Jonah opened his eyes.
He was everywhere.
Not just standing in Glimmertide—but inside every moment that ever had been, could be, or never quite was. It wasn't like seeing memories. It was like feeling time breathe.
The rogue second had become a part of him.
And he was still himself—but stretched thin.
Voices rang through his skull. Familiar, but not. His mother singing to him when he was small. Bellamy arguing with Thorne. Evelyne whispering a name—his name—from a timeline that hadn't yet happened.
Then: silence.
And then: a heartbeat.
He was back.
Lying in the cracked square of Glimmertide, snow melting in strange directions. Evelyne knelt over him, eyes wide.
"You're alive," she said softly.
He tried to speak—but something behind his voice answered first.
> "I am the second. I am the in-between. I remember what you've forgotten."
Evelyne recoiled.
Thorne stepped in fast, hand on the hilt of his cane-blade.
"Jonah," he said carefully. "Are you still… you?"
Jonah forced himself to sit up. "Yes. I think so."
He looked around.
The world looked the same—but he could feel the seconds beneath it. Every heartbeat, every delay, every hesitation. Time wasn't a line anymore.
It was a shape.
And something in that shape was watching him.
> From behind the horizon of time, something shifted.
> A ripple in the dark.
> Something… old.
Jonah clutched his chest. "It knows."
"What does?" Evelyne asked.
He looked up at them, eyes glowing faintly with silver light.
> "The Archive."
Thorne's face went pale. "That's impossible."
"What's the Archive?" Evelyne asked.
Thorne didn't answer right away. He stared at Jonah like he was reading the last line of a prophecy.
Then he said, "The Archive isn't a place. It's a being. A recorder. A judge. It stores every second that's ever happened—and every second that shouldn't."
Evelyne blinked. "Then why does it care about Jonah?"
"Because," Thorne whispered, "he's carrying a second that was never archived. That makes him… invisible to the rules."
A slow dread settled over them.
Jonah stood up, still glowing faintly.
"I don't want to be invisible. I want to know why I was part of the loop. Why Bellamy chose me. Why Evelyne—why everything."
Thorne reached into his coat, pulling out the Timeweft again. But this time, it didn't react. No paths. No light.
"I can't guide you anymore," he said. "You're off the map."
Evelyne stepped beside Jonah, took his hand.
"Then we find our own path," she said. "Even if we have to write it ourselves."
Jonah squeezed her fingers. "You with me?"
"Always."
Thorne looked between them, then slowly smiled.
"Clockmakers," he said. "Always rewriting the rules."
But the wind had changed.
And high above them, far beyond the veil of ordinary seconds, something stirred.
Something with eyes made of centuries.
The Archive had noticed.