The observatory was gone.
Three days after the fire, Koyi stood at the edge of the cliff, staring at the scorched remains. Blackened wood. Twisted metal. The charred frame of the old telescope reaching toward the sky like a forgotten question.
In the distance, the sound of waves crashing against the rocks filled the silence.
She inhaled the salty air.
It smelled like the end of something—but not necessarily the wrong thing.
"Aren said it best," she whispered to the wind. "We still remember."
---
School had returned to normal. Or something close to it.
Students buzzed about tests, weekend parties, and the strange fire that took the old observatory. No one knew what had caused it. Some blamed a lightning strike. Others whispered about faulty wiring. But no one mentioned Aren or Koyi.
They hadn't been seen near the scene. No one could prove anything.
And strangely, some didn't even seem to remember the observatory had existed at all.
"Didn't that place close, like… ten years ago?" one student said near her locker.
"I thought it was just a rumor," another replied. "Was there really a telescope in there?"
Koyi stood frozen, her books in hand, lips parted in confusion.
The timeline was rewriting itself.
Again.
---
That night, she found something strange on her bedside table.
It wasn't a letter.
It was a watch.
A vintage timepiece with a leather band and cracked glass face. The hands were frozen at 11:11.
She stared at it, her chest tightening.
The note beside it was written in neat cursive:
> "It doesn't tick because it remembers what stopped time.
Use it when you're ready to find the fracture."
There was no name. No seal. No indication of where or when it had come from.
She turned the watch over. Nothing engraved. But as she held it in her palm, something strange happened—the air around her felt charged, like static before a storm.
And for the briefest moment, the world went quiet.
No crickets.
No distant cars.
Not even her own breathing.
Then, as suddenly as it began, everything returned.
Koyi dropped the watch, her hand trembling.
Whatever this was—it wasn't just from tomorrow.
It was from somewhere deeper.
---
She showed Aren the next day.
They sat under the old eucalyptus tree, the grass still green despite everything that had burned.
He examined the watch carefully, flipping it over, holding it to his ear.
"No sound," he murmured. "No heartbeat."
"It made time stop," Koyi said. "Just for a second. But it was real."
He handed it back. "Where did it come from?"
"I don't know. I found it beside my bed. With a note."
"From the future?"
"I think…" she hesitated, "I think it might be from something past the future. Something beyond the letters."
Aren leaned back against the tree, processing. "You think there's another layer?"
Koyi nodded. "Something—or someone—who isn't writing to us. They're watching us rewrite the story."
He stared into the sky. "Then maybe the fire wasn't just a signal. Maybe it was a test."
"Of what?"
"Of what we'd become without the letters guiding us."
---
Later that evening, Koyi sat with the watch resting on her notebook.
She didn't try to activate it again.
Instead, she wrote.
> "To the one who gave me the watch,
I don't know who you are.
But I know you're seeing more than we can. You knew the observatory would fall. You knew we'd lose the letters.
So what are we now?
Fragments? Versions? Survivors?
Or something else entirely?
Tell me where to look.
I'm ready to find the fracture."
She placed the letter inside a small wooden box—the same one where she had hidden her previous message—and closed it.
If the world wanted to speak, it would find a way.
---
Two days later, Aren showed up with news.
"I found something," he said, breathless. "You need to see it."
They rode his bike out to the eastern edge of town, toward the fields that once held the county fairground. The grass had grown wild. Trees leaned crookedly toward the sun, and rusted booths peeked through like skeletons.
"This way," he said, guiding her past a broken fence and overgrown trails.
They stopped at a large oak tree with a hollow trunk.
Inside, he pulled out a canvas pouch and handed it to her.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Something I found… but shouldn't exist."
She opened the pouch and froze.
Inside were pages.
Letters. Burned at the edges. Torn. Scattered.
And all of them were in her handwriting.
> "June 3rd: Don't forget to check the watch at 11:11."
"July 10th: Aren smiled differently in this version."
"August 4th: The wind changed direction. I felt it before the birds did."
She looked up, shocked. "Where did these come from?"
"They were buried in the trunk. Hidden. Like someone wanted them preserved."
"But I never wrote these…"
"Not yet," Aren said. "But maybe you did. In another line. Another version."
Koyi ran her fingers along the paper, the ink blurred from age or time—or both.
"These aren't predictions," she whispered. "They're records."
"Exactly," Aren said. "Of timelines we never lived. But still happened."
---
The discovery shook her more than she expected.
That night, she couldn't sleep.
She stared at the ceiling, the watch on her nightstand, its frozen hands pointing at 11:11 like a threat—or a promise.
The letters in the hollow tree weren't messages meant to guide her. They were remnants. Ghosts of what could've been.
So why had someone kept them?
Were they hoping she'd remember? Or trying to warn her?
At 11:10 PM, Koyi sat upright.
She picked up the watch.
And waited.
11:11 struck.
And the world stopped again.
---
She wasn't in her room.
She stood in the middle of a train station.
Empty. Dusty. Lit only by flickering lamps.
A marble floor stretched beneath her, covered in faint tracks. The sign above read:
"Terminal 0: For Moments That Were Never Meant To Be."
She turned in place. No voices. No trains. Just silence.
Then she heard it—a faint ticking. Not the watch in her hand, but something larger. Like a grandfather clock in the belly of the building.
She followed the sound.
Down a hallway.
Through a door.
Into a room filled with floating letters.
They hovered in midair, turning slowly, ink glowing softly. Dozens. Hundreds. Maybe more.
And in the center of the room was a desk.
Sitting behind it was a figure.
Not quite human. Not quite shadow.
Its face was obscured by a shifting veil—like smoke trapped in a jar.
It looked up as she entered.
"You've come early," it said.
Koyi swallowed hard. "What is this place?"
The figure tilted its head. "This is where the forgotten timelines rest. The ones too painful to live… but too important to erase."
She stepped closer. "Are you the one who sent the watch?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
The figure leaned forward. "Because you asked for the fracture. And now you're standing inside it."
Koyi's heart pounded. "What do you want from me?"
"I want nothing," it said. "I only hold what you've thrown away."
"Then… what happens now?"
The figure gestured behind her.
Koyi turned.
A wall had appeared.
On it were three doors.
One red. One white. One black.
Each had a name etched above it.
Red: The Life You Were Meant to Forget
White: The Life You Have Yet to Write
Black: The Life You Can't Escape
"Choose," the figure said.
Koyi stepped toward the doors, her entire body shaking.
"Do I get to know what's behind them?"
"No," it replied. "But you've known all along."
---
She stared at the Red Door first.
She saw a flicker of a boy laughing, then leaving. Her crying at the base of the tree. The observatory empty. A letter burning in her hand.
Then the Black Door.
A flicker of Aren walking away. A void where her voice once lived. The timeline folding in on itself. A hollow version of her teaching herself to forget.
Finally, the White Door.
There was nothing.
Just light.
Possibility.
Breath.
Koyi stepped toward it.
Her hand rested on the handle.
"I choose this one," she whispered.
The figure smiled. Or perhaps the smoke inside it smiled.
Then the door opened—and she fell.
---
She woke up in her bed, gasping.
The watch lay on her chest, still frozen at 11:11.
But she was different.
And so was everything else.
---