The next day unfolded much like any other or at least, it seemed that way at first.
Elian arrived at the cafe before noon, earlier than usual. The chairs were still stacked atop the tables, the floor freshly mopped and carrying the faint citrus smell of cleaning solution. The barista, a wiry young man with a friendly but forgettable face, gave him a nod and began to prepare his usual order without asking.
Elian settled into his corner seat, the same one by the window where dust-motes drifted lazily in the sunlight. The same one where he spent hours shielding himself behind a wall of books and notes, lost in timelines and centuries far removed from the noise of modern life.
But even then, something felt different today. As he set his leather-bound journal down, he caught his reflection in the glass pane.
He looked tired. Not physically but there was something in his eyes. A weight that hadn't been there before yesterday.
He hadn't been able to sleep. Not really. After that strange encounter with the woman Selene, she said her name was his mind refused to rest.
Who was she? How did she know so much about him without ever having spoken to him before? And that final, cryptic promise.
"I can take you there."
Take him where?
He hadn't told anyone about it. Not his professors. Not Marcus, his roommate. Not even his sister, whom he spoke with weekly. He knew exactly what they would say, You imagined it. You've been reading too much. Get some air.
And yet, Elian couldn't shake the feeling that something real had happened in that moment that someone had seen straight through the facade he wore, all the way down to the questions he kept buried.
So he waited.
The hours passed slowly. He pretended to read, flipped through maps of Mesopotamia, skimmed a chapter on ancient maritime trade, underlined a quote from Herodotus but his eyes kept returning to the entrance.
She didn't show.
By late afternoon, the cafe had begun to fill with students and regulars. Conversations floated through the air discussions about assignments, whispered gossip, the occasional laughter but Elian was no longer listening.
Just as he was about to pack up and leave, a shadow fell across his table.
He looked up.
There she was.
Selene Nian.
Wearing a slate-grey coat and a scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, she looked as though she had stepped out of a different decade.
Or perhaps no decade at all. Her presence was hard to place. She was not youthful in the conventional sense, but neither did she appear old. Her dark eyes held an unreadable depth, and her face, though calm, carried the kind of stillness that came only with experience. The kind earned over lifetimes, not years.
"You're still here," she said.
"I had a feeling you'd come back."
She smiled. "And you waited."
Elian didn't reply. He didn't trust himself to speak without sounding like a fool.
Selene glanced at the chair opposite him.
"May I?"
He nodded.
She sat gracefully, folding her hands over one another atop the table. There was no coffee in her hands, no bag or notebook. Just her.
"You said yesterday… you could take me there. What did you mean by that?" Elian finally asked.
She tilted her head slightly, considering him. "I meant exactly what I said."
"You're talking about time travel."
"Yes."
He blinked. No hesitation. No explanation, no nervous smile that suggested she was joking.
"That's not possible," he said, almost by reflex.
"Not by what your world currently understands, no," Selene said. "But you, Elian Synn, you already know that time isn't as simple as the ticking of a clock."
He leaned back in his chair. "You're making assumptions."
"Am I? You believe history breathes. That it lives. You sit here each day trying to touch it through ink and paper. But you've always wanted more."
Elian didn't respond. His throat tightened. It was true. It had always been true.
She continued. "Time travel isn't just a device. It isn't about gadgets or paradoxes. It's about presence. Awareness. It's about listening to the echoes left behind and learning to move between them."
"And you can do that?"
Selene hesitated. "I can guide you. But it's not without cost."
"What kind of cost?"
"Truth," she said, her voice quiet. "Once you begin to see time as it truly is, you'll never see the present the same way again. There's no unknowing, Elian. No return to innocence."
A long silence fell between them.
Elian looked down at his hands. They trembled slightly. He wasn't scared not exactly. It was more like standing on the edge of something vast. The way a historian might feel upon discovering a lost scroll, or standing in the ruins of a once-great city.
"Why me?" he asked.
Selene's gaze didn't waver. "Because you listen. Most people look at history and see dates, wars, monuments. You see people."
He exhaled slowly. That one sentence pierced something inside him.
"Where would we go first?"
Selene's lips curved. "To the beginning."
"The beginning of what?"
"Civilization."
She stood, and this time, she did not offer a hand.
"Tomorrow," she said. "Meet me at dusk.
Wear walking shoes. And bring that journal of yours."
Then she turned and left, disappearing into the crowd as easily as she had arrived.
Elian sat there long after she was gone, the words replaying in his mind.
Time travel.
The beginning.
Civilization.
He didn't know whether he had just agreed to something brilliant or something utterly mad. But he knew one thing for certain.
His life would never be the same again.