The sky was grey.
Not the dramatic, stormy grey of movies, but the dull, flat kind that made everything feel quieter than it should. The clouds hung low over the city like a blanket of smoke, and the wind rustled through the bare trees lining the cemetery.
Rayan stood at the edge of the grave.
His suit was too tight around the collar. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his black coat, clenched into fists. The cold bit at his skin, but he didn't notice.
He hadn't spoken since the body was lowered into the ground.
The words of the priest washed over him—soft, practiced, meaningless. People from Amira's side of the family stood in silent clusters. A few of his colleagues came, awkward in their grief. Some cried. Some prayed.
But Rayan didn't cry.
He stared at the coffin like it was a puzzle he couldn't solve.
She was only twenty-nine.
Twenty-nine, with the kind of laugh that could brighten a whole room, and the kind of silence that could make him feel seen. Twenty-nine, with unfinished paintings stacked in the corner, favorite tea mugs that still sat on the shelf, and a toothbrush by the sink that would never be used again.
He hadn't even known she was sick.
He hadn't noticed.
All those moments he thought were fine—quiet breakfasts, short answers, gentle smiles—were her hiding the pain.
He had been a scientist, a problem solver, someone who saw patterns where others saw chaos. But he had missed her pattern completely.
Later that evening, after the last of the mourners had left and the house was empty again, Rayan sat on the living room floor surrounded by the remnants of her life.
Her sketchpads.
Her scarves.
The sweater she wore the day before she died, still faintly carrying her scent.
He picked up a drawing—an unfinished one of their apartment window. Outside the frame, in the margins, she had scribbled a tiny sentence.
"I wish you had time to sit here with me."
He stared at those words until his vision blurred.
The days blurred together.
Rayan didn't return to the lab.
He didn't respond to calls.
He stopped eating unless someone reminded him. He lost weight. Grew a beard. His eyes sank into dark circles, and his skin lost its color.
But every night, he sat at his desk with one thing in front of him: a folder labeled "Amira."
Inside were hospital reports.
Autopsy summaries.
Neurological scans.
Notes she'd secretly left in her journals—tracing the progress of her symptoms like a diary written in code.
And at the bottom, a line that broke him:
"I just want to stay with you. Even if it hurts."
The guilt consumed him.
He cursed himself for every night he stayed late at the lab. For every "I'll be home soon" that turned into midnight. For every moment he chose his work over her.
He couldn't sleep in their bed anymore. Couldn't look at the mirror without seeing her reflection behind him in his mind.
One night, he stood in the hallway for hours, just staring at the front door.
"If I had come home thirty minutes earlier…"
He never finished that sentence. It didn't matter.
She was gone.
And time doesn't rewind.
Or did it?
A week after the funeral, he dragged out the old hard drives from the storage closet—tech from his early research on particle resonance and temporal layering. It had been a crazy theory once: that time could fold like paper, and you could poke a hole through two points.
The Time Loop Hypothesis.
His peers had laughed. His grant had been pulled.
But now?
Now he didn't care if they laughed.
He didn't want recognition.
He didn't want forgiveness.
He wanted her.
He converted the guest room into a lab.
Drew formulas on the walls.
Slept two hours a night.
He coded like a madman, soldered circuits by hand, and built a crude prototype with scavenged materials and bleeding fingertips.
He sold his patents.
He sold the apartment.
He moved into a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, where the light never touched and the neighbors asked no questions.
And then, one night, three years after she died, something pulsed to life on his workbench.
A ripple in the air.
A hum that felt like the edge of a memory.
The prototype had worked.
It wasn't stable.
It wasn't safe.
But it was possible.
The disease that killed Amira—he studied it now like it was a nemesis. He developed simulations, mapped it cell by cell. Built a cure that had to be taken for a year to completely halt and reverse the effects.
But he had no test subject.
No Amira to give it to.
Not unless…
He stared at the time machine.
What if he went back?
Not far. Just… ten years. Just enough to see her. Just enough to give her the cure in secret. To save her without disrupting time too much.
He wouldn't interfere with the past.
He'd just fix what he missed.
He calibrated the machine.
Set the date.
And pressed the button.
He arrived in the past in a burst of light and nausea.
The sky was brighter here. The air cleaner. The city looked newer. And there she was, across the street, waiting at the bus stop with a sketchbook in her hand and a gentle smile on her face.
Younger. Laughing at something on her phone.
Alive.
He nearly collapsed just looking at her.
Tears filled his eyes for the first time since she died.
But he couldn't speak to her.
Not directly.
His younger self existed in this time too—freshly married, still filled with excitement and foolish belief that love alone could carry them through anything.
So Rayan watched from afar.
He followed her routine. Left anonymous vitamin supplements in her mail. Subtly replaced her tea with a compound he'd designed. It wasn't enough, not yet—but it was the beginning of the cure.
He rented a room nearby. Hid in plain sight.
And every day, he saw her.
And every night, he grew weaker.
The side effects of time travel weren't theoretical anymore.
Every hour he spent in the past, something inside him aged faster. His body broke down more quickly. His cells frayed at the edges. He coughed blood in the morning and wiped it away like it was dust.
But he stayed.
Because she was laughing again.
Because she was sketching again.
Because maybe this time, she would live.
Then one day, she saw him.
She was walking in the park, and he was across the path, hidden behind sunglasses and a cap. She stopped. Tilted her head.
He turned quickly, but not fast enough.
"Rayan?" she called out.
He froze.
Her voice. The way she said his name. It stabbed into him like a memory.
He ran.
She followed.
She didn't catch him that day. But the next week, she did.
He was leaving a bottle of the compound in her mailbox when the door opened.
She stood there.
Older Rayan looked at her with wide, teary eyes.
Amira blinked. Confused.
"…Do I know you?"
He couldn't lie.
Not this time.
"Yes," he whispered. "You… You will."
To be continue...