The woman who walks into Alderwick should not exist.

Beth comes from another century. She has traveled through the Fifth Road carrying an old photograph of Samantha Keating and Colin Weatherson, along with answers she refuses to give.

Then Samantha and Colin disappear.

The Road has taken them to Fallow County in 1868, where Blackthorne Manor has another Keeper, Alderwick is barely the town they know, and the people they left behind have become figures from a future no one here can imagine.

Including Owen Maddox.

Stranded more than a century and a half from home, Samantha and Colin must survive without revealing knowledge that could alter everything awaiting them in 2026.

Meanwhile, Owen begins searching for the missing Keeper with Beth at his side. She knows the past because she lived there. She knows Samantha and Colin because somehow, impossibly, their lives intersected with hers.

Most unsettling of all, she knows Owen.

He does not remember her.

Every answer Beth gives produces another question, and every piece of evidence points toward a history that appears to be changing even as they investigate it.

Somewhere between 1868 and 2026 lies the truth.

And the Fifth Road is not finished with any of them.