AN INTROVERT TEEN WHO WANTS TO TIME TRAVEL

Episode 1: The Watch That Ticked Too Loud Elliot Hayes had always preferred silence. The low hum of the school hallways, the murmurs of passing conversations, even the rhythmic tapping of his fingers against his notebook—those were sounds he could control. But the world was loud, unpredictable, and worst of all, it expected things from him. That was why he found himself in Holloway Antiques on a rainy Tuesday afternoon instead of at the school pep rally like everyone else. The shop smelled like dust and forgotten time, an escape from the real world, just the way he liked it. He trailed his fingers along the rows of old books, their cracked spines whispering untold stories. A globe with peeling edges sat in the corner, its map outdated by at least a century. He liked places like this—places stuck in time. Then he saw it. A small, brass pocket watch rested inside a glass case, its surface worn smooth by age. Something about it felt… different. It ticked, but too loudly. The sound pulsed in his ears, in his chest, like a heartbeat. "Interested in that one?" The shopkeeper’s voice made Elliot jump. The man was old, his face lined with a thousand untold stories. His sharp gray eyes studied Elliot carefully, as if measuring something unseen. “I—uh, just looking,” Elliot muttered, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket. The old man smirked. “That watch has been here a long time. Belonged to a traveler, they say. A man who was never meant to stay in one place.” Elliot hesitated. He didn’t believe in fate or magic or stories like that. But something inside him whispered, Pick it up. So he did. The second his fingers brushed the metal, the world lurched. The shop blurred, the walls stretched, and a rush of cold air tore through him. He gasped, stumbling backward— And then everything was different. The smell of the shop was gone, replaced by something sharper—smoke, metal, and… horse manure? The air was thick with voices, but not the casual chatter of modern life. These were accents, fast and clipped, with words he barely recognized. Elliot turned, his pulse hammering. The antique store was gone. The shopkeeper was gone. Instead, he stood in the middle of a bustling cobblestone street, surrounded by men in long coats and women in wide skirts. Gas lamps flickered against the evening sky, carriages rattled past, and in the distance, the silhouette of a towering clock loomed above the city. He knew that clock. Big Ben. He was in London. But not his London. Elliot had just traveled through time. And he had no idea how to get back.