“It was a dark October night when I first heard the tale of the Time-Torn Man. Some say he had a name once, other than that one, but if he did it was lost long ago – under a mountain of history and dust, or so I was told.

When he was born doesn’t matter, because truly he was a child of Sometime, or a brother of Never, depending on how you look at it. The Time-Torn Man never really belonged anywhere, or any when to put it more accurately – but that doesn’t change anything. He’s still out there.

It does something to you though, I reckon, being the eternal outsider – too young for the past, too old for the future. Or the other way round. Or no way round at all, if that’s what you like to think. Must drive you mad, knowing so much, having so many stories to tell.

But they say that the Time-Torn Man had one story in particular. A story which wraps itself around all of time and never ends. A story that goes, so they say, like this:

It was a dark October night when I first heard the tale of the Time-Torn Man…