(OPENING)
The fog clung to Elias like a shroud as he stood frozen outside the art supply shop. *Lily Thorne.* The name was a knife twisting in the wound of Aria's absence. Through the warped glass, he watched her speak to the shopkeeper, her gestures animated, her face still flushed from their encounter. She pointed subtly toward the street where he stood.
*Time to move, soldier.*
He melted into the thickening gloom before the constable could return, the watch a burning brand against his skin. It pulsed again—*thud-thud*—like a war drum counting down to an ambush.
**(THE CHASE BEGINS)**
He followed her.
Through gaslit alleys stinking of damp brick and coal dust. Past vendors hawking wilted flowers and dubious meat pies. Across bustling squares where street urchins darted like rats. She moved with purpose, her green skirt brushing the grimy cobbles, her straw hat bobbing like a beacon in the grey.
Elias kept his distance, blending into the shadows. Old skills resurfaced—tracking, assessing threats, noting exits. *This is recon,* he told himself. *Gather intel. Survive.* But his eyes never left her. Every turn of her head, every brush of her hand against a market stall, was a punch to his gut. *Aria. Not-Aria.*
She stopped at a terraced house in a slightly less squalid street. Faded blue door, lace curtains in the narrow windows. A brass plaque beside the door: *L. Thorne - Botanical Illustration & Fine Art*. She unlocked the door and vanished inside.
Elias leaned against a damp brick wall across the street, the watch heavy in his pocket. *What now?* Storm the door? Demand she remember? He'd seen the fear in her eyes. He was a ghost haunting her reality, a madman clutching a broken watch.
*Wind it only when your tears fall.*
He hadn't wound it. Hadn't dared. What fresh hell would *that* unleash?
**(THE PAWNSHOP & THE WATCH'S WARNING)**
He needed money. Shelter. Clothes that didn't scream *mad time traveler*.
He found a pawnshop tucked beneath a railway arch, its window crammed with sad treasures: tarnished silver, cracked china, a dusty violin missing a string. The air inside smelled of dust and despair.
The pawnbroker, a wizened man with eyes like currants, peered at Elias over wire-rimmed spectacles. "What've you got, then?"
Elias placed the pocket watch on the scarred counter. The crack in the glass seemed to deepen under the grimy gaslight.
The pawnbroker picked it up, grunted. "Brass. Old. Cracked." He held it to his ear. "Not ticking." He flipped it open, peered at the porcelain face. "Mechanism looks sound, though. Odd design." He glanced at Elias's rough clothes. "Stolen?"
"Mine," Elias growled.
"Five shillings."
Elias needed the money. Desperately. But as the pawnbroker's fingers closed around the watch, a jolt of pure *wrongness* shot through Elias. The watch flared—**searing cold**—so intense the pawnbroker yelped and dropped it.
"Bloody hell!" He sucked his fingers, staring at the watch as it lay inert on the counter. "What devilry is this?"
Elias snatched it back. The metal was icy, vibrating faintly. A warning. *Not for sale. Not for anyone else.* He fled the shop, the pawnbroker's curses echoing behind him.
**(THE BRIDGE & THE SPARK)**
Days blurred into a desperate routine:
* Sleeping rough in doorways or under bridges, the watch clutched like a talisman.
* Scrounging pennies unloading coal carts or sweeping stables.
* Watching Lily Thorne's house. Learning her rhythms.
She emerged each morning, sketchbook under her arm, heading to parks or the hothouses at Kew Gardens. Elias followed, a phantom haunting her steps. He watched her draw delicate ferns and strange, fleshy orchids with meticulous precision. Her focus was absolute, her brow furrowed in concentration that was achingly familiar. *Aria, lost in a canvas.*
One rain-slicked afternoon, she sat on a bench beneath the skeletal branches of an elm tree in a small, fog-draped park. Elias stood fifty yards away, partially hidden by a dripping statue of some forgotten general. He watched the tip of her pencil dance across the page.
A gang of rough-looking boys, faces smudged with dirt, spotted her solitary figure. They swaggered over, blocking her path back to the gravel walkway. One snatched her straw hat. Another grabbed her sketchbook.
"Give that back!" Lily's voice was sharp, frightened.
Elias moved before thought. Years of close-quarters combat took over. Two quick strides, a grab, a twist. The boy yelped as his wrist was bent painfully backward, the hat tumbling free. Elias kicked the legs out from the sketchbook thief, sending him sprawling into the mud. The third boy froze, eyes wide.
"Piss off," Elias said, his voice low and gravelly with disuse and suppressed rage.
They fled, vanishing into the fog like rats.
Elias bent, picked up the hat and the sketchbook. Mud splattered the open page—a detailed study of a rain-battered rose. He handed them to her.
Lily stared at him, her chest heaving. Recognition dawned—not of shared history, but of the ragged man who'd accosted her days before. Yet the fear in her eyes was now mixed with shock… and gratitude.
"You…" she breathed. "Thank you." She took the items, clutching them to her chest. Her gaze flickered over his worn clothes, his unshaven jaw. "Are you… following me?"
Elias met her eyes—Aria's eyes. The lie tasted like ash. "I walk. You're… often in my path."
A faint, disbelieving smile touched her lips. "A persistent coincidence." She hesitated, looking at the muddied rose sketch. "My name is Lily Thorne."
"Elias," he rasped.
"Elias." She tested the name. "You're not from London." It wasn't a question.
He shook his head. "Far away."
(THE SLOW BURN)
A fragile bridge formed.
He didn't approach her again, but their paths *did* cross. He'd be sitting on a bench near her favorite spot in Kew when she arrived. He'd be leaving the public library as she entered.
One day, caught in a sudden downpour, she gestured him under her umbrella as they waited for an omnibus. The closeness was agony and ecstasy. He smelled lavender soap and the faint, sharp scent of graphite.
"You look like you carry the weight of the world, Elias," she said softly, rain drumming on the umbrella.
He looked at her profile, the raindrops catching in her lashes. "I lost someone."
Her expression softened. "I'm sorry. Was it… the war?" She'd noticed his bearing, his scars.
He nodded, the lie easier than the impossible truth. "Yes."
"Time doesn't heal," she murmured, watching the rain sheet down the street. "But it… changes the shape of the wound." She offered him a small, sad smile. "I lost my parents. Cholera. The sketches… they help."
He understood. Art was her anchor, just as Aria's murals had been. The spark between them, tentative at first, began to glow. He carried her parcels sometimes. She brought him a meat pie once, wrapped in brown paper, her cheeks pink. "You look hungry."
He ate it slowly, savoring not the food, but the impossible gift of her care.
(THE FIRE & THE EMBRACE)
The inevitable came on a night thick with freezing fog.
Elias was huddled in a doorway near her house, trying to sleep, when the scream tore through the silence. Not Lily's. A man's shout.
FIRE! FIRE AT THE STABLES
Elias was running before the second shout faded. Thick, acrid smoke billowed from the mews lane behind Lily's row of houses. Flames already licked the roof of the timber-framed stables, casting monstrous, dancing shadows. Panicked horses screamed. People spilled into the street, shouting, carrying buckets.
Then he saw her.
Lily, in her nightdress and a shawl, stood frozen on her doorstep, staring in horror at the inferno next door. Sparks rained down on her roof.
LILY Elias roared, sprinting toward her.
She turned, eyes wide with terror. "Mr. Henderson! He's still inside! He tried to save the horses
Elias didn't hesitate. He shoved his way through the gathering crowd, grabbed a soaking horse blanket from a water trough, and threw it over his head. The heat hit him like a wall as he plunged into the smoke-filled stable.
Chaos. Roaring flames. The panicked shrieks of trapped animals. An old man lay unconscious near a stall, half-buried under fallen tack. Elias hauled him up, the blanket smoldering, and dragged him towards the faint rectangle of the doorway.
Flames surged across the hayloft above them. Burning timbers groaned.
He burst into the cold night air, dragging the old man clear just as the roof collapsed inward with a deafening crash of sparks and splintered wood. The crowd gasped.
Lily rushed forward, tears cutting tracks through the soot on her cheeks. She helped Elias lower Mr. Henderson gently to the cobbles.
Elias Your arm
He looked down. His left sleeve was charred, the skin beneath blistered and raw. He hadn't felt it.
She touched his shoulder, her fingers trembling. "You could have died!"
He looked into her eyes, filled with tears and reflected firelight. The fear he'd seen before was gone, replaced by raw, desperate relief. And something else. Something deep and undeniable.
He cupped her soot-streaked face. "I couldn't lose you." The words were ripped from the core of him. Not to Lily Thorne. To *her*. To the soul he'd crossed time to find.
She didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. Her breath hitched. Her gaze dropped to his lips.
He kissed her.
Amidst the chaos, the smoke, the screams of fire bells approaching, he kissed her. It tasted of ashes and desperation and a terrifying, fragile hope. Her lips were soft, yielding, then fiercely responsive. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him closer, anchoring him in the burning present.
For a heartbeat, the world ceased to exist. There was no crack in time, no cursed watch, no looming death. Only her warmth, her breath, her heartbeat against his chest.
Then she pulled back slightly, her eyes searching his, filled with wonder and confusion. Elias… who are you?
The pocket watch, pressed between them, turned **ice-cold** against his skin.
**(THE END & THE BEGINNING)**
Months folded into a bittersweet dream.
Elias found work as a laborer, then a night watchman at the docks. He rented a tiny, clean room. Lily painted him sometimes—his profile etched by lamplight, the scars on his hands. Their love grew, a tender, fierce thing nurtured in stolen moments and quiet understanding. He told her fragments of a soldier's life, carefully edited. She shared her dreams—illustrating exotic plants from far-off lands.
He watched her. Not just with love, but with a growing, gnawing dread. *How? When?* The watch remained cold and silent in his pocket, its crack a constant reminder.
They picnicked by the Thames on an unseasonably warm autumn day. Lily sketched the gnarled roots of an ancient willow dipping into the water. Elias watched the sunlight dance on her hair, memorizing the curve of her smile, the way she bit her lip when concentrating.
It's perfect, she sighed, leaning back against him. "Like a painting.
He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her head. The peace was a knife-edge. He felt it—the fragility. The borrowed time.
"I love you, Lily Thorne," he whispered into her hair, the name still foreign, yet imbued with everything he felt.
She tilted her head back, smiling up at him. And I love you, Elias Kane.
He kissed her, pouring every ounce of his fractured soul into it. *Remember me, he begged silently. Please, remember me.
Later, walking her home through gaslit streets, the first icy flakes of snow began to fall. Lily laughed, catching one on her glove. Early winter
A delivery wagon, overloaded with barrels, rumbled around the corner ahead. The horse shied at a sudden clatter of metal from a nearby construction site. The driver shouted, hauling on the reins. One barrel, precariously stacked, teetered… then plunged off the back of the wagon.
It struck the slick cobbles with explosive force. Not beer. Kerosene.
The thick, pungent liquid gushed across the street, a dark, spreading tide.
Lily, laughing at the snow, stepped directly into its path.
LILY NO Elias roared, lunging.
Time didn't slow. It *ignited*.
A careless pedestrian dropped a lit cigarillo.
WHOOMF.
A wall of fire erupted across the street, fueled by the kerosene river. It roared, ten feet high, cutting Lily off from Elias, trapping her against the front of a milliner's shop.
Heat slammed into him, forcing him back. Through the blinding curtain of flame, he saw her eyes widen in terror. Saw her mouth shape his name.
ELIAS!
He charged forward, ignoring the searing heat, the blistering pain on his face. *Not again! NOT AGAIN
He was almost through the wall of fire when the shop's ornate wooden sign above Lily, superheated by the blaze, tore free from its brackets.
It fell like a burning comet.
Elias screamed, a raw, animal sound of utter despair, as the flaming timber struck Lily Thorne, engulfing her in fire and smoke.
He stumbled back, beaten by the heat, his eyes burning, not from the flames, but from the sight he couldn't unsee. Her silhouette, consumed.
He fell to his knees on the frozen cobbles, the snow sizzling where it touched his scorched clothes. The watch in his pocket wasn't cold anymore.
It was blistering hot.
He pulled it out, the brass searing his blistered palm. The crack in the glass pulsed with **hellish red light**. Tears, hot and endless, streamed down his soot-blackened face, mingling with melting snow and ash. They splashed onto the burning watch face.
*Wind it only when your tears fall.*
His trembling fingers found the winding key. He turned it.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK
Not glass breaking. The sound of **reality splintering**. The gaslights stretched into impossible lines. The screams of the crowd distorted into a deafening roar. The burning street, the falling snow, the smell of kerosene and charred wood—all dissolved into blinding, white noise.
When the light faded, Elias was on his knees again.
But the cobblestones were gone.
The air stank of mud, blood, and rotting flesh.
The ground trembled with the **crump of distant artillery.
He looked up.
Barbed wire snagged against a twilight sky bleeding smoke.
Men in muddy khaki huddled in a waterlogged trench.
And walking towards him, calm amidst the hellscape, a nurse with a lantern and kind, weary brown eyes, was…
*Aria.*
Down the shattered trench line, half-buried in mud, a sign flickered weakly:
**Hourglass Shop - Salvage & Sundries**
Elias Kane closed his eyes, the nurse's unfamiliar face seared into his mind alongside Lily Thorne's final, burning scream. The watch was ice-cold again in his ruined hand.
He knew the ending.
He knew the cost.
He knew he would pay it.
The chase had only just begun.
(END CHAPTER & ARC 1)