Eleven seconds. It was a gap in the universe, a tiny, shimmering flaw in the weave of time, and it had anchored itself to a specific spot: the Tholos of Athena Pronaia.
She found the epicenter between the third and fourth standing columns. The air tasted of ozone and hot copper. Lena knelt, brushing fallen olive leaves aside, and placed a calibration disc onto the bedrock. The disc's surface shimmered, not reflecting the rain, but reflecting something else: a memory of sunlight. delphi 2021.10b
The rain over Delphi had turned the ancient stones into mirrors. Each slick surface reflected a sky the color of bruised plums. Lena pulled the hood of her waterproof jacket tighter, the nylon rasping against her ears. She wasn't a tourist. She wasn't an archaeologist. She was a chronometric auditor for the Temporal Integrity Commission, and according to her instruments, the ides of October in the year 2021 was eleven seconds off. Eleven seconds