Lin Mo's fingers froze in midair.
On page 42 of the leather-bound notebook, a line written in black ink — *July 4, 2026. Clear skies. North District Archives receives three Qing-dynasty land deeds* — was dissolving before his eyes, the characters twisting and warping as though splashed with acid, until they vanished completely.
In their place, dark-red words seeped through the paper like fresh blood:
*Same date. 10:15 a.m. Apartment on Kangning Street, Xizhi District, New Taipei City. Victim: Chen Tuo, male, 26. Cause of death: locked-room murder.*
Lin Mo sucked in a sharp breath. His heart skipped a full beat. This was his grandfather's notebook — an unassailable wall of recorded history. It never lied. It never joked.
Fifteen minutes later, Lin Mo ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape at the Kangning Street apartment. His credentials as a consulting archivist, and a few familiar faces on the detective unit, got him past the line without argument.
The cramped studio reeked of blood and something faintly chemical. The victim, Chen Tuo, lay flat on his back in the center of the living room, a fruit knife buried in his chest, eyes wide open and frozen in terror. Strangest of all: every door and window in the apartment had been nailed shut from the inside with heavy wooden planks. A perfect locked room.
"What've we got?" Lin Mo forced his voice steady and walked toward Old Zhang, who was working through his notes.
Old Zhang looked up, puzzled. "Lin? What are you doing here?" He glanced around. "And what do you mean, what've we got? This is just an unlawful-entry call. Empty unit, somebody broke in."
Lin Mo stared at him. He pointed at the body on the floor — still warm, still bleeding. "Unlawful entry? There's a dead man right in front of you."
Old Zhang followed the gesture. His expression held no horror. Only the faint, pitying look a person gives someone who's lost the plot.
"Lin." Old Zhang patted his shoulder. "You been pulling all-nighters at the archives again? There's nothing on that floor." He pointed at the bare, empty boards. "Chen Tuo? Name rings a bell, actually — yeah, he was the Chen family's only kid. But that boy died ten years ago. Pile-up on the freeway, chain-reaction crash. He was sixteen. It was all over the news. You don't remember?"
"What did you just say?"
Lin Mo dropped to a crouch and pressed his fingertips against Chen Tuo's skin. Still warm. Slick with blood. Every sensation slammed into him — the smell, the texture, the weight of it.
But to Old Zhang, to every member of the forensic team moving in and out of the room, there was nothing there. Just a dusty stretch of empty floor.
The history had been rewritten. The entire city — the entire logic of the world — had already absorbed the new version: *Chen Tuo died ten years ago.* It had taken less than twenty minutes.
Lin Mo held himself together under Old Zhang's bewildered stare. He knew one thing with absolute certainty: the world could lie. Matter persists.
He started searching the body, fast and methodical. A historical rewrite always left traces. Wherever two timelines collided, there would be a causal collision anomaly — something that didn't fit.
Then his eyes locked onto the victim's jacket.
Chen Tuo was wearing a brand-new windbreaker. Lin Mo flipped back the inner collar tag. The text was small but unmistakable: *Spring 2026 Collection. Made in Taiwan.*
He turned to Old Zhang. His voice trembled, but every word came out clean and hard. "Old Zhang — if Chen Tuo died ten years ago, then whose body is wearing a 2026 jacket that only hit shelves this spring? One that fits him perfectly?"
Old Zhang's brow furrowed. He stared at Lin Mo's hand, hovering in the air, gripping nothing. He opened his mouth to respond.
Across the city, in some lightless corner, a darkroom glowed with an eerie red safelight. A pair of withered hands worked a pair of scissors with precise, unhurried strokes, cutting a photograph of a young boy — taken ten years ago — into tiny pieces. The fragments drifted down into a tray of developer solution and dissolved in a hiss of sharp white foam.