She runs to Claire: “The fire isn’t British. It’s us. An accident. A trap we set ourselves.” Jamie rides at dawn to destroy the dye stores. But Skanawati’s men ambush him. In the fight, a torch falls. The shed ignites. The same red flames. The same date—not 1776, but now .

Later, by the embers, Roger holds Jemmy. His whisper is barely a breath: “We changed it. The keyframe was me. The moment I chose to go back in.”

The microSD card, cracked and useless, floats down the creek. A fish nuzzles it. The water doesn’t care about the future. It only flows.

Jamie’s voice is low: “So we cannot stop it?”

Claire and Roger arrive. The Big House isn’t burning—yet—but the smoke is blinding. Roger, with no voice left, runs in. He finds Bree pinned under a beam. He cannot call for help. He cannot sing. He simply lifts —rupturing his healing throat, blood trickling from his mouth.

That night, a fever sweeps the Ridge. Claire works for 30 hours straight. Roger, despite his ruined throat, sings a fragment of “Clementine” to a dying child—and the child lives. The voice is ugly. But it is data transmitted .

Roger’s whisper cracks: “That’s… not possible. That’s from 2015 or later.”