The Hidden Street
The city of Paris in 1928 was a mix of smells: cheap perfume, coal smoke, and a strange, faint smell of metal that shouldn't be there.
Elara Vance, a woman who hid her real age, pulled down the collar of her gray coat. She was pretending to look at toy robots in a shop window, but she was really watching an alley across the street. The alley was called Rue des Rêves—the Street of Dreams. Most maps didn't show it; you had to know how to look for it to see it.
Elara wasn't just fixing clocks; she was a Watchmaker for time itself. She kept track of how time was supposed to flow. And tonight, the flow was wrong.
She reached into her pocket. Her special compass didn't point North; it shook and vibrated when time was being messed with. Right now, it was shaking hard, pointing straight down Rue des Rêves.
She stepped into the alley. The noisy city sounds—car horns and chatter—vanished instantly. Everything became strangely quiet. The street was lit by old gaslights that made nervous, long shadows. The buildings were carved with confusing, strange shapes, and the shop signs were written in Aetheric Gnomon, the language of hidden machinery.
The people here were just as strange. A man with three faces that overlapped sold glowing light bulbs. A very tall woman walked a small, barking cloud on a leash. A bakery window showed bread loaves that spun, glowing with a soft blue light inside.
Elara had a goal: The Grand Repository of Tempora, a secret place hidden behind an old, broken clock tower halfway down the street.
She passed a creature sitting on a step. It was made entirely of clockwork and brass, with a face made of clear crystal that showed time in many different ways. This was Automat 702, a maintenance robot for the Repository.
"Seven-Oh-Two," Elara said clearly. "Tell me what happened."
The Automat slowly turned its brass head. It made a grinding sound.
"Mistress Vance," its voice was deep and chiming, like a giant bell. "A break-in happened. Security lock 47-Beta was broken. The main time device—the Heart of Veridia—is gone."
Elara stopped, shocked. The Heart of Veridia wasn't just a thing; it kept the time for all of Europe stable. Stealing it was a disaster for reality itself.
"Who took it?" she asked.
The Automat lifted a perfect brass hand and pointed a glowing finger at a stain of deep purple oil on the stones. "The sign is clear, Mistress. This is the work of The Curator."
Elara felt a cold fear. The Curator was a ghost of the time underworld, a master thief who stole moments and even future possibilities. His goal was always the same: to rewrite history for reasons no one could understand.
"Where did he go?"
"The break-in was at 3:00 AM," the Automat chimed. "The way he left shows he didn't just run. He made a jump—a huge jump. To a point in time where the flow of history is very confused."
Elara looked at the purple oil. It was Chronolube, a powerful oil used only in huge time travel engines. The oil meant The Curator was now very far away—maybe decades or centuries away from 1928.
"I need to follow him," Elara decided quickly. "Is the main time jump machine working?"
"No, Mistress. Stealing the Veridia Heart shut down the power. It will take twelve hours to get the jump-engine ready."
"Twelve hours is too long," Elara sighed. She had a riskier, secret way to travel through time.
She pulled out her pocket compass. It felt hot in her hand. The needle, which had been frantic, now pointed steadily at a single, impossible location: straight through the wall of a broken bookshop nearby, and through it, to a specific time and place.
"Seven-Oh-Two," Elara said, her hand on the bookshop's cold stone door. "Write down the event, seal the Repository, and start the power-up. If I am not back in three days, activate the Retcon Protocol."
The Retcon Protocol was the final step: a plan to wipe out 1928 entirely, which would stop the disaster but also erase everyone living there.
"Understood, Mistress Vance. Be careful."
Elara didn't answer. She focused on the compass. It was guiding her to the exact echo of The Curator's jump—a small trail of broken time he left behind.
She kicked the bookshop door open. Inside, it wasn't a shop, but a dark room dominated by a huge, steaming metal machine that looked like a brass diving helmet mixed with a telescope. This was the Chronal Resonator, a dangerous, experimental machine Elara had built to follow time trails instead of creating new ones.
She strapped herself into the machine's harness and quickly worked the dials. She had to match the Resonator to the specific signal left by The Curator's Chronolube oil.
The brass machine began to hum.
She typed in the final location shown by her compass. It wasn't a map location, but a destination marked by Time Period, Important Event, and Feeling.
Time Period: 16th Century.
Important Event: A King's crowning.
Feeling: Betrayal.
She slammed the main power lever down. The air inside turned into liquid light. Elara felt a huge pressure against her mind, like reality was being squeezed. The smell of burning time filled her lungs.
The Resonator screamed.
In a flash of light the color of a setting sun, Elara Vance vanished, leaving behind only the sound of silence and the deep, brass chime of Automat 702 standing guard on the hidden street.