The burning numbers of July 18, 2098 bled into the paper like liquid fire. Suddenly, the room tilted violently. The heavy stone doors vanished. The warm scent of rain turned into a freezing wind. The world dissolved into spinning shadows. Deep, ticking clockwork sounds echoed inside Kian’s bones.

The spinning finally stopped. Kian fell to his knees on a floor of polished obsidian. The air was heavy and dead silent. A strange, permanent twilight filled the space. He looked up and gasped.

He stood in a massive, ruined courtyard. It seemed to float in the middle of a cosmic void. Giant, crumbling statues surrounded him. They were shaped like majestic, winged dragons. The stone of the statues shifted colors from deep purple to starlight silver.

This was not the past. This was a shattered, mysterious future.

“The map brought another one,” a voice whispered. It sounded like dry leaves scraping across stone.

Kian spun around. His chest tightened with fear. A figure emerged from the gloom, wearing tattered, star-woven robes. A brass mask shaped like a dragon hid its face. Two glowing blue crystal eyes stared out from the mask.

“Where am I?” Kian asked, holding the trembling map tightly. “What happened here?”

The masked figure stepped closer. “You are in the Twilight Archive. You are two hundred years from where your journey began. Or rather, you are looking at what is left of it. Dragons were never beasts of fire, boy. They were the Loom-Weavers of Time. And someone has just stolen their spindle.”