Chapter 1: The Roadblock
The jeep’s engine coughed, a sickly metal rattle that echoed off the pines crowding the narrow road. Vanja eased her foot off the clutch, letting the vehicle roll to a stop ten meters from the barricade. Her hands stayed on the wheel, pale and steady.
The barricade was a rusted skeleton of a thing, a metal beam wedged between two concrete blocks, half-sunk into the cracked earth. A single streetlamp buzzed overhead, its flickering light painting long, trembling shadows. One of those shadows moved.
He stepped into the jaundiced pool of light, rifle angled at her chest. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, his face all sharp, angry planes under a thatch of wheat-blond hair. His eyes were the blue of glacier ice, and they held no curiosity, only a flat, operational assessment. A Kosovar Albanian fighter. UÇK.
Vanja’s heart hammered, but not from fear. It was the dizzying, impossible punch of recognition. Burim Ramadani. The photograph in the 2026 archives had been grainy, black and white. It hadn’t captured the fierce, living hostility of him, or the way the cold air misted around his lips.
She rolled her window down manually, the crank protesting. The night air rushed in, carrying the scent of damp pine, diesel, and beneath it, the faint, acrid ghost of gunpowder.
“Documents.” His voice was low, Serbian fluent but accented with the hard edges of Albanian. He didn’t lower the rifle.
Vanja moved slowly, deliberately. She reached into the inner pocket of her leather jacket, her fingers brushing against the strange, cool metal of the ring she’d arrived with. She pulled out a Swiss passport and a laminated press card, extending them through the window.
He took them with his free hand, his eyes never leaving her face. The lamp flickered, casting jumps of light over her features: the thick wave of golden hair, the pale skin that she knew was flushing under his scrutiny.
“Vanja Richter,” he read aloud. “Journalist. Born Basel, 1974.” His gaze lifted from the photo to her, then back. The forgery was perfect. It had to be. “Swiss?”
“My father was German. My mother was Serbian,” she said, keeping her voice neutral, a clean, professional alto. She used the Belgrade dialect, pure and untainted.
His mouth tightened almost imperceptibly at the word ‘Serbian’. “What is a Swiss journalist with a Serbian mother doing on this road, at this hour?”
“Following a story,” she said, meeting his glacial stare. A faint, calculated smile touched her lips. “Aren’t you the story? The UÇK standing up for Kosovo?”
He ignored the bait. He studied her press card again, then her face, then the empty road behind her. His suspicion was a physical force. “There are no stories here. Only trouble. Go back to Pristina.”
“I can’t do that.” She let a sliver of frustration, of feminine insistence, color her tone. She leaned forward slightly, the movement accentuating the neckline of her sweater. “I’ve driven six hours. I have meetings tomorrow. In Gjakovë.”
His eyes flickered downward, then back to her eyes, a quick, involuntary track. A tiny crack in the armor. “No one meets in Gjakovë at night. Not unless they are looking for a war.”
“Perhaps I am,” Vanja said softly, holding his gaze.
For a long moment, there was only the buzz of the lamp and the distant call of a night bird. He lowered the rifle, finally, slinging it over his shoulder. He tossed her documents back onto her lap.
“Your papers say you are a journalist. Your car says you are a fool. This is not a scenic route.” He nodded at the jeep’s dented side, at the mud splattering the windows. “The Serbian patrols are dogs. They bite.”
“And the UÇK? Are you wolves?” she asked, tilting her head.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “We are what we need to be.” He stepped back from the window. “Move your vehicle. You block the road.”
It was a dismissal. Her mind raced. This was the first contact, the thread she had to grasp. Letting him walk away was not an option. History was a avalanche already in motion; she needed a handhold, this handhold, to try to divert it.
She opened the car door and stepped out. The cold bit through her jeans. He turned, instantly alert, his hand back on the rifle strap. She raised her empty hands, a placating gesture.
“Please. It’s dark. The road is… I don’t know this road.” She injected a tremor into her voice, the vulnerable woman out of her depth. It wasn’t entirely an act. The enormity of where she was, when she was, threatened to crash over her. “Is there a village nearby? Somewhere I could wait for daylight?”
He studied her, his expression unreadable. The flickering light hollowed his cheeks. He was so young, she realized with a sudden ache. Younger than her, in this timeline. Carrying a weight that hadn’t yet broken him.
“There is a house. Back that way,” he said finally, jerking his thumb behind the barricade. “It is not a hotel.”
“I don’t need a hotel. I just need not to be on the road.” She hugged herself, a shiver that wasn’t feigned. “My mother… she was from Kosovo. She told me stories. She made me promise to see it.”
It was a risk, blending her cover story with a fragment of emotional truth. She saw the conflict in his eyes. Hatred for the Serbs warring with a deeply ingrained cultural code of hospitality, especially toward a woman alone.
“Get back in,” he said, the words gritted out. “I will take you to the house. You will stay until first light. Then you will leave. Your meetings can wait for the sun.”
Vanja nodded, meekly. “Thank you.” She climbed back into the jeep, her movements slightly clumsy with relief and cold.
He didn’t get in with her. Instead, he signaled to another shadow in the trees. A younger fighter emerged, taking his place at the barricade. Burim went to a battered, mud-caked Opel sedan parked in the darkness, its lights off. He got in, started the engine with a roar, and pulled around her jeep, leading the way.
She followed, the twin red taillights of his car her only guides. The pine branches whipped against her windshield. The house, when they reached it, was a dark shape against the hills, more of a shepherd’s hut than a home. He pulled up and got out.
“Here,” he said, as she stepped out again. He didn’t offer to help with her bag. “There is a wood stove. Water in the pump outside. No electricity.”
“It’s perfect,” she whispered, looking past him at the looming outline of the mountains. This was it. The first step into the labyrinth.
He stood, uncertain for a moment, as if he’d discharged his duty and now wished to vanish. “Why are you really here, Vanja Richter?” The question came out rough, stripped of its earlier official tone.
She turned to face him, the mountain wind tangling her hair. The moon had broken through the clouds, silvering his blond hair and her own. For a second, they were just two people in a cold, silent place.
“To see the truth,” she said. And then, because she was a time traveler playing a part, because she needed an anchor in this relentless past, she added, “And to tell it.”
He shook his head, a short, dismissive motion. “The truth here gets people killed.” He turned toward his car.
“Burim,” she said.
He froze. Turned back slowly. She hadn’t used his name before. He hadn’t given it.
She shrugged, a delicate lift of her shoulders. “The boy at the checkpoint. He said it when you walked away.”
The lie slid smoothly from her lips. He searched her face, the suspicion back, deeper now, mixed with something else—a dawning, reluctant fascination. He gave a sharp, final nod.
“Lock the door. The sound of a engine does not tell you if it is friend or foe. Only the knock on the door does.”
He left her then, his car disappearing back down the track, its sound swallowed by the night. Vanja stood alone, the weight of the ring heavy on its chain under her clothes, the secret documents sewn into her bag’s lining. She had crossed the checkpoint. She had met him. The past was no longer a record in an archive.
It was the chill on her skin, the ache in her bones, and the faint, lingering trace of diesel and resolve left in the air where his car had been. The game was on. And every move, every word, every calculated flutter of her eyelashes, was a step toward stopping the avalanche, or being buried by it.
And every move, every word, every calculated flutter of her eyelashes, was a step toward stopping the avalanche, or being buried by it.
The hut was a tomb of cold shadows. Vanja lit the kerosene lamp she found on a rough-hewn table, its yellow flame pushing back the darkness just enough to reveal peeling walls and a dirt floor swept clean. She pumped water at the rusty outdoor handle, the screech of metal echoing in the vast silence, and filled a chipped enamel basin. The water was so cold it burned her skin.
She was unpacking her sleeping bag onto a narrow cot when the sound of an engine cut through the night again. It wasn’t the distant rumble of a patrol. It was close, guttural, and stopping outside.
The door flew open before she could move.
Burim filled the frame, backlit by his car’s headlights, his silhouette sharp and angry. He strode inside, kicking the door shut behind him. The lamp flame shuddered.
“You lied.” The words were a low snarl.
“About what?” Vanja kept her voice calm, placing her folded sweater slowly on the cot. Her heart was a trapped bird against her ribs.
“Your car. The plates are Serbian. Not Swiss. Not German. Serbian.” He took a step forward. The cozy, fragile space of the hut evaporated, replaced by a dangerous, vibrating cage. “Who are you? A spy for Belgrade? A little bird sent to sing for the army?”
“It’s a rented car, from Pristina. Of course it has local plates.” She tried a smile, but it felt brittle. “Would a Swiss plate be less conspicuous on this road?”
He was on her in two long strides. His hands gripped her shoulders, spinning her around, and he slammed her back against the cold, rough wall. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Splinters bit through her jacket. The lamp light danced wildly in her vision.
“Who do you work for?” His face was inches from hers, his breath hot, his eyes scanning hers for a fracture. One hand released her shoulder, patting down the sides of her torso, her ribs, under her arms—a rough, professional search for a wire, a transmitter, a weapon.
His movements were efficient, brutal. But then his hands reached her hips, mapping the curve from waist to thigh through the denim. The clinical motion faltered. His palms pressed flat, his fingers splayed, holding her there against the wall. The pressure changed. The search became an assessment of a different kind. Heat bloomed under his touch, a treacherous signal her body sent despite the terror.
His gaze, locked on hers, fractured. The pure, clean hatred blurred with something raw and startled. He felt it too. This impossible, magnetic pull.
Vanja saw the confusion warp his features. She knew this was the pivot. The moment to become a victim would fail. The moment to seduce would be too obvious. She needed the truth, or a piece of it, to hang in the air between them.
She let her body go slack against the wall, not resisting, offering no threat. She turned her face slightly, her lips close to the stubbled line of his jaw. She whispered, the words exhaled into the charged space between them, in the fluent, unaccented Albanian of the mountains.
“I’m not your enemy.”
He froze. Utterly still. The only sound was their mingled, ragged breathing and the distant cough of the wind.
His head turned slowly. His eyes, wide now with pure, unadulterated shock, searched hers. The Albanian had been perfect. Better than perfect. It was the dialect of his village, the cadence of his mother.
Suspicion and desire warred in his gaze, a visible, violent storm. His grip on her hips tightened, almost painfully, then loosened, as if his hands were acting against his will. He didn’t push away. He didn’t step back. He held her there, pinned between the unforgiving wall and the heat of his body, trapped in the glaring, inconvenient truth of a connection that defied all reason.
The knife-edge of the moment stretched, infinitely thin.
The knife-edge of the moment stretched, infinitely thin.
His breath hitched. The Albanian words hung between them, a sacred profanity. His grip on her hips shifted from violence to possession. The line vanished.
He crushed his mouth to hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim, an attack, a furious answer to a question he couldn’t even form. His lips were hard, demanding. Vanja met the force with a gasp, her own mouth opening under the assault. The taste of him was black coffee, tobacco, and the copper tang of a long night’s watch. She kissed him back, not in submission, but in a fierce, equal collision. Her hands came up, tangling in the coarse wool of his sweater, dragging him closer.
He growled into her mouth, the sound vibrating through her. One hand left her hip, cupped the back of her head, fingers threading through her thick hair, holding her still for his tongue. The other hand dropped, grabbing a handful of her ass through her jeans, grinding her pelvis against the hardening ridge in his own pants. The rough wall scraped against her shoulder blades. The cold of the hut was gone, burned away by the furnace of their bodies.
“You fucking liar,” he muttered against her lips, but his voice was ragged, his resolve shattered. He bit her lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make her moan. “Witch.”
He yanked her away from the wall, spinning her around. The table was behind her, the kerosene lamp flickering. He shoved her backward, her lower back hitting the rough wood. He didn’t pause. His hands went to the buckle of her belt, fumbling with the leather. She reached for his, her fingers clumsy, undoing the button of his fatigues, the zip. The sound was obscenely loud.
He pushed her jeans and underwear down her thighs in one rough motion. The cold air hit her skin, then the heat of his calloused palm. He didn’t tease. His fingers slid through her folds, finding her wet, impossibly ready. He let out a choked curse in Albanian, his forehead dropping to her shoulder.
“See what you do?” he snarled, pushing two fingers inside her. She cried out, arching off the table, her hips meeting the thrust. He worked her with a brutal, efficient rhythm, his thumb circling her clit. It was too much, too rough, a punishment and a promise. Pleasure, sharp and electric, coiled low in her belly.
“Burim,” she gasped, her own hands shoving his pants down over his hips. He sprang free, thick and heavy in her hand. She stroked him, feeling him pulse, a vein throbbing under her thumb. He was all hard, smooth heat.
He knocked her hand away. He grabbed her under the thighs, hoisting her up onto the edge of the table. The lamp rocked. He stepped between her spread legs, his eyes locking on hers. There was no tenderness there, only a blazing, conflicted hunger.
He drove into her in one deep, splitting stroke.
Vanja’s head snapped back. A sharp cry tore from her throat, swallowed by the dank air of the hut. He filled her completely, a stretch that was almost pain, then pure, shocking sensation. He didn’t move for a second, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of holding still. His eyes were wide, wild, staring down at where they were joined.
Then he fucked her.
It was pure, raw animal physics. He pulled back and slammed home, again and again, the table scraping across the dirt floor with every thrust. His hands gripped her thighs, holding her open, his fingers leaving marks. There was no rhythm but need, no sound but skin slapping against skin, their ragged panting, and the creaking protest of the old wood.
“Who are you?” he grunted, his voice strained, each word punctuated by a driving plunge.
She couldn’t answer. Her world had narrowed to the slam of his body into hers, the delicious, building friction, the sight of his face, clenched in agonized pleasure. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper. She met every thrust, rolling her hips, taking him, claiming him just as he claimed her.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his pace becoming frantic, desperate. His control was gone, incinerated.
The coil inside her snapped. Her orgasm ripped through her, violent and blinding. She clenched around him, a pulsing vise, her scream muffled against his shoulder as she bit the wool of his sweater. The sensation tipped him over the edge. With a raw, broken shout, he buried himself deep and came, his release hot and shuddering inside her. He collapsed against her, his weight pressing her into the table, his face buried in her neck. They stayed like that, joined, dripping, gasping for air in the settling dust.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The smell of sex and kerosene. The chill on their sweat-slicked skin. The insane reality of what had just happened.
He was the first to move. He pulled out of her, a slow, wet separation. He didn’t look at her. He turned away, pulling his pants up, buckling his belt with fumbling fingers. His back was tense, a wall of regret and confusion.
Vanja slid off the table, her legs unsteady. She righted her clothes, the mundane act surreal. She pumped water, washed herself with cold efficiency, the physical clarity sharpening her mind. The act was done. The bridge, however treacherous, was crossed. Now she had to walk on it.
She lit a cigarette from her pack on the cot, the match flaring. She offered him one. He finally turned, took it, let her light it. They smoked in silence, the smoke curling up to the dark ceiling beams.
“I am from the future,” she said. Her voice was quiet, hoarse from screaming, utterly calm.
He stared at her, the cigarette frozen halfway to his lips. He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You are mad.”
“I was born in 1993. In your time, I am a two-year-old child somewhere. In my time, I am a historian. Thirty-two years old. The year was 2026.” She drew on her cigarette, her golden-green eyes steady on his. “I came here through a device. A ring. To stop the war. To stop the crimes that haven’t happened yet.”
He just stared, the laughter gone, replaced by a creeping, ice-cold dread. “Impossible.”
“The Drenica offensive will begin in full force in February. The Jashari family will be massacred in March. Prekaz. You know the place. You will be there.” She spoke with the flat, terrible certainty of a weather report. “The Serb commanders, the ones who give the orders—Mladić’s tactics from Bosnia are being adapted here. The UCK will retaliate. The Gornje Obrinje massacre. The kidnapping of the Serbian bus drivers near Glušane. It escalates. It becomes a factory of ghosts.”
His face had drained of color. “These are plans. Rumors. Anyone could guess—”
“Your commander, Ahmeti, he has a scar on his left thigh from a mortar fragment in ‘95. He doesn’t like anyone to know it still pains him. You have a sister, Liridona. She is studying medicine in Tirana. You haven’t seen her in a year. You send her money you get from your family, pretending it’s from a job in Pristina. Your father’s name is Isuf. He calls you his ‘little wolf.’ He doesn’t know you have that nickname tattooed on your ribs.”
Burim’s cigarette fell from his fingers, landing in the dirt. He didn’t move to crush it. He looked like a man who had been shot in the chest but hadn’t yet felt the pain.
“How?” The word was a whisper.
She reached into her sweater, pulling the chain over her head. The ring was plain, dark metal, warm from her skin. She held it out. “This. I don’t understand the physics. I just know it worked. I have documents. Photocopies of news articles from my time. Lists of names. Mass grave locations. Timeline of events. It’s all in my bag. Sewn into the lining.”
She went to the cot, pulled out a small knife, and slit the lining of her backpack. She pulled out a thick, oilcloth-wrapped packet. She handed it to him.
He took it as if it were a live grenade. He unwrapped it, his large hands surprisingly gentle. He leafed through the pages. Photographs of ruins that didn’t yet exist. Maps with markings. Dry, academic prose detailing atrocities with clinical precision. His eyes scanned a page, then widened. He looked at her, then back at the paper.
“This… this is the operation plan for my unit. For next month. This is real. This is the real one.” He sank onto a rickety stool, the papers trembling in his hands. “Only three people have seen this.”
“In my time, it’s in a war crimes tribunal archive,” she said softly. “Page 4,342. Exhibit D-17.”
The silence that followed was total. The weight of the impossible settled on him, bowing his shoulders. He looked from the papers to her face, searching for madness, for deceit. He found only a grim, weary resolve. And the haunting, familiar shape of her eyes in the lamplight.
“Why?” he asked, his voice cracked. “Why come here? Why tell me?”
“Because in every account, every story that survived, you were different. You were… a point of divergence. You hesitated at a key moment. You tried to stop something. You failed. And it broke you.” She knelt in front of him, looking up. “I am here to make sure you succeed. I need your help. I can’t do this alone.”
He reached out, his fingers tracing the line of her jaw, a touch so different from before. It was a question. A verification of solid flesh.
“You are real.”
“I am.”
“And all this… this death. It is real? It will happen?”
“Unless we change it.”
He looked around the hovel, at the proof of a catastrophic future spread on his knees. He looked at the woman from tomorrow, who had walked out of a nightmare to warn him, whose body still held the scent of him. The pride, the discipline, the hatred—it all receded, overwhelmed by a tidal wave of a purpose so vast it made his previous war seem like a child’s fight.
He believed her.
He carefully rewrapped the documents. He stood, pulling her up with him. “You cannot stay here.”
“I know.”
“Come.” He slung his rifle, picked up her bag. He took her hand. His palm was rough, his grip certain. He led her out of the hut, into the pure, cold night. The mountains were dark silhouettes against a sky beginning to bleed grey at the edges. Dawn was coming.
He didn’t take her to his Opel. He led her up a footpath behind the hut, steep and rocky. They climbed in silence for twenty minutes, until the path leveled out onto a ridge. Below, the valley was shrouded in mist.
And there, on the crest of the hill, stood a house. A big, old, stone family house, with multiple levels and a wide porch. Lights glowed warmly in several windows. Smoke curled from a central chimney. It was a fortress of order and life, overlooking the sleeping, troubled land.
“My home,” he said, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn’t name. He looked at her, their joined hands between them. “My family is inside. They will have questions.”
“I have answers,” Vanja said.
Together, they walked toward the lights.