Kian did not panic. He looked at the map, then at the shadow. Suddenly, he understood the final secret. The riddle said: open the lock with the dead man’s key. The shadow wasn’t a stranger. It was the ghost of a past Time-Walker. The boy had failed the map centuries ago and became trapped by his own fear.

“You can’t change your past,” Kian shouted, “but I can change our future!”

Kian didn’t pull away. Instead, he slammed the glowing map directly onto the glass. The map acted as a golden seal. The dates burned into the paper, 1898 and 2098 acted like a bridge. They connected the two eras and released a massive surge of temporal energy.

The glass did not shatter. It dissolved. The golden light wrapped around the shadow. It turned the dark smoke into pure, radiant starlight. The shadow let out a soft sigh of relief and faded away. The ruby Heart-Stone and the brass key fell straight into Kian’s waiting hands.

Courage surged through Kian’s veins. He ran back up the floating stairs to the courtyard. He placed the Heart-Stone into the frozen black fountain. Then, he inserted the brass key into the bone clock and turned it.

TICK.

A thunderous sound echoed through the void. The clock hands finally moved to 12.00. The stone dragons cracked open. Their rocky shells fell away, revealing living scales of gold, emerald, and sapphire. They soared into the twilight sky, breathing life and color back into the future. The universe began to breathe again.

The Archivist bowed low to Kian. “The mystery is solved, Master of Centuries. The future is safe.”

The map on Kian’s chest dissolved. In its place, a permanent, glowing silver pocket-watch mark appeared on his palm. The library back home was waiting, but Kian smiled. Whenever a new date appeared on his skin, a new fantastical mystery would be waiting for him to solve.