The Man Who Borrowed Tomorrow-
Rain fell like ash over Greyharbor, turning the gaslit streets into mirrors of distorted light. In the upper room of a pawnshop that no longer appeared on any map, Elias Morwen stared at an object that should not have existed.
A pocket watch.
Its glass was cracked, its hands frozen at an impossible angle. Yet the moment Elias touched it, the second hand twitched.
Once.
Then again.
He pulled his hand back as if burned.
The shopkeeper had been blind, or at least pretended to be. He spoke without blinking, without breathing too deeply. "You asked for a way out of debt," the man said. "This is one."
Elias had laughed then. Now, alone, he wasn't laughing.
The watch began to tick.
Not forward.
Backward.
---
Elias discovered its power by accident.
At dawn, he spilled boiling tea onto his desk, ruining a letter meant for the Bureau of Maritime Accounts. Panicking, he grasped the watch and whispered the first thought that came to mind: I wish this hadn't happened.
The world stuttered.
The steam reversed. The tea flowed back into the cup. The letter was dry again.
Elias collapsed into his chair, heart hammering. Outside, the bells rang the same hour twice.
That was when he realized the watch did not turn back time.
It borrowed it.
Every reversal carved something unseen from the future and paid it into the present.
---
The city began to change around him.
Small things at first. People forgetting names they should remember. Ships arriving a day early, then never arriving at all. A child on the corner aging too fast, his eyes already tired of the world.
Elias kept using the watch anyway.
He corrected mistakes. Avoided confrontations. Saved himself from accidents that would have crippled or killed him. Each time, the watch grew warmer. Each time, the ticking grew louder.
And each night, he dreamed of doors.
Countless doors, suspended in a dark sea, each engraved with symbols he could not read. Some were locked. Some were broken open from the inside.
One door always stood closer than the others.
Behind it, something was waiting.
---
The Bureau noticed anomalies within three weeks.
Inspector Hale arrived at Elias's apartment with a polite smile and eyes that never reflected light. "You've been very fortunate lately, Mr. Morwen," he said. "Fortune tends to draw attention."
Elias lied. Poorly.
Hale's gaze drifted to the pocket watch on the desk. His smile thinned. "That doesn't belong to you."
"It was purchased legally."
"Nothing like that ever is."
When Hale left, Elias knew two things with chilling certainty.
The Bureau was not human in the way it claimed to be.
And the watch had started ticking ahead again.
---
That night, the nearest dream-door opened.
Elias stepped through.
He stood in a ruined version of Greyharbor, its towers bent like ribs, its sea black and unmoving. The sky was filled with clock faces instead of stars.
And there, at the center of it all, stood a figure wearing his face—but older, hollow-eyed, stitched together with symbols burned into flesh.
"You used it too much," the figure said calmly.
"What are you?" Elias whispered.
"You," it replied. "What you will become when tomorrow runs out."
The future-Elias raised a hand, revealing a wrist fused to a shattered watch. "The artifact doesn't reverse time. It trades probability. Every avoided death feeds another. Every correction sharpens the end."
"Then how do I stop it?"
"You don't," the figure said. "You choose who pays."
---
Elias woke screaming.
The watch lay silent.
For the first time, it would not respond.
Outside, Greyharbor's bells rang out of sequence. The sea began to recede, revealing things that had never known light. The pawnshop was gone. The Bureau's headquarters burned without smoke.
Elias understood.
The watch was finished with him.
But it had one last transaction left.
He placed it on the windowsill and whispered, not a wish, but a confession:
Take my tomorrow. Leave the rest untouched.
The watch shattered.
The ticking stopped.
---
Years later, Greyharbor told stories of a man who vanished during the Time Irregularities. No body was ever found. No record remained.
Sometimes, though, when the city clocks all freeze at once, people swear they see a figure standing at the edge of the future—watching, waiting, making sure no one ever borrows what doesn't belong to them again.
Behind a door that never fully closes.