August 11, 1979. Knebworth Park. 9:42 p.m. GMT.

Lyra Chen stood at the edge of the crowd, her coat flickering between violet and black, her breath syncing with the pulse of the amplifiers. The breach had dropped her here—not gently, not randomly, but with precision. The sky above was a dome of sound. The stage lights bent like equations. The crowd moved like a waveform.

She was supposed to be here. That was the terrifying part.

The air was thick with sweat, static, and something else—something recursive. The people around her were real. Too real. A woman with a 2020 wristwatch. A man with a scar she recognized from a future riot. A child who looked like her mother. The breach was folding time again, rehearsing the past with actors from the wrong decade.

She moved slowly through the crowd. Her boots crunched on discarded cups and torn denim. The music was loud, but not deafening. It was layered—like memory. The first verse of a song began, soft and unexpected, not part of the setlist.

“She walks like velvet through the morning haze / Eyes like lanterns in a midnight maze…”

It wasn’t coming from the stage. It was coming from the speakers behind it. A test track. A rehearsal. A memory.

The crowd surged. A fight broke out near the front—two men arguing in languages that didn’t belong. One wore a coat stitched with symbols from Book Zero. Another had Mikhail Orlov’s posture, but he was too young. Or too old. Lyra ducked as a bottle flew past her head. No one noticed her. She was invisible. Or rehearsed.

She slipped behind the stage. The path was narrow, lined with cables and incense. A groupie offered her a cigarette laced with something that shimmered. A stagehand nodded at her like he’d seen her before. A swami sat cross-legged near the generator, his eyes closed, his mouth moving silently. He opened one eye and said, “The flower folds the hour. But the hour is not yours.”

She kept walking.

Backstage was a maze of velvet and mirrors. The walls reflected her in fragments—one version smiling, another bleeding, another whispering equations. She passed a dressing room where a man leaned back in a chair, drinking from a bottle. His hair was curly. Blonde. His shirt was patterned like a waveform. He looked at her and smiled.

“You’re late,” he said. “But you’re not wrong.”

He gestured to a reel-to-reel player. Two spools spun slowly. He pressed play.

The second verse began:

“We danced on rooftops made of silver rain / Her voice a hymn, my heart a weather vane…”

The chorus followed, muffled by the sound of people leaving the concert:

“Oh, velvet horizon, take me slow / Where the stars lean down and the warm winds blow…”

Lyra listened. She said, “It’s beautiful.”

He smiled again. “It’s not finished. But it’s yours.” He signed the tape. “I’ve got another version at the studio.”

He handed it to her. The tape glowed faintly. The stage lights flickered. A crack opened in the floor between them—just a hairline fracture, but it pulsed like a heartbeat.

She reached for the tape. The breach reached back.

And something happened.

She was still backstage. But the room had changed. The mirrors were gone. The velvet was darker. The air smelled like ozone and regret. The man was gone. The tape was in her hand, but it felt heavier. She looked down. The label had changed. It now read: “Echo Draft 2.0 – 1980 / Not For Broadcast.”

She walked through the corridor. The walls whispered. Equations bloomed in the shadows. She passed a door marked “STAGE MATERIAL.” It was ajar. Inside, cables twisted like vines. A mannequin stood in the corner, wearing a coat identical to hers. Its face was blank. Its hands were bleeding ink.

She turned away.

Outside, the crowd was dispersing. But some were frozen. Not physically—temporally. A man stood mid-step, his foot hovering above the ground. A woman laughed in reverse. A child blinked and aged ten years. The breach was rehearsing again. But this time, it was improvising.

Lyra walked past them. No one stopped her. She was part of the scene. Or the script.

She reached the edge of the field. The grass was scorched in a perfect circle. In the center stood the swami. He held a mirror. It reflected the sky. Not the stars. The equations.

He said, “You are the scar. You are the flower. You are the breach.”

She said, “I know.”

He handed her the mirror. It was warm. It whispered.

She looked into it. Her reflection blinked. Then turned away.

She hadn’t moved.