It began with a flicker.
A boy—ten years old—racing down an alley in a rainstorm. No name. No face.
Just a flash.
Gone.
Jonah gasped and staggered, the vision striking him like a jolt of static. He clutched his head.
"Did you see that?" he whispered.
Thorne turned sharply. "You saw a moment?"
Jonah nodded, dazed. "A kid. Rain. Then… nothing."
Thorne's eyes narrowed. "It's starting."
He crouched beside a patch of moss near a broken sundial. Slowly, carefully, he pulled a thin brass strand from the soil.
It shimmered.
A Time Thread.
"Here," he said, handing it to Jonah. "Hold this. Focus on what you saw."
Jonah took it. The thread felt warm. Alive.
He closed his eyes.
The flicker came again—clearer this time.
The boy running. A man shouting behind him. A red door. A silver coin falling in slow motion. Then—blackness. Like that second had been cut out.
Evelyne touched his shoulder. "You're not just seeing it," she said. "You're connected to it."
Jonah opened his eyes. "I think it's the missing tick."
Thorne nodded grimly. "Then it's somewhere out of place. Unanchored. Which means it could reshape anything it touches."
Evelyne frowned. "What happens if we don't find it?"
"Depends," Thorne said. "If it attaches to a weak enough moment, it could rewrite a person. An event. An entire city block."
Jonah stood. "Then we find it before it finds something broken."
—
They followed the thread through old paths, abandoned time sanctuaries, and shuttered clock towers. Each place hummed with energy. Each step brought flashes—little snatches of the lost second, trying to complete itself.
But always shifting.
Changing form.
Until they reached the edge of a seaside town called Glimmertide.
Jonah stared at it in silence. The sky above the coast shimmered like water in reverse. Time felt… loose.
"This place feels wrong," Evelyne said.
"That's because it is," Thorne answered. "The tick is here."
They entered the town cautiously. No people. No sound.
And then, a chime.
Soft.
Wrong.
> Ding.
Ding.
Diiing.
They turned the corner—and stopped cold.
At the town's center, a clock tower stood tall—but the face wasn't round.
It was shattered. Like a broken mirror held together by force of will.
In the center of it, floating and spinning like a compass needle gone mad, was a glowing orb of compressed time.
The missing tick.
Evelyne reached out. "It's beautiful."
Jonah grabbed her hand. "It's dangerous."
The air thickened. All around them, the streets shimmered. Houses shifted shape. Windows blinked like eyes.
Then the tick spoke.
Not in words—but in memory.
Jonah felt it slam into him:
A birthday candle never blown out.
A girl at a train station who never got on.
A war that paused for one heartbeat too long.
Bellamy—writing Jonah's name at the bottom of a page, then crossing it out.
> This second had been forgotten by everyone.
But it remembered itself.
And now it wanted to exist.
Jonah stepped forward. "You're not a threat. You're a choice."
The tick pulsed, spinning faster.
Thorne shouted, "Jonah—wait! If you bind to it, you'll become its anchor! You'll carry it—forever!"
Jonah turned to Evelyne.
"If I don't… it'll just keep looking for a home."
Evelyne hesitated, then nodded. "Then make it you. At least we know your heart is real."
Jonah reached out.
His fingers touched the glowing tick.
And everything—
stopped.