Chapter 7

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Chapter 7: The Archivist’s Warning

 They met the archivist at the museum—a thin man with spectacles and a strange hunger in his eyes. He specialized in “chronological anomalies” and invited them for tea.

He knew.

Before Elias said a word, the archivist placed a hand on the journal and said:

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Elias stiffened.

The man explained: objects displaced from their original time create temporal scars. The clockwork Elias had used wasn’t just a machine—it was a tether. And tethers break.

“If you stay too long,” the archivist warned, “you’ll unravel things you can’t fix. And her? She may forget, or worse… never become who she was meant to be.”

Ella didn’t speak the entire ride home.

When they parted that night, she held his hand longer than usual.

“If we’re not meant to be… why does it feel like the only thing that ever made sense?”

Elias had no answer.

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