The scent of waxed wood and damp stone filled his lungs as Victor Delcroix awoke with a start.
For a moment—long, stretched, silent—he didn't move. The bed beneath him was too firm. The air too cool. The ceiling above him too close, too... wrong. There were no panels of blinking LEDs. No digital assistant chiming reminders. Just silence, and the slow creak of an old house settling in its bones.
He sat up slowly. His hands—smaller. Paler. He stared at them, then touched his face. No beard. No lines. No scar over his left brow. A boy's face. His hands began to tremble.
He reached for the edge of the bed and nearly tripped as he stood. The room around him was dim, lit by the gray glow of morning through tall glass windows. Heavy curtains. High ceilings. A fireplace dark with soot.
Everything was old. Not retro, not vintage. Genuinely, undeniably old.
Victor stumbled to the window. Beyond it, a narrow cobbled street wound past tall, stone-faced houses. A man in a flat cap pushed a cart loaded with milk bottles. A horse trotted past, pulling a covered wagon. A newspaper boy shouted something in Dutch he could barely hear.
Victor felt the room spin.
He turned and stumbled toward the hallway. The mirror on the wall caught him mid-step.
It wasn't his face.
Sixteen. At most. Pale skin. Chestnut hair. Gray eyes. Sharp cheekbones. His heart thundered in his chest.
He remembered dying. Remembered the sterile smell of the hospital, the beeping machines, the finality in the doctor's voice. He remembered his last thought—regret. Not for dying, but for being too late to see the world change the way he had always dreamed.
And then—this.
He spent the next hours in a daze, combing the house. Letters confirmed what he feared. The name on the envelopes was Victor Delcroix, dated 1920. Belgian postage. Old script. His parents had died in the war—one in Ypres, the other in the influenza wave that followed. He, the only heir, had inherited their modest fortune, their estate, and a controlling interest in a colonial company based in the Congo.
He sat for hours in the dusty study, leafing through documents he half-understood. Shares, land deeds, maps of Africa, railway routes marked in pencil.
The silence of the house pressed in.
It wasn't until late in the evening that he entered the attic.
Old trunks. Furniture under sheets. Dust thick as velvet. He opened a box filled with his father's things—surveying tools, sketches, and a brass compass worn smooth from use.
He picked it up idly, staring through the glass lid.
And suddenly—
A jolt.
Light.
Images.
Machines he'd never seen before but instantly understood. Drones flying over jungle canopies. Modular rail systems built in hostile terrain. Mapping devices smaller than his hand but capable of scanning an entire valley in minutes. Solar-powered beacons. Autonomous vehicles.
Then darkness again.
He dropped the compass, his breath ragged, heart pounding. The attic was quiet.
But Victor knew something had changed. Something real. Something impossible.
He was sixteen again. Alive. Alone.
And now… he could see the future.
Chapter 2: A Glimpse Beyond
Victor didn't sleep.
The vision haunted him—not like a dream, but like a memory. Vivid. Hyperreal. The silver pocket watch still sat on his bedside table, now just an object again. Innocent in appearance. Silent.
But the moment he had touched it, something inside had awakened. He'd seen machines that should not exist. Concepts decades—centuries—ahead of this world. And though the pain had passed, its aftertaste lingered like ozone on the air after a storm.
He rose before dawn, dressing slowly in the heavy clothes of a different time. The cotton shirt itched. The boots were stiff and too polished. He descended the stairs, greeted no one, and slipped into the study.
The room smelled of leather and tobacco. It had been his father's, the notary had said. Lined with books, globes, instruments. An entire life reduced to artifacts.
He moved through it slowly, afraid and fascinated all at once.
A compass. A magnifying lens. A microscope.
Victor stared at the microscope for a long moment, breath shallow. Then he reached out—and touched it.
Nothing.
No flash. No pain. No vision.
His heart sank.
He picked up a copper caliper next. Then a slide rule.
Still nothing.
It wasn't until his fingers brushed against the hardened rubber eyepiece—cracked slightly from use—that it came.
The flash.
But it was different this time. Quicker. Sharper. Like looking through a keyhole into another age.
He saw it evolve: the eyepiece, once crude and fixed, transformed into high-precision optics, adjustable lenses, and ergonomic digital displays. He saw it in laboratories he didn't recognize—places filled with bright white light and humming machines. People wore gloves and coats and spoke in languages he knew but with terms this world had yet to invent.
And then it was gone.
Victor staggered backward, gripping the edge of the desk.
It was real.
This was not a one-time hallucination. He could do it again. The microscope had shown him a future—twenty years ahead, he now realized. Not his future from 2026, but this era's. A future built from the 1920s, out to 1940.
It had rules. A limit. A pattern.
He sat down, mind racing. One object. One glimpse. Not always immediate. And something else—his gut told him this ability was not something he could abuse endlessly.
He tested five more objects. Nothing.
Only then did it dawn on him: it had recharged. The pocket watch yesterday. The microscope today.
Once per month?
He stood, suddenly cold despite the fireplace behind him.
Something had given him this ability—and set limits. One vision per month. But unused visions seemed to carry over. Perhaps indefinitely. That meant he had two remaining. Maybe more. He didn't know yet.
What he did know was this:
This world was broken and backward. Still reeling from a war that had killed millions. And worse—he remembered what would come next. The 1930s. The rise of monsters. The Second World War.
He wasn't ready to think about that. Not yet.
For now, he focused on the feeling inside him—not fear, but something colder. Sharper.
Purpose.
He had been given a gift. A weapon, perhaps.
And when the time came… he would use it.
Chapter 3: The Weight of Inheritance
The soft clink of porcelain against silver jolted Victor from his thoughts.
"Your breakfast, Monsieur Delcroix," came a calm, gravelled voice.
Victor turned from the study window, blinking against the morning light. A tall, lean man in a dark waistcoat stood beside the desk, one hand steady on the tray he had just placed.
"I took the liberty of adding a boiled egg this morning. Your appetite seemed… absent yesterday."
The man's face was long and pale, etched with the dignity of age. His hair, once black, now silvered at the temples. His eyes were intelligent, but never prying.
Victor searched his memory—this was new. A name came faintly, from the letters he'd read in the night.
"Thank you… Gérard?"
The butler's lips lifted just slightly. "I am honored you remember, young sir. I served your father for twenty-seven years. I have been in this house longer than the wallpaper."
Victor gave a tired smile, then sat.
"Where is everyone?" he asked, glancing toward the hall. "There must have been… staff. Before."
"There were, monsieur. But the war spared little. Most returned to their families. A few were lost entirely." Gérard's voice softened, but he remained composed. "With your parents gone, the estate has been quiet. I remained. As I promised your father I would."
Victor studied the man. There was no pity in his eyes—only loyalty, wrapped in formality.
"I… I don't know what I'm supposed to do now," Victor admitted, looking down at the tea Gérard had poured. "I didn't expect to be here."
"No one ever does," the butler replied. He took a half-step back, as if to excuse himself, then paused.
"The notary sent word that the board of your family's company, the Société Coloniale, awaits instruction. The managing director is in Léopoldville. They are... hesitant to act without the heir's direction."
Victor raised his eyes. "They expect me to run it?"
"I suspect they expect you to sign papers quietly while they continue as they please."
The young man nodded slowly. Typical. But he wasn't going to be a figurehead.
Not now.
He stared out the window again. A passing motorcar coughed down the street, leaving a puff of smoke in the cold air.
"I'll need to see everything," he murmured. "The company reports. Financials. Maps. I want to understand what we actually own."
Gérard inclined his head. "I anticipated this. I've taken the liberty of retrieving your father's files. They're in the drawing room."
Victor paused, then looked back at him. "You've been more than a butler."
Gérard allowed a brief smile. "Your father believed in preparedness. And I have grown… fond of order."
Victor stood. The microscope's vision still lingered in his memory like a faint echo.
He was beginning to feel the edges of something vast.
In this unfamiliar past, he wasn't just some stranded soul. He was an heir. A steward. A hidden blade.
And now, thanks to a steady old man and a broken empire abroad—he had a place to begin.