Fifteen-year-old Igor finds an old pocket watch in a park and is thrown into another time. But when he tries to get back, it becomes clear he is not alone.
It started on a Friday afternoon, when Igor cut through the old park on his way home from school. The wind worried the leaves overhead, and the last light of day flickered through the branches. He had his rucksack slung over one shoulder and his phone half out of his pocket, already checking messages as he walked.
Near the bench under the big oak, something caught the corner of his eye. A flash of metal. Igor stopped, crouched, and reached beneath the bench. His fingers closed around an old pocket watch.
It was heavier than it looked. The lid was scratched, the chain was dark with age, and the tiny hands on the dial were moving. Not smoothly, either. They jerked, skipped, and clicked against each other as if they were arguing.
Inside the lid, someone had engraved a message in neat, narrow letters: Time is not everything. Courage, wanderer!
Igor gave a short laugh. Some antique, probably. A strange one, but still just an old thing dropped in the grass.
Then he pressed the button on the side.
The park vanished.
The world lurched hard enough to steal his breath. The trees blurred into streaks of green and gold. The ground seemed to drop away beneath him, and for one sickening second he felt as if he were falling through a tunnel of light and static.
When it stopped, Igor was standing in the middle of a cobbled square he had never seen before.
He turned in a slow circle. No cars. No traffic lights. No glass fronts or bike racks. Only narrow streets, crooked buildings with faded shutters, horse-drawn carriages rattling over the stones, and people in coats, caps, and long dresses who stared at him as if he had fallen out of the sky.
His phone was dead. Completely dead. The screen stayed black no matter how many times he tapped it. His own watch, the one on his wrist, had gone mad too. 2:92 p.m. blinked back at him in pale digits.
That was the first moment Igor understood he was not in the park anymore.
The second came when he noticed how the people were looking at him. Not just confused. Alarmed.
He backed away from the square and into a narrow street between two stone buildings, trying to think, trying not to panic. His grip tightened around the pocket watch. It was still warm, almost pulsing in his hand.
Then he heard footsteps rushing over the cobbles behind him.
A voice hissed, close and sharp: “It’s him. He has the watch.”
Igor spun around. Someone was coming around the corner.
His heart slammed against his ribs. He looked down at the watch, turned the face in his palm, and froze.
A voice came from behind him, quiet and dangerous. “Don’t.”
Igor went still.
“If you want to live,” the voice said, “you’ll keep your hands off the crown.”