On the remote island of Lanzarote, where the Atlantic waves crash against ancient volcanic cliffs, a strange phenomenon had begun to unfold. The locals, long accustomed to the island’s fierce beauty, began to notice subtle changes. The sun would rise in the wrong direction, birds would fly backward, and the waves seemed to recede into the ocean only to crash against the shore in reverse.
It all began one evening when Elena, a marine biologist, returned to Lanzarote after years of studying abroad. She had always been drawn to the island, not just for its stark landscapes but for the stories her grandmother told of a hidden power buried deep within its volcanic heart.
Elena had come back with the intention of studying the rare marine life around the island, but what she found was far more extraordinary. As she walked the black sand beaches, collecting samples and jotting down notes, she stumbled upon something bizarre—a pocket watch half-buried in the sand, its hands spinning wildly in both directions.
Intrigued and a little unnerved, Elena took the watch back to her small, rustic house in the town of Yaiza. That night, she dreamt of an ancient civilization that had once thrived on the island, a people who had harnessed the island's volcanic energy to manipulate time. In her dream, the island was alive with towering spires of obsidian, and the air buzzed with the hum of strange machines, fueled by the power of the volcanoes.
When she woke up, the watch lay still on her nightstand, its hands frozen at midnight.
Elena’s curiosity was piqued, and she sought out her grandmother, Abuela Rosa, a woman who was known for her deep connection to the island’s history. Abuela Rosa listened to Elena's tale with a knowing look in her eyes. She told her that the watch was a relic of "Los Perdidos del Tiempo," the Lost Ones of Time—a group of ancient islanders who had discovered how to bend time to their will. According to legend, they had hidden their knowledge deep within the Timanfaya National Park, a place where the earth still boiled beneath the surface.
But their power came at a cost. The more they tampered with time, the more they fractured it. In the end, the island itself became unstable, a place where past, present, and future intertwined in a chaotic dance.
Elena, driven by her scientific curiosity and a deep sense of adventure, decided to explore the heart of Timanfaya. Armed with the strange watch and her grandmother's warnings, she ventured into the park, where the ground smoked and the air shimmered with heat. As she walked deeper into the park, the world around her began to blur. The black volcanic rocks seemed to twist and melt, reforming into shapes from different eras—a village from the past, a futuristic city, and everything in between.
At the center of it all, she found a cave, its entrance marked by ancient symbols. Inside, the air was thick with energy, and at the far end, she discovered a massive stone disk, carved with intricate designs and glowing faintly. The watch in her hand began to hum, its hands once again spinning in all directions.
Elena realized that this was the heart of the island’s temporal disturbance. The Lost Ones had created this device to control time, but it had spiraled out of their control, trapping Lanzarote in a loop where time was no longer linear.
Determined to restore balance, Elena studied the device, using her knowledge of science and the island's history to decipher the ancient mechanisms. After hours of trial and error, she found a way to reset the disk, aligning its symbols with those on the watch.
As she did so, the cave began to tremble, and a blinding light filled the space. Elena felt herself being pulled in all directions, as if she were being stretched across time itself. Then, with a final surge of energy, everything went still.
When she opened her eyes, Elena found herself back on the beach where she had first found the watch. The sun was rising in the east, the birds were flying in formation, and the waves were gently lapping against the shore. The watch in her hand was silent, its hands finally at rest.
Lanzarote had been restored. The strange temporal disturbances had ceased, and the island was once again anchored in the present. But Elena knew that the secrets of the Lost Ones of Time would always remain buried beneath the volcanic soil, waiting for another curious soul to uncover them.
As she walked back to her village, Elena couldn't help but feel a deep connection to the island—an island that had shown her that time was not a straight line, but a circle, endlessly looping, with beginnings and endings intertwined. And somewhere deep beneath the earth, the ancient power of Lanzarote waited, silent but alive, guarding the mysteries of time.
