“Some stories don’t need chapters, just impact.”

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Against the Hourglass

Chapter 1: The End

Aurea woke, her breath catching as her eyes blinked open to a sky streaked with violet and gold. Two crescent moons hung low, casting a soft, eerie glow over the ground. She lay on a bed of soft, dew-covered grass, a chill in the air that hinted at the transition from night to day.
The world was eerily quiet. No sounds of insects, no rustle of leaves. Just the soft hum of something… backward. She sat up, the grass brushing against her fingers. Something felt wrong, No, everything felt wrong. Her mind was blank, her name, her past, even the air she breathed. She knew nothing. Her thoughts scattered like leaves in a breeze.

Then, she saw it. A bird flew backward across the sky, its wings slicing through the air, flapping in reverse as if it was retracing its flight. The leaves in the trees seemed to hover in mid-air for a moment before they glided gently upward, back into the branches from which they had fallen.
Aurea’s heart raced. This wasn’t right. Was she dreaming? No. This was real. Standing up, she took a few hesitant steps. Her footfalls, strangely light, made no sense. It was as though the ground itself was unwilling to hold her in place. A figure appeared in front of her, a man dressed in rough clothes. His face was lined with age, but his eyes, bright and wide, were filled with warmth. He smiled at her and then, without a word, turned and walked away.

“No… wait!” Aurea called, but her voice felt faint. It was as though he hadn’t even heard her. He kept walking, retreating farther into the distance, his form fading into the mist. Aurea blinked and stood there, stunned, unsure of what just happened. It was as if the world had just rewound itself, a video tape playing in reverse.
Then, she heard voices behind her, soft and muffled, coming from what appeared to be a small group. She turned to see several figures approaching, and to her confusion, they were walking backward, stepping in reverse, as if retracing their movements.
“Excuse me!” Aurea called again, but they didn’t stop. Instead, they walked further away, faces frozen in expressions she couldn’t quite place. Suddenly, a voice broke through the fog of confusion, sharp and clear.
“You don’t belong here, do you?”

Aurea spun around to find a woman standing alone, her figure outlined against the soft glow of the setting moons. Her clothes were simple but worn, and her eyes held a deep, knowing look.
“No,” Aurea answered, a chill running down her spine. “I don’t know where I am.”
“You’re not from here,” the woman said, her voice almost a whisper, yet unmistakably firm. “Come with me.”
Aurea hesitated but followed the woman as she turned and began walking, this time with purpose. As they walked, Aurea noticed the landscape beginning to shift, buildings unfell, rivers ran backward, and the sky twisted with streaks of reversed light.
The woman led her to a large building, the doors wide open. Inside, a group of people, disheveled, yet determined, sat gathered around a table. They looked up at Aurea as she entered, their faces reflecting a strange mixture of curiosity and caution.
“Is she… one of them?” a man asked, his voice trembling.
The woman who had led Aurea inside nodded. “Yes. She’s a Forward.”
Aurea blinked. “A… Forward?”

The man nodded. “It’s a myth, an anomaly. Someone who doesn’t follow the reverse flow of time. The only one.”
Aurea stood silent, absorbing the weight of the words. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but something inside her told her she needed to understand. The woman at the table stood up and walked toward her. “We call ourselves the Chronites,” she said. “We resist the flow. We try to stop the unraveling.”
“The unraveling?” Aurea repeated.
The woman motioned toward the others. “The world is falling apart. Time is moving backward, and we can’t stop it. People forget their future. They forget what will happen, and they live in what has already been undone.”
Aurea stared at them, trying to make sense of it all. “And you think I can help?”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “We’ve been waiting for someone like you. You’re the key.”
“But I don’t even know what’s going on,” Aurea said, her voice rising in frustration. “I don’t remember anything.”
The woman smiled softly. “You will. You’ll remember soon enough.”

Chapter II: The Middle

Days passed, though it was hard to keep track of them. Every morning, Aurea woke up again, only it wasn’t again in the usual sense. It was as though she was retracing her steps, reliving moments backward, trying to reverse the damage.
The Chronites took her under their wing, teaching her the ways of their resistance. She learned that she had once been part of the experiment that had created this world, an artificial pocket dimension created to preserve humanity’s mistakes and regrets. The longer she stayed, the more pieces of her own past she recalled. Her original world, the one she had come from, was dying. And in her desperation to save it, she had made a fateful decision: to rewind time, to pull the world backward and give people a second chance. But she had underestimated the consequences.

This new world, Caldrith, was a prison for the memories of the doomed. Time moved backward for everyone, but for her, it was an impossible paradox. She was the only one aware of what would happen, even as the rest of the world was bound to relive what had already been undone. But as the days or rather, nights passed, Aurea began to understand something more troubling: the world wasn’t truly reversing itself. It was stuck in a loop. She wasn’t just a witness to this backward march through time, she was the cause. She had created the loop.

Chapter III: The beginning

One day, perhaps the last, or perhaps the first, Aurea woke at the heart of Caldrith, but this time, the silence was not stillness. It was grief. The world around her had decayed into ruin. Cities had unfallen into ash, forests recoiled into saplings, then seeds. The sky cracked like a mirror, the two moons now spiraling toward each other, preparing for a final collapse.
And in that silence, she saw herself, not in a mirror, but in a living memory projected in the air. Aurea, the scientist. The one who built the Temporal Fracture Engine. The one who said, “I can fix the world, I just need to reverse the pain.”
This place, Caldrith—was not a different world. It was the echo chamber of her own guilt.
“You always had the power to escape,” said a voice. The Chronite woman stepped from the broken timeline, the air folding around her. “But you chose to rewind instead of face what came next.” Aurea turned to her, eyes blazing now, not with fear, but with fire. “I made this world to save humanity from its own end. I didn’t know I was sealing them in a reverse death.”

“You tried to undo pain by erasing time,” the woman said. “But pain is part of time’s price and now, only one final act remains.” Above them, the sky convulsed, the moons collided, and the world shook.
Aurea stepped forward. Her hand touched the core of Caldrith, now visible, a pulsating sphere of memory, looping endlessly, feeding on regret. Her own voice echoed within it.
Reset in reverse. Reset in reverse. Reset—”
She clenched her fist. “No. Not this time, I won’t rewind, I won’t run.”
With one breath, she pressed her hand against the core.
And pushed forward.
The world convulsed. Reality cracked in eruption and light exploded outward. Time shattered like a glass sculpture into threads of infinite possibility. Aurea screamed, not from pain, but from awakening.

She woke up.
In a lab. In her real world. The Fracture Engine had powered down. Her colleagues stared at her in disbelief.
“You were… gone,” one said. “For weeks. We thought we lost you.”
Aurea stood, trembling but alive. “I wasn’t gone,” she whispered. “I was learning what happens when we run from our past.”
She walked toward the console.
“Delete the reverse protocol,” she said.
This time, she would face time as it came.

By Anshita Dhingra

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When the Wall Watched Back

Fifteen minutes, that’s how long I have been frozen, eyes locked on the grey wall ahead. My hands are trembling. My heart is pounding in a way it shouldn’t be, not this loud, not this violent. Everything feels blank, like I have been erased from the inside. Deep breaths that should calm me down are only consuming me, dragging me further into the dark. I can feel the air pressing against my skin, my ribs, my throat, like it wants to crush. Another panic attack in the same week, right before I’m supposed to go out and meet my friends.
But I can’t.

Agoraphobia, the fear of stepping out, of facing anything beyond these walls, it’s sinking its claws deeper. Every day, it makes me feel worthless. Like I’m failing to be human. The panics are uncontrollable now, and the missed opportunities? They are uncountable and haunting.
This is something different though, it’s longer than usual. It’s not stopping. I’m still staring at the wall, and I swear it’s changing shape. It’s not just grey anymore, I see red now and I don’t know if it’s in the wall or behind my eyes. The horror inside me coils like a living thing, it feels as if the walls themselves are possessed, pulsing with breath, and I can’t move, because it’s watching me back. The red color is no longer abstract, they’re shaping into something rectangular. A door. Blood-red door, right there on my wall.

Am I hallucinating?
Have I finally crossed that line, the point of no return, where there’s no cure, no hope left? With every ounce of energy I can gather, I force myself to stand. My feet feel like someone has strapped heavy stones to them, like the ground itself doesn’t want to let me go. Still, I move slowly, step by step, dragging fear behind me like a second shadow. I arrive at the door. Every horror story has warned me, this is a terrible mistake. A line that shouldn’t be crossed. But my mind… It’s just as curious as it is terrified. So, I reach out and open the door.

The other side jolts me. It’s vast, mesmerizing. More than a thousand seats, all full. The audience is completely absorbed, their eyes locked on the stage. This isn’t just any auditorium; it’s unlike anything I have ever seen. Posh, with a balcony, vintage design, and lights that bathe the stage in a golden glow. There is a woman on the stage, moving with a rhythm so hypnotic, as if someone has sprinkled stardust in the air around her. The lights focus on her, yet I can’t see her face. The mystery pulls at me, a magnetic force I can’t resist. I move forward cautiously, not wanting to disturb anyone, but it doesn’t matter. No one seems to notice me, as if I’m invisible. I make my way to the front row. There’s just one seat left and I take it. Still, I can’t see her clearly. It’s as though the light itself creates her aura, and the dance she performs is entwined with shadows, blending with the darkness. When the performance ends, the entire crowd stands, erupting into applause. It’s deafening, yet somehow melodic and then, the lights flicker off.

In that brief moment of darkness, I see her. My breath catches in my chest as I stare at her face. Pure shock freezes me.
It’s her—but it’s also me.

The same face. Yet, she wears an expression of calm, of pride, an expression I haven’t worn in what feels like forever. She comes closer and extends her hand, like she’s inviting me onto the stage. I just stand there, frozen, unwilling to reach out. She offers me a reassuring smile. I still can’t believe it. It’s me. That smile… I lost it years ago.

She says softly, “Come. Don’t worry, no one’s here.”
Confused, I glance back, the auditorium is empty.
I look at her. It was full.
“Yes, it was,” she nods. “Because of our dream and our dedication to it. I achieved it years ago. Every dance class, every move, every drop of time we poured in, it was all worth it.”
“Then where did everyone go?” I ask.
“You’re not willing to come on stage,” she says, her voice low but steady. “You don’t want to be seen. You’ve developed fears, lost all hope… started doubting yourself, punishing yourself for every missed opportunity. The moment you began to curse your own name, question your own talent, it all disappeared.”

Suddenly, her expression shifts. The pride fades into grief. She walks slowly to the center of the stage, sits down cross-legged, her head bowed, like she’s caged.
That face, it’s too familiar. It’s the one I see every time I look in the mirror. I can’t watch her like this. I rush up to the stage, but she’s gone. Now it’s just me on the stage and suddenly, the audience is back, cheering. Before I can make sense of it, something yanks me backward, violently, like I’m being snatched. Pulled through the red door.

Then—
I hear my sister shouting my name in panic.
“Wake up! Are you okay? What happened? Did you have a panic attack again?”
I nod weakly. “Yeah…”
“Probably fainted from it. Wait, I’ll get you some water,” she says, rushing to the kitchen.
And I just sit there, staring at the wall again.
Confused. Shocked. Enlightened. I’m not even sure what I’m feeling.

Was it real?
A dream?
A hallucination?
Or was it my subconscious—screaming at me to break out of this cage?
I don’t know. But I know one thing now, with certainty.
My sister returns with a glass of water. I stand, take it gently, sip slowly, and then turn toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asks, confused.
I turn back, no panic in my chest this time, just a small, proud smile.

“To meet my friends.”

By Anshita Dhingra