The Covenant Of Timeless Mysteries

The past is a ribbon, albeit very long, and because it leads to the future, it cannot simply cease existence. It is an imperceptible reality, but it is still there.

The future, however, is like a tapestry unraveling from the end. It cannot unravel from where it starts, only from where it ends.

"Was that it!? Why did I waste fifteen days reading this crap? I disposed of the valuable time I could have spent reading a book with at least a half-decent ending." 

Hoku closed the cover of the thick book he spent many days reading and gazed at the surface with resentment. 

Despite his understanding of the scenarios, he despised that the story ended with the protagonist choosing to shatter his soul into terminal fragments.

'Yet somehow I wish there was more to the story,' he thought.

Hoku slumped deep into a wooden chair, with a bored expression.

He grazed a finger along the white crease on the book's spine. 

Jiang Hao, his current caretaker, who he had needed since he was only seventeen, worked as a history professor at an unpopular university. 

Hoku's first meeting with family apart from his parents was ill-fated. 

His uncle—the older brother of his father, first shook hands with Hoku after he had awakened from a two-day coma inside a hospital room. 

The only details that burdened his identity were an unidentifiable hospital uniform, a lanyard with a broken clip, and memory loss, despite receiving a report that he hadn't suffered brain damage.

Fortunately, his current situation wasn't as abnormal. The room he resided in was a gaudy vast room of books. 

The walls shelved mostly antique books, an inevitable collector's interest when one's life revolves around teaching history.

Some of them were newer, but not too recent. 

Further down the stacks were books written by authors that were old, but still alive.

Those were the stories that fascinated him most.

Hoku sighed and stood from his chair, then dragged it across the room to the edge of the shelf, and pushed down on the backrest to balance himself on top of the chair. 

There was a gap in the high-middle shelf precisely the same width as the book in his hand. 

He pushed the book back into place. 

Hoku had never shared affection for the pieces of history his uncle received, as gifts from either his fond female colleagues or the online websites he spent his evenings scrolling through rather than marking his students' papers.

Hoku peers at the top shelf as he steps down from the chair. 

Suddenly, a distinct book with a stark white spine and no dust cover, or branded title, seized his attention. 

He stared for a moment at the only white book on a shelf of books with eroding spines, before pulling it from its place on the shelf.

Hoku brushed his thumb over the pages and studied the strange blank cover. 

Upon opening the book, the pages snap apart as if they had never been opened during the presumably long period it had been published. 

 No dedications, just a vacant page without an author's signature. 

The next page is the same. 

Nothing. 

As well as the third page seemingly as though any title of ownership were pulled into a white pool. 

Hoku flips through the pages quicker, every other page more puzzling than the last.

Somewhere amidst the pages, he discovers an illustration without an entry. 

This book is odd. 

The page after it also had a picture with no text. 

He turned the page back and forth as though he had expected an answer to appear. 

The image on the twenty-third page was a neatly detailed drawing of what appeared to be the inside of an outdated house. 

The interior was vast, and walls were heaped with messy bookcases that contained only clutter. 

The drawing had a linear perspective, and a few candle sticks secured on the side walls were shaded darker than the ones on the main wall. 

The next page had an atmospheric perspective of the center wall. 

There was a book on the shelf that wasn't tinted like the other ones around it. 

The book bore a white spine, almost as if it were preserving itself from the damage of time. 

Hoku flipped through the pages to see if there were any more peculiar illustrations, it oddly intrigued him. 

However, they were also blank.

'Is it supposed to be symbolic? Like an art piece?' He pondered, furrowing his eyebrows.

He peeked again at the filled pages, though nothing looked out of place. 

Although he noticed upon second glance that a rather large painting of a key was propped against one of the bookshelves, and the matrix of the painting was absent.

Hoku supposed that maybe it was an unfinished painting. 

Losing interest, he rested it on the edge of the shelf, not feeling the need to put it back right away. 

Unbeknownst to him, there wasn't enough space on the edge to balance the book, and it fell to the floor the instant he let go of it. 

Hoku briefly examined the book on the floor. 

His uncle granted him access to almost every book in the room, but set distinct limits on the ones at the top.

 Figuring he could hide it in the desk, he bent down to pick it up, but something was there that he hadn't noticed while flipping through the pages. 

Peeking from the top, was a corner of a page, its shade much whiter than the other pages. 

Hoku instinctively pulled the page from where it was seemingly hidden, confirming that it was not content from the book itself, but rather a poorly folded envelope that appeared to have been in the book sooner than when it was 'published'. 

'Maybe a birthday card? Is this a late gift?'

Hoku turned the envelope to the back, and neat text composed a short message. 

"Do not amend their mistakes, pertain to the present."

He scrunched his eyebrows in puzzlement and picked at the yellow wax seal on the other side. 

Peeling it off came easier than understanding what had been written inside of the paper. 

A series of numbers, separated by a degree symbol, and apostrophes were written at the end of the page, normally where someone would address themself after a letter.

There were also letters written in the array of digits, an N and an E, followed by a short message above them.

"This is a guide for the one without a sequence.

The greatest navigator. See you soon 'Hoku' "

'Another strange entry from a mysterious correspondent,' he thought, tilting his head.

Rule 3

Sending written letters to the past will not change the future. Instead, the recipient will lose memories of the letter. If the correspondent personally delivered the letter... both parties are doomed.

Rule 4

Never go near a paradox. There are three kinds, all of which you should avoid.

Nonetheless, it is possible to escape some of them. The regular paradox is a single place where time has warped into a cage of recurring past. Rabbit holes are multiple parallel time frames.

Think of it as an addition to the same concept as a regular paradox, except multiply your chances of escaping by how many times you will be teleported to a different outcome of the past. Someone has yet to free themselves from an upside-down frame.

A reversed paradox does not repeat itself, nor can it alter an environment. There's no way of knowing you're inside until it is too late.

To be continued...