We crossed the Weeping Spires at dawn, stepping carefully through crumbled pathways and old bones turned to crystal. Each gust of wind sounded like chimes—only these weren't made of metal.
They were teeth.
Caeryn didn't speak. She'd barely slept. The Echo's whisper still haunted us, curling into our dreams like smoke that couldn't be coughed out.
We were heading for the only being who might know what came next.
The Watchmaker.
He wasn't a god, not exactly. Not anymore.
They say he was once the Keeper of Time, third of the Dawn Tribunal. Until he tried to stop a war between fates and was broken for it. Now he exists inside a pocket of warped chronology, where yesterday is always tomorrow, and nothing ever really ends.
The doorway found us.
Not the other way around.
One moment we were walking. The next—we were standing before a black iron gate floating in the middle of a windless glade. Clock faces of every size turned in impossible patterns. The air tasted like old parchment and lightning.
Caeryn hesitated. "You sure about this?"
"No."
I pushed the gate open anyway.
Inside the Fold
Time bent as we entered. I felt my body age and de-age in flickers. My hands looked like a child's. Then a corpse's. Then my own again.
The room was circular. Endless. Walls lined with ticking devices, some made of stone, others of flame, one made of sighs.
And in the center—
He stood.
Back turned. Adjusting a timepiece the size of a mountain.
Dressed in a long coat made of stitched hours. His hair was silver and gold in alternating strands. His eyes, when he turned, were pocket watches—ticking with every blink.
"Jason Talem," he said. "Bearer of the stolen flame. And Caeryn Vael… daughter of war."
"How do you—" she started.
"I know everything that has already happened," he replied. "And nothing that has not."
"Then why did you call us here?"
He tilted his head. "Because you just asked me to."
My blood went cold.
"You're not bound to linearity," I said.
"Of course not." He smiled. "I'm busy."
He waved his hand.
The room shifted.
Suddenly I was back in the hospital bed on Earth. Then standing over my own grave. Then watching a city burn that I hadn't even been to yet.
"You seek answers," the Watchmaker said. "But truth is never free."
"What's the price?" I asked.
"Memory," he said. "One you care about."
I hesitated.
Then… nodded.
He reached forward—and plucked something from my mind.
A voice.
Feminine. Laughing. Soft.
My sister.
I couldn't remember her name.
"You bastard," I whispered, falling to my knees.
"She is not lost," he said. "Merely stored. If you live long enough, you may earn her back."
Then he crouched, looking me in the eyes.
"Elion saved you… because he wasn't supposed to."
"What?"
"There was another," he whispered. "The real heir. The one who could've mended the Shattered Realms."
"Where is he?"
The Watchmaker stood.
"Dead."
He snapped his fingers. The Fold vanished. We were back in the ruins. Our bodies unchanged—but something in us was.
I couldn't remember her name.
But I remembered the fire.