Before I could formulate a response to this breathtaking logical fallacy, the bell above the door chimed.

  It was a single, clear note—the kind of sound that should have been unremarkable, the sort of mechanical jingle that accompanied every entrance and exit in establishments like this one. But this time, it seemed to slice through the café's dull murmur like a blade through silk, leaving a silence in its wake that had nothing to do with actual quiet and everything to do with the sudden, absolute focus of every sense I possessed.

  And then came the footsteps.

  Not the clatter of youth, all careless energy and misplaced confidence. Not the shuffle of age, weighted with years and weariness. This was a cadence of quiet authority—each step a deliberate press against the earth, as if the ground itself should feel honoured to bear his weight. The sound of a man who had never needed to hurry because the world had always waited for him.

  And then—the scent.

  It washed over me like a wave from another world, a fragrance I had no name for, one that bypassed memory entirely and went straight to the soul. It was the crisp, clean air at the edge of the world, where the atmosphere thins and the sky darkens to the colour of forever. It was the scent of pine needles warmed by a sun that saw all and judged nothing. It was cold starlight on untouched snow, and beneath it all, a wild, musky hint of frosted earth—the smell of a place so high and pure that mortal lungs could not draw breath there for long.

  It was a scent that summoned butterflies in my stomach—not the nervous flutter of anticipation, but something deeper. A recognition so profound it felt like homecoming. Like a million spectral wings kissing a field of forgotten flowers, rousing them to bloom after centuries of sleep.

  In that moment, the world stopped.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Not figuratively. Not poetically. It stopped—or at least, it stopped for me.

  Apple's chatter died mid-syllable, her lips frozen somewhere between "numbers" and "game" in a silent O of surprise. The cup she had been raising hovered an inch above the table—a tiny ceramic satellite arrested in its orbit—and I could see, with the impossible clarity of this frozen moment, a single droplet of coffee suspended beneath it like an amber teardrop caught by time itself.

  But I knew, somewhere in the rational part of my mind that was rapidly drowning beneath the flood of sensation, that the coffee was still falling. That Apple was still speaking. That the world continued its indifferent spin, oblivious to the cataclysm unfolding in my chest.

  It was I who had stepped out of its current.

  The clatter of cups from the counter. The hiss of the espresso machine. The dull murmur of a dozen conversations. The scrape of chairs against worn wooden floors. The tinny jazz leaking from the overhead speakers—all of it dissolved into a vacuum that existed only inside my skull. The world hadn't silenced itself. My soul had simply stopped listening.

  Even the light seemed to pause—but it hadn't, not really. Dust motes still drifted through the evening sunbeams; I could see them moving if I focused, tiny golden galaxies spiralling in their slow, eternal dance. The second hand on the clock behind the counter hadn't stopped between four and five. I had.

  I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't blink.

  Every cell in my body had become a listening post, attuned to something my mortal senses couldn't yet perceive but my immortal soul already recognized. Time hadn't stopped for the universe. It had stopped for me—suspended, held, waiting for the moment when the source of this cataclysm would finally come into view.

  And in that suspension, the present collapsed.

  The café walls dissolved like morning frost under a rising sun. The scent of coffee became something else—the crisp, impossibly pure air of Mount Caelestis-Sol, where the snow never melted and the stars never set. The distant hum of traffic became the whisper of wind through eternal snow, carrying with it the ghosts of voices I had not heard in centuries. I was no longer in the city, no longer in this century, no longer in this body that had known so many centuries of waiting.

  I was flung backward—not by force, but by the sheer gravity of recognition. The past and present converged, and I was caught in the space between, tumbling through the years until I landed, breathless and barefoot, at the beginning of it all.