A ripple in the quantum silence. Did she step sideways or backwards in time? Elara never knew for certain. The echoes of the past, or was it the future, brushed against her consciousness like an unseen hand tracing forgotten paths upon forgotten skins.

"Time is an ocean," her mentor had once mused, "and we are but boats adrift on its currents. Sometimes these currents take us forward, sometimes backward, but rarely do they allow us to remain stationary."

In the shadow of a quasar—a magnificent, distant beacon of cosmic chaos—Elara received the message etched in fading light. A message from a time where the past and present intertwined like dancers in an eternal waltz.

The image—a phantom—flickered momentarily before her eyes. A silhouette of a person dressed in garments that seemed out of place; a traveler from an era when the stars sang their secrets to those who dared listen.

Was she real, this phantom? Or merely a construct of memory and desire, woven from the threads of a reality that once was, or perhaps might still be?