I and the Witch of Time Who Seeks the Past

The Chronomantic Clock and the Witch of Time (Volume 1)

The Prophetic Dream

I dreamed of an old manor.

The windows were veiled in dust, vines crawling up their frames. The path before me was half-hidden by weeds, and the gates that once guarded the place were now rusted shut.

And yet, the manor wasn’t lifeless. Rabbits scurried in the courtyard, calling to their young. A new sapling pushed up beside deadwood. When the breeze passed through, it carried a breath of life into the fresh buds clinging to the old walls. Flowers would bloom again—the cycle of nature unbroken.

The manor wasn’t ancient. It was waiting.

When winter came, snow blanketed the ground, soft and heavy. I pushed open the gate, trudging into the silence. Golden decorations gleamed as if untouched by time. Statues lined the hall, iron-clad guardians with swords at their sides and stern faces frozen in stone.

At the end of the corridor, a colossal marble door loomed, its surface carved with a cross. It radiated mystery, like the threshold to an abyss.

I pushed it open.

Darkness swallowed me whole—vast, still, silent as death.

Then, from above, a faint beam of light broke through, falling upon a massive clock at the chamber’s center. Strange symbols covered its surface, each one stirring unease the longer I looked.

The moment the light touched it, the clock began to move.

Tick. Tock.

When the hands struck midnight, a black robe drifted down from the air.

Its hem brushed the floor, only to whip forward as though caught by an invisible wind. At last it settled, slowly, heavily. And from within—

A girl appeared.

She hovered in the air, adjusting the clasp of her robe. Her hair, black as ink, fell to her waist. Her eyes, just as dark, locked on me. Her robe was the color of night, yet her skin shone pale, almost radiant.

And then she spoke.

“You’ve finally arrived.”