You and Ivy Mae—you’re supposed to be... gone. You were born before all this. But here you are. And I’m not a kid anymore. I remember... being younger. But that wasn’t that long ago.”
Ivy Mae exchanged a wary glance with Roman. “We weren’t going to say anything until you were clearer. But yes. Something happened.”
Roman sat on the edge of the cot, the firelight dancing on his weathered hands. “It started after the first wave of solar storms. Not just outages. Time itself went... sideways. Places warped. People appeared in the wrong decades. The magnetic field wasn’t just torn—it was rewritten.”
“Do you remember the ship?” Jas asked them.
“I remember watching you disappear into it,” Ivy Mae said softly. “But that was days ago. Or years. Maybe both.”
A breeze rattled the glass panes. Outside, the auroras twisted across the sky in geometric pulses—unnatural, intelligent. Alive.
Jas whispered, “I think I wasn’t supposed to forget. I think we were meant to carry something back with us.”
“What do you mean?” Roman asked.
“The ship was a kind of archive. Of what we lost. What we let slip through greed, through ignorance. Elon Musk. The DOGE ministry. The sunspot. We were warned, but we didn’t listen. And now... we’re all echoes.”
Ivy Mae leaned in. “Then we’ve been given a second chance.”
“Maybe,” Jas said, gripping her hand. “Or maybe we’re the last ones who remember enough to make sense of the pieces.”