Date: November 11th, 1884
Day: Wednesday
Time: 4:44 AM
Location: Fog District, Unnamed City
Timeline Anchor: Cycle 0000-α
He always woke at 4:44 AM.
No alarm. No birdsong. Not even the soft hum of gears from the antique clocks lining the shop downstairs. Just stillness.
As if something was waiting for him. Watching.
Elias Rehn opened his eyes to another pale morning—if it could still be called morning. The city outside his apartment lay submerged in a colorless fog, where even time seemed hesitant to move. The cracked face of the wall clock read 4:44. Again.
He sat up. Not surprised. Not panicked.
Just… empty.
It had been like this for forty-three days. The same hour. The same breath. The same dream.
A mirror across the room greeted him. Tall, ancient, and discolored like it had survived another era. Its glass always fogged near the center—never touched, never cleaned. Something about it felt off. Familiar in a way that scraped the inside of his skull.
He should have replaced it.
But some part of him didn't dare.
He told himself it was routine. Circadian rhythm. Nothing more. But even the rational voice in his mind—the one trained on logic and silence—was beginning to tremble.
He'd stopped writing dates in his journal. The ink always smudged.
He'd stopped talking to customers. Their faces looked too much like his.
He'd stopped sleeping. Because in sleep, he sometimes saw her.
The girl with black eyes.
The one that remembered.
On the forty-fourth morning, something changed.
He rose as always, pulled the curtains back, and stared into the mirror.
And the mirror blinked.
Late.
Half a second behind his own eyes.
Elias froze.
Not a trick of the light. Not tired eyes.
This time, he felt it.
That version of himself—no longer a reflection—tilted its head just slightly. The angle was wrong. Too human to be coincidence. Too perfect to be innocent.
It smiled.
But he didn't.
"You don't remember yet, do you?" the mirror-Elias asked, in a voice smoother than his own. Calm. Heavy. Like it had practiced this line many, many times.
Elias's breath hitched. His legs trembled. The silence was not natural—it was orchestrated.
The figure in the mirror stepped forward, still bound by the glass.
"I'm you," it said. "From tomorrow."
He didn't scream. Not yet. Logic wrestled instinct.
He staggered back, eyes darting to the desk—no knives, no weapons.
His own reflection—no, not his—remained still.
Unblinking. Calculating.
"I came to warn you," it said, voice flat. "You're asking questions in your sleep. Words you don't remember by dawn. But the mirror does. Time does."
"Warn me of what?" Elias whispered.
"If you keep asking... you'll find the truth." The figure tilted its head again.
"But once you do—"
It leaned in. The mirror shimmered.
"—it won't let you leave."
A pause.
Like a heartbeat between two universes.
Elias's voice cracked. "What won't?"
The figure smiled for the final time.
"Time."
Then—
The mirror shattered.
No sound. No force. Just a silent, seamless collapse. Like reality itself gave up holding it together.
Glass dissolved like ash. Darkness folded inward.
And Elias—fell.
He gasped.
Sat upright in bed.
4:44 AM.
Same bed. Same clock. Same breath.
But the mirror... looked normal now.
Until he stood.
And realized—
He wasn't in the room.
He was in the mirror.
He turned. His breath caught.
A new version of himself—half-asleep, unaware—was walking toward the bed. Toward him.
He screamed.
The other didn't hear.
That was the first loop.
It wasn't the last.
Every day, a new version of him awoke. Elias, the original—if such a word still had meaning—was trapped behind the glass, screaming, begging, explaining.
They never listened.
They always asked.
And Time always… reset.
He didn't.
He watched centuries bleed through. Time fractured. His selves came and faded like snow in wind. Some were artists. Some were madmen. Some jumped out of windows the moment they realized what he told them.
But it never mattered.
Because they always asked.
And they always ended up—like him.
Eventually, he forgot his voice.
Forgot his name.
Forgot what it meant to breathe air instead of memory.
One day, he stopped speaking.
And the mirror—forgot him back.
A version of him stood before the glass and whispered, "Who are you?"
And for the first time in eternity—
He said nothing.
Just a silent stare.
Colder than time itself.
That was when it cracked.
From the inside.
The world didn't pause. It stopped.
The air froze. Sound ceased. Even the clocks bowed their heads.
And Elias...
didn't wake up at 4:44 that morning.
Because he didn't wake up at all.
He had become something else.
Not inside time.
Not outside it.
He was time.
A breath caught in eternity.
A whisper repeating across lifetimes.
A mirror never built by human hands.
He was the anomaly.
The ripple in the design.
The question echoing long after the answer vanished.
❖ To be continued in Chapter 2: The Clock That Counts Backwards ❖