Chapter 2: Fractures in the Frame

The clocks were still wrong.

Every single one.

Duran sat at his kitchen table, surrounded by timepieces—his wall clock, the old wristwatch he inherited from his grandfather, the glowing digits on his phone, and the digital readout of his microwave. None of them agreed. Not even close.

1:46.

2:02.

3:19.

12:14.

It was as if time had spun a roulette wheel and landed differently in each corner of the room.

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and tried to breathe. Get a grip, Duran. Maybe he'd just fallen asleep in the park and had a weird dream. Maybe he was exhausted. Dehydrated. Maybe that girl—

Julia. The name had stuck in his mind like a thorn.

—maybe she was just some actress pulling off an elaborate prank. A performance artist. Someone who got off on confusing people with sci-fi monologues and mysterious disappearances.

Except...

He opened the photo on his camera again.

It wasn't a dream.

The stars in the image were wrong. He'd grown up under this sky—he knew it. And in this photo, they weren't right. The constellations were warped, the placements subtly off. And in the upper-right corner, between what should've been Orion's Belt and the crescent moon, there was her face. Half-faded. Like a ghost imprint left by a flash of cosmic memory.

He zoomed in until the pixels blurred. Still her. Still smiling.

Not the dreamlike smile from the park. No. This one had a hint of sadness. Or warning.

He shut the camera off.

Sleep was impossible. He paced the room, watched the windows, flipped through his journal—where he'd started tracking the strange things he saw each night. Odd light bends. Audio glitches. The repeating birds. And now... the time anomalies.

It was more than a coincidence.

And Julia—if that was her name—knew something. Something about him.

Why him?

Why now?

His heart raced with questions, but no answers came.

He looked out the window.

The city was still. Too still. The wind hadn't moved the trees in over ten minutes. The traffic on the main road? Silent. No headlights. No sirens. No flicker of passing cars. Just a suspended world, like someone had pressed pause.

He opened the window to check for sound. None.

Then, faintly, a voice.

"Duran."

It wasn't shouted. It wasn't spoken.

It was placed inside his head like a memory.

He spun around.

Nothing.

But the clocks had all reset.

Every single one now read: 6:44 PM.

The park was different at that hour.

Alive, yes, but off. It had the gloss of reality, but none of the warmth. Too many symmetrical patterns in the leaves. Too many perfectly mirrored bird calls. As though the scene were rendered, not lived.

And there she was.

Again.

Sitting beneath the sycamore, shawl draped around her shoulders, fingers lightly tracing a spiral pattern on the wooden bench.

She looked up as he approached. This time, he didn't hesitate.

"Julia," he said, though he wasn't sure why he used the name. It still felt like hers.

She tilted her head. "You named me."

"It felt right."

She studied him a moment. "Names carry weight, Duran. In my world, to name something is to create a bond."

"Then we're bonded, I guess," he said, sitting beside her. "Because you've definitely done something to me."

"I haven't done anything to you," she said softly. "You heard me. That's the difference."

He watched the birds above, twisting again in their hypnotic dance. "Why now? Why me?"

"You weren't supposed to see me," she admitted. "Your frequency aligned only because of the fracture. Most pass through this loop without ever noticing. But your mind..." She paused. "It's receptive. Unanchored."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

She smiled. "You're not broken, Duran. Just tuned differently."

"To what?"

"To the Fold," she said.

He blinked. "The what?"

"It's what you call glitches. An interspace between realities. A crack in continuity."

He swallowed. "So you're saying I'm seeing into... another dimension?"

"No. You're seeing beneath them."

The birds froze.

So did the wind.

The light dimmed, and the sky cracked—just slightly—like a shattered phone screen.

Duran stood instinctively, heart hammering. "What the hell was that?"

"Temporal pressure," Julia said calmly. "The Fold's boundaries are weakening. The more you see, the more unstable it becomes."

"Are you saying this is my fault?"

"No," she said, rising too. "I'm saying you're part of it now."

The fountain behind them hissed. Dry moments ago, it now bubbled with silvery water, glowing faintly under the fading sun.

She touched his arm gently. "I need your help."

He turned to her. "I don't know anything. I'm not a physicist. I take pictures."

"Your perception is your power. Your lens is a key."

"To what?"

She pointed to the camera hanging around his neck. "That device doesn't just capture light. In this field, it captures fracture imprints. Echoes of events that haven't happened yet. Or shouldn't have."

Duran stared at the camera like it might explode.

"You mean... the photo of you in the sky...?"

She nodded. "That's a memory. But not yours. Not yet."

He stepped back, brain reeling. "I need... I need time."

"You don't have much," she said, voice tight. "The Fold is collapsing faster. If it breaks fully, the pocket will consume the zone. And everything in it."

"Define 'zone.'"

"Three city blocks. Maybe more."

He stared at her.

"This is insane."

She smiled softly. "Insanity is just reality without permission."

The ground beneath them trembled.

Small. Subtle. But real.

The birds scattered, no longer in loops—now in chaos.

Julia grabbed his wrist. "Come with me."

"Where?"

"To the anchor point."

They left the park through a gate that hadn't existed five minutes earlier.

It opened into a narrow alley, where the buildings leaned inward like conspirators. Duran followed her through dim paths and silent streets, the city flickering slightly as if struggling to maintain form.

Finally, she stopped in front of an old building. Abandoned. Cracked windows. Vines crawling over brick like veins.

"This was the original breach site," Julia said, voice reverent.

"Looks like an old observatory."

"It was."

She stepped through the doorway.

Inside, the temperature dropped.

Dust hung in the air, but it didn't fall. Just... hovered.

Duran looked around. Instruments. Broken telescopes. Old monitors blinking faintly despite no visible power source.

And on one of the walls—photos. Hundreds.

His photos.

Of her.

Of the park.

Of the birds.

Of things he hadn't even taken yet.

He stepped closer. "How...?"

"This is the imprint chamber," Julia said. "Everything you observe gets stored here. Your vision bridges timelines."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to," she said. "Just believe it's real."

He looked at the images again.

One caught his eye.

A future image.

Julia—eyes wide, mouth open in a scream—reaching for him as she dissolved into light.

He stepped back. "No."

"I don't want it either," she whispered. "But that's one outcome. Unless we reset the Fold."

Duran turned to her. "How?"

She pointed to his camera. "With that. You must capture the breach point in its open state."

"When?"

She looked at the watch on the wall.

It now read: 6:44 PM.

"Now."