Chapter 2

 Chapter 2: Stepping Into Now

What happens when a man built for candlelight and carriage wheels steps into a world buzzing with artificial stars and voices trapped in glowing rectangles?

The journal never recorded what it felt like. But the photograph did.

Elias Thornwell’s eyes, captured in black and white, said more than ink ever could. He stood still on a bustling sidewalk somewhere in London—though not the London he knew. The street was littered with electric scooters, the air thick with the sound of honking cars and music leaking from wireless earbuds. His Victorian coat clung to him like a costume, out of time, out of place.

He had made it.

The journal's mechanism had worked—or, at least, it had hurled him across time with uncanny precision. The year was 2025.

He wandered the city like a ghost that nobody noticed. He marveled at the skyless skyline, at the little black boxes people spoke into, and the lights that didn’t flicker like candle flames. But nothing captured him, not even the miracle of time itself, until he saw her.

It happened outside a modest café on Berwick Street. A small poster, taped to the window, fluttered in the spring breeze. The poster depicted a jazz night. A woman’s face, printed in warm sepia tones.

Eleanor.

Alternatively, there could be someone who bore a striking resemblance to her.

She has the same eyes and the same delicate mouth. She exuded the same quiet confidence that had initially captivated him on the dance floor. Her name now was “Ella Moore,” and she was set to perform at 8 p.m.

Elias stood frozen.

The gears of his watch ticked frantically in his hand, matching the tempo of his pulse. He pressed his hand to the glass as if it could soften the centuries. She was alive—in some form—and performing music, something Eleanor had loved but never pursued.

Could it be her? Reborn? Was she rewritten by time? Or had fate simply carved her likeness into another soul?

He didn’t have answers.

But at precisely 7:58 p.m., Elias stepped inside the café, the doorbell chiming like an old cathedral bell calling the past into the present.

He took the last seat at the back, heart thudding beneath his waistcoat. The room dimmed, and the spotlight caught a curl of her dark hair.

Ella Moore walked onto the stage.

Elias Thornwell, a clockmaker, widower, and time traveler, fell in love once more.