The cafe wasn't busy that morning. It rarely was, especially at this hour when most people were just starting their routines.
A dull gray light filtered through the windows, softened by the thick clouds outside. The smell of roasted beans lingered in the air, mixing with the faint scent of old books and polished wood.
For Elian Synn, it was the perfect silence.
He sat at his usual corner table near the back, where the walls met at a crooked angle and the light didn't quite reach.
The staff had grown used to seeing him there. They didn't bother him anymore. A barista would bring his order without asking black coffee, no sugar. They didn't know his name, but they recognized his habits.
His table had become a kind of fortress, surrounded by textbooks and notepads, old maps curled at the edges, and a worn leather-bound journal that never left his side. To anyone else, it might have looked like chaos. To Elian, it was a kind of order.
A sacred place where past and present blurred.
He had always been this way. While other kids played games and chased one another in the streets, Elian had wandered libraries.
His father used to joke that Elian was born old, and maybe there was some truth to it. He never cared for what was trending, never followed the fast-moving world. He wanted to understand what came before.
Ancient texts. Forgotten civilizations. The rise and fall of empires. These were his obsessions.
He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. Lukewarm. Again. It didn't matter. His eyes drifted over the pages of a Sumerian chronology he'd been rereading for the third time. Names of rulers, conquests, irrigation systems somehow, it all brought comfort. Not just the facts, but the people behind them. The ones history forgot.
The ones Elian wanted to remember.
He scratched a note into the margin of his journal: Compare Uruk's governance system with early Egyptian theocracy possible overlap in priest king roles?
His handwriting was jagged, messy, but legible enough to him.
The world outside might've been full of noise, but in here, time slowed down.
He didn't notice the door open. Didn't hear the faint chime. But something made him look up.
She stood there in the entrance, framed by the dull light, her eyes scanning the room like she was looking for something she'd already lost. She didn't seem particularly out of place at first. But there was something about her an uncanny stillness, a presence that didn't match the modern world around her.
Black hair, long and flowing like it belonged to another century. A long, dark coat that brushed against the floor. Her eyes, deep and dark like the ink of old scrolls. She looked like she had walked out of a dream Elian didn't know he'd had.
She noticed him.
And then she moved.
Without hesitation, she walked straight to his table, her footsteps soundless over the wooden floor. Elian felt a strange tightness in his chest, the kind that came from being observed too closely.
"You're always here," she said simply.
Elian blinked. "Excuse me?"
She smiled, and it wasn't just polite. It was knowing.
"You seek answers in the past," she said.
"But have you ever wondered if the past could answer back?"
Elian hesitated. A dozen replies flickered through his mind, ranging from sarcasm to suspicion. But none of them felt right. She didn't look like she was joking.
"I'm Selene," she said, offering her hand. "May I sit?"
He nodded slowly, pushing aside a map of ancient Mesopotamia to clear a space.
She sat with the grace of someone who had done this before, though Elian had never seen her in the cafe until today. She looked at the books around him, her fingers brushing the spine of one. "Sumer. Always a good place to start."
Elian stared at her. "How do you know that?"
"Because it was the beginning," she said, her voice soft but steady. "The cradle. The first breath of what we now call civilization."
Elian leaned forward. "You speak like you've been there."
Selene met his gaze. "Would you believe me if I said I have?"
Something in her tone made the air heavier.
Elian tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow.
"So, what are you? A reenactor? Historian? Or is this some elaborate prank?"
Selene didn't answer right away. Instead, she reached into her coat and pulled out a small object, placing it gently on the table.
It was a coin. Or something like a coin. Rough-edged, made of a metal he couldn't identify.
The inscriptions on it were alien to him not Greek, not Latin, not even Cuneiform. But the symbols felt… familiar.
"I don't expect you to believe me yet," she said. "But I'm offering you something you've been chasing your whole life."
Elian's voice was low. "What is that?"
"A chance to see the past. Not read about it. Not imagine it. To stand in it. To walk through it."
He stared at her. At the coin. At the quiet certainty in her voice.
"This isn't a joke?"
"No."
He picked up the coin. It was warm.
Elian Synn had always believed that history was a place of dust and records. That it existed only in pages and ruins.
But in that moment, something shifted.
Something real.
And though he didn't know it yet, his obsession had finally found its answer.
This was the beginning.
Not of a research paper.
But of a journey.