The Temporal Transition is the mechanism by which the Time Bandits were moved from Serpent Island (September 1901) to Sarajevo (June 1914): a jump of thirteen years. It is not recorded as an accident; everything points to a carefully prepared manipulation.
| Type | Concept (time-travel mechanism) |
| From | Serpent Island, September 1901 |
| To | Sarajevo, June 1914 |
| Cycle | Uchronic Paris |
| Houses of the Cycle | ⏳ House of Carnal Time |
| Spanish entry | Transición Temporal |
Omens before the jump
- A telescope let the group look four years ahead, reaching 1905 and the Russian war.
- Aby Warburgo dreamed of Sarajevo and a “foiled attack”.
- Russian chants echoed on the upper floor of the Lighthouse: a ritual mechanism in progress that the group did not interrupt.
- Invocation circles and telegraph “secret lines” pointed through the Ray, tracing a temporal network of international powers.
Change of scale
Until then the group moved in the urban intrigue of Paris and the regional conspiracy of Belgrade and the Circle of the Serpent. After the jump it is placed in a uchronic event of world scope: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which in the unaltered chronology set off the Great War. In Uchronic Paris the attack is a temporal battle: several travelers assume identities of real historical conspirators, Cvjetko Popović and Gavrilo Princip among them, and must get through the event while fighting the dark forces trying to manipulate it from the shadows. The execution of the jump and the identities assumed are covered in Sarajevo 1914 (Time Jump).
Afterward
The jump to 1914 is not final. The group will travel again, to the Paris Commune of 1870, a sign that temporal non-linearity is constitutive of the cycle: the travelers are actors able to alter timelines through their own actions.