Chapter 1: “The Diary of Forgotten Futures”
The bell over the door tinkled softly as I stepped into the dimly lit bookstore, a tiny pocket of calm amid the chaos of the city outside. The scent of old paper and musty wood enveloped me, and for a moment, I felt like I had slipped into another world. Shelves sagged under the weight of forgotten stories, dust motes swirled in the warm light filtering through the narrow windows, and the hum of the crowd outside faded into a distant murmur.
This place had a way of making time seem irrelevant—something I could lose myself in. And, as it turned out, that was exactly what I needed. I had been running from something for a while now, although I couldn’t quite put it into words. Regret, maybe. Guilt, definitely. There was something I needed to fix, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out what. So, I wandered. From place to place, job to job, planet to planet.
The small bookstore was my latest destination, though it wasn’t books I was looking for—at least, not consciously. I trailed my fingers along the spines of well-worn volumes, feeling a strange sense of familiarity with each one. Then, I spotted it: an old, faded leather-bound book, wedged between a stack of more colorful titles.
Drawn by something I couldn’t explain, I pulled it free. Its cover was worn and cracked, the once-gold letters on the spine barely visible. I opened it gingerly, expecting to find dry pages crumbling under my touch. Instead, the pages were crisp, as though the book had been preserved, waiting for me.
The title on the first page was simply: The Diary of Forgotten Futures. And then, as I blinked at the empty page beneath it, words began to appear.
He stands in the square, under a sky full of stars she’s never seen before. The air hums with unspoken words, and his gaze… it pierces through the centuries.
I frowned, flipping back and forth between the pages. The book was completely blank except for the words I had just read. It was almost as if they had been written for me, as if the diary knew something I didn’t.
Without thinking, I tucked the book under my arm and made my way to the counter. The old man at the register glanced at it and gave me a peculiar smile. “Ah, that one,” he muttered. “Found you, did it?”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he rang it up silently and handed it over with a nod. I left the bookstore, still confused but strangely eager to read more.
***
Later that night, in my small apartment overlooking the sprawling, futuristic city, I sat by the window, the diary open on my lap. I had flipped through every page again, but no more words had appeared. The city lights twinkled like stars on a faraway planet, casting a faint glow over the room. I sighed, half-disappointed that whatever magic had written those words had already faded.
But then, as I was about to close it, the ink shifted.
She feels the pull of time, like a hand reaching out to her from the past. And when she takes his hand, she will see the stars of a time long forgotten.
The words blurred, and the world around me tilted. I gasped, clutching the book as everything around me shifted, distorted, and then fell away. The city outside disappeared, replaced by a vast, open sky, shimmering with unfamiliar constellations. I stood in the middle of a square—an ancient, stone-paved marketplace that seemed to exist in another era, or perhaps another world.
My heart raced. Where was I?
Before I could even process what had happened, I saw him.
He stood under the soft light of a lantern, his tall figure silhouetted against the glow. His face was shadowed, but there was no mistaking the way his presence filled the space around him. He was handsome in a way that felt timeless, his features both rugged and delicate, as though carved by the passage of centuries. He watched me with eyes that seemed to hold entire lifetimes, and for a brief moment, I couldn’t look away.
I knew, without understanding how, that he was the man from the diary.
As if pulled by invisible strings, I found myself walking toward him. Each step echoed in the empty square, the soft murmur of the market around me fading away. His gaze never left mine, and when I finally stopped a few feet in front of him, the world around us seemed to still.
“Who are you?” I whispered, my voice barely audible in the quiet night.
“You know me,” he replied, his voice deep and calm, though there was an undercurrent of sadness in it. “You’ve always known me.”
I frowned, confusion tightening my chest. “I don’t… I don’t understand. Where am I? How did I get here?”
He took a step closer, his presence overwhelming but not threatening. “You’re where you’ve always been meant to be. Time is not a straight line, but a circle. We meet, and we will meet again.”
There was something achingly familiar about him—something that made my heart ache in ways I couldn’t explain. My thoughts were tangled, and my instincts told me to back away, but I didn’t. Instead, I took another step toward him, feeling the strange pull that seemed to exist between us, a magnetic force that tied us together despite the confusion swirling in my mind.
His hand lifted, and he gently brushed a stray lock of hair from my face. His touch was soft, careful, as though he feared breaking something fragile. The warmth of his fingers lingered long after they left my skin, and my pulse quickened.
“I’ve waited for you,” he said softly, the sadness in his eyes deepening. “But time is not kind to those who wander between its threads.”
I blinked, struggling to process his words. “Waited for me? But I don’t even know your name…”
His lips curved into a bittersweet smile, and his voice was barely a whisper when he spoke again. “You will.”
Before I could say anything else, the air around us shimmered, and the world seemed to ripple. The square, the lanterns, even the stars above us—everything blurred and twisted, like the pages of the diary, folding in on themselves.
“Wait!” I called, reaching out to him, but my hand grasped only empty air. He was gone.
I was falling—falling through time, through space, through memories I didn’t understand—and when I finally opened my eyes again, I was back in my apartment. The city lights twinkled outside, as if nothing had happened. The diary lay closed on my lap, its pages still and silent.
Had it all been a dream?
I touched my cheek where his fingers had brushed against me, half-expecting to feel warmth lingering there. But there was nothing.
As I opened the book again, the words on the page danced before me.
“This is only the beginning.”
***
The ink in the diary shifted again, forming a new sentence that made my heart race:
“Tomorrow, you will meet him again.”
The air seemed to crackle around me, and a deep, inexplicable fear took root in my chest. What had I just unlocked?