Months after their night in a Swiss hotel memory, Ernest brings Lisavet a paper-wrapped gift: her father’s bronze pocket watch, recovered through pressure and bribery. He proves it still works by winding it until a wooden door appears, confirming the watch can still open exits from the time space. He also gives Lisavet a small silver revolver for protection after the Russian timekeeper’s assault, and she begins carrying both items constantly.

As months pass into 1950, Lisavet grows bolder with Time. She tests Ernest’s “temporal departure” theory and discovers she can time-walk without a book by thinking a place into existence, though she hides this from Ernest. In Ancient Greece, she accidentally inserts herself into a memory so fully that a lamb touches her and a shepherd boy speaks to her; when she flees back to the time space, pages in the book she used have turned to dust. After repeating the phenomenon and seeing larger portions of books disintegrate, Lisavet realizes that entering memories this way changes Time and destroys the recorded history, and she vows to stop.

Ernest’s lie to TRP leadership holds: he reports Lisavet died after the Russian attack, and Jack accepts the story with cold disappointment. Over time, Ernest’s guilt shifts into a quiet rebellion; he starts bringing Lisavet pages from books he was ordered to erase, asking her to keep them. His fear persists, and in a quiet moment with Lisavet in a 1745 Russian winter memory, he questions why she avoids the near-present; Lisavet admits she fears what the world became and feels safer where “everything is already over.”

Back in Ernest’s apartment, Jack is waiting with Ernest’s private notebook and a list of erased targets Ernest failed to eliminate. Jack reveals he had Brady and Collins watch Ernest, confirming Lisavet is alive, and he reads Ernest’s notes about Lisavet’s abilities and background. Jack concludes Lisavet is a threat—especially as the daughter of a watchmaker who could hold critical secrets—and orders Ernest to coax Lisavet out of the time space within one week, threatening to ruin him with accusations of treason if he refuses.

Ernest rushes to Lisavet the next evening, distraught, and insists they go somewhere quiet; Lisavet takes him to the Swiss hotel memory without using a book, and he still doesn’t notice. Ernest proposes marriage and begs Lisavet to leave the time space with him to escape TRP, admitting he and Lisavet are in danger but refusing to explain fully. Lisavet agrees to leave after a few hours, then later—seeing in Ernest’s sleeping memories what he would lose (his mother, sister, and ordinary life)—decides to save him by erasing herself from his mind. Using torn pages from a poetry book, Lisavet pulls every memory of her out of Ernest and stores them in her hidden memory-book; she returns alone to the time space, determined that Ernest will live on without her while she keeps their love in secret.