Morning sunlight pierced through the blinds, landing like needles in Elias Rowan's eyes. He shot upright from the bed, drenched in cold sweat. He'd just escaped a nightmare—himself, shriveled into a mummy, with the pendant still clinging to his chest like a parasitic leech.
"Just a dream…" he muttered, hand instinctively reaching for the chain at his collar. It was still there, cool and silent. Elias exhaled shakily, swung his feet to the floor—then froze.
The mirror on his desk reflected something terrifying: the streak of white hair on his left temple had multiplied—now a cluster of silver threads gleamed like frost. Worse, faint crow's feet etched themselves at the corners of his eyes, as if time itself had clawed them in overnight.
"No…" Elias gripped the mirror, fingers trembling as he touched his face. He looked older—at least five years. Sunken eyes, cracked lips, skin pallid and dry. His right hand bore a jagged brown blotch on the back that had grown to the size of a coin, shaped like a spreading mold.
A sudden knock on the dorm room door made him jolt.
"Elias? Are you in?" came Serena Wynn's voice—calm but uncharacteristically uncertain.
In a flurry, Elias grabbed a baseball cap, tugging it low to hide the white strands. He threw on a long-sleeved shirt to conceal the mark on his hand, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
Serena stood outside, a lab coat layered over pale blue, clipboard in hand. Her hair was pulled back neatly. She blinked at Elias with a fleeting flicker of surprise, but her expression swiftly returned to measured control.
"You don't look great," she said cautiously, brow furrowed.
"Didn't sleep," Elias said flatly. "After the crash."
She nodded, but didn't break eye contact. Her gaze was clinical—an X-ray made of silence.
After a beat, she said, "That raindrop."
Elias's stomach clenched. "What?"
"The one that hovered beside the bus window. For two seconds. I ran the physics. With the momentum of the crash, it couldn't have held trajectory like that." She pulled a photo from her clipboard—taken from a phone at the scene. "Look here."
Elias swallowed hard. The edge of the image revealed a single shard of glass hanging motionless in midair, while others lay shattered on the ground. Anomalous. Impossible.
"I…" Elias opened his mouth but had no explanation. Cold sweat crawled down his back.
"I did some digging," Serena continued, stepping closer. Her voice dropped. "A professor from Vienna in 1873 documented something called 'Localized Temporal Field Abnormalities.' In 1945, Hiroshima survivors claimed the moment of detonation froze for 0.3 seconds."
Her eyes glittered with excitement. "Elias, do you understand what that implies?"
His heart thudded so hard it nearly split his ribs. She knew. Or almost.
Then Serena pulled out a small box.
"I need to run a test on your pendant," she said. "I suspect it contains an unknown radioactive isotope triggering spatial-temporal distortions."
Elias instinctively covered his chest. "It's just… amber. Nothing special."
"Is it?" Serena arched a brow. "Then why do you look five years older? Radiation accelerates cell decay—you know that."
Elias had no retort. Her deduction was sharp, though incomplete. But what shook him more was her ability to see through him so quickly.
Just then, the pendant beneath his shirt seared his skin. Elias winced as Serena's detector shrieked—the needle on her device flailing wildly.
"Knew it!" Serena's eyes lit up, and she reached forward. Elias stepped back, and the pendant slipped from his shirt, flinging through the air—
—then hit the floor with a soft click.
They both stared at it. A fine crack now marred the surface. Stranger still, golden droplets oozed from the fracture and vanished into vapor instantly, leaving behind a faint, ancient scent—dust and time.
Serena inhaled sharply, crouched down but didn't dare touch it. "That's not amber…"
Elias' heart sank. He picked up the pendant. A sting pricked his finger—where the golden fluid had touched him, a red dot now bloomed. And deeper still, he felt something… crawling inward through the wound.
"You need to come to the lab. Now." Serena's tone was uncharacteristically urgent. "This thing could be irradiating you."
Elias clutched the pendant tightly, feeling warmth creep up his arm. Serena's misunderstanding might be the best disguise he could ask for. Better radioactive than supernatural.
"Fine," he said. "On one condition. The test results stay between us."
Serena squinted—that thinking squint he'd seen before. "Deal."
As they turned to leave, a shrill caw shattered the air. Elias glanced toward the window—and froze.
A pitch-black raven perched on the windowsill, staring at him with eyes the color of fresh blood. And around its ankle was a tiny metal ring, engraved with a bizarre but eerily familiar symbol: a lightning bolt piercing a sandglass.
Serena noticed his pause. "Something wrong?"
"Nothing," Elias muttered, pulling the curtain shut. But the raven's image etched into his mind. He had seen that symbol before—somewhere.
On their way to the lab, Elias discreetly checked his wrist. The crack in the pendant had grown. A fine golden thread now traced along his inner forearm, winding up his veins like a serpent made of time.
Serena walked ahead, unaware.
A patch of translucent scales had formed on the collar of her lab coat—shimmering under the sun with a spectral gleam.