The scrollcase in Izen's hand felt heavier than the last.
It wasn't just the metal—though this one was forged from dull steel rather than leather—but the weight of meaning. The seal engraved on the cap was unmistakable: a dagger piercing a coiled spiral. Volen's personal sigil. Meant to be seen by no one except the target and the killer.
Kaelith watched him turn it over beneath the faint orange light of the academy's rear walkway.
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
The air back here tasted of mildew and old iron.
Somewhere above them, a pair of dormitory windows clicked shut. A curfew bell hadn't yet rung, but the academy always began to shrink this time of night. Lights dimmed. Doors locked. Conversations softened until only secrets remained.
Izen tapped the scrollcase against his thigh.
"…Why give me this?"
Kaelith didn't answer right away.
She leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, and finally said, "Because you need to see what he's hiding. And because if you don't do something soon… you won't get another chance."
Izen broke the seal.
The wax cracked differently this time—cleaner, sharper. Inside was a single sheet of black parchment inked in pale silver, the letters angular and sharp like carved bone.
Subject: Instructor Volen
Class: Ex-Executioner, House Glaive
Assignment: Embedded Asset, Tier II — Academy of Knighthold
Directive: Monitor Subject Izen Mirth and any residual Spiral phenomena.
Codename: Watchmaker
Failure Contingency: Erasure
Izen's hands didn't tremble this time.
They were still. Cold.
Controlled.
"So he's watching me," he muttered. "Why?"
Kaelith shook her head. "Not just watching. He was part of the team that… took you. The team that brought you to the orphan sector after your mother's death. He's been here since the beginning."
"Then why hasn't he killed me?"
"Because he can't. Not unless you activate."
Izen turned to her. "Activate?"
Kaelith's expression turned solemn. "Your time-seed. Whatever they implanted in you—it's not dormant forever. It's ticking. And they're all waiting for the moment it reaches zero."
The words hung in the air like poison in fog.
Ticking.
It wasn't just metaphor. Izen felt it sometimes—behind his eyes, in the marrow of his bones, in the odd tug of gravity when he thought too hard or felt too much. Time bending like reeds in a storm. Memories that didn't align. Flashes of images that hadn't yet happened.
His dreams had been worsening too.
But he hadn't told anyone.
Now he understood why.
It wasn't madness.
It was design.
"Where did you get this file?" he asked.
Kaelith hesitated, then reached into the folds of her robe and pulled out a narrow blade—a scalpel.
"It was inside a corpse," she said softly. "One from the basement chapel. Stitched into its chest cavity, behind the spiral sigil."
Izen exhaled. No horror. No revulsion.
Just understanding.
"You went alone?" he asked.
"No," she said. "Three others. I'm the only one who came back."
They stood in silence again.
The torch above the back door buzzed faintly, drawing moths that circled in tight, silent spirals. Izen tilted his head, watching them.
It reminded him of a clock.
Always winding down.
Later that night, he didn't return to his dormitory.
Instead, he went walking.
Past the west tower. Past the upper gardens. Past the hall of mirrors where the first-year illusions were taught. The Academy at night was a different world—slick with condensation, shadowed in long corridors, filled with the groaning hum of old infrastructure.
And no one ever watched the Archives after midnight.
Not unless they were expecting you.
The Archives weren't a library.
They were a mausoleum.
Iron shelves three stories tall stacked with classified records, discipline reports, ancient scrolls, and sealed histories the academy didn't bother to teach. Every student was assigned a grade of access. Most never went beyond Level One.
Izen had been denied clearance.
So, he picked the lock.
The interior smelled of old parchment and ozone.
Blue-glass lanterns flickered quietly as he descended into the second tier, his fingers running along the worn railing. Beneath the Archives was a hidden annex known only by older initiates. Volen had mentioned it once—drunkenly—after a failed weapons demonstration.
"The Watchmaker's Vault," he'd called it.
A room only those with a Spiral emblem could access.
Izen reached the base of the central staircase.
The floor tiles here were cracked and uneven. The back wall had been patched—badly. But in the center of the floor was a hatch with no handle, just a single indent shaped like the spiral coin.
He slid it from his pocket.
The metal was warm again.
Alive.
He pressed it into the slot.
With a click like a heartbeat stopping, the hatch unlatched.
A gust of warm air breathed upward, thick with the scent of grease and wax.
He descended slowly, knees bent, hands ready. The tunnel was narrow and wound in on itself, leading to a chamber no larger than a classroom. Inside were rows of disassembled timepieces, metal arms, and crystal domes etched with writing.
But at the center of the room sat something stranger:
A chair.
It wasn't built for comfort.
Straps hung from its arms and legs, and the leather was stained with something too dark to be rust. Above it, an apparatus of mirrors and lenses dangled from the ceiling, all trained on the seat like an executioner's blade paused mid-swing.
On the chair's headrest was carved one word.
Mirth.
Izen stared at it for a long time.
His fingers brushed the grooves of the letters.
Was this a test?
A relic?
Or something waiting to be used again?
The spiral in his pocket vibrated.
Something shifted in the ceiling.
He backed away in time to see the mirrors above the chair adjust themselves, aligning into a circular pattern. Each reflected a different image—not of the room, but of places beyond the academy: a burning house, a garden of blood-colored flowers, a figure in white with no face, standing at the center of a frozen clocktower.
The spiral turned.
And for a second—
Time stopped.
He was standing in the chair now.
He hadn't moved.
But the straps were fastened.
The mirrors above began to spin.
Not quickly. Not violently. But with the rhythm of a heartbeat and the sound of falling sand.
His chest hurt.
His arms wouldn't lift.
Visions flooded him like water into cracked stone.
His mother—her face half-shadowed—speaking to someone he couldn't see. A silver blade held in her hand. A promise. "He won't become what they made him."
Then, Volen's voice—distorted, mechanical. "The Spiral is incomplete. The Watchmaker failed."
Then another voice. His own.
But older.
Whispering.
"Tick… tick… tick…"
The visions ended with the sound of shattering glass.
When he blinked, he was back on the floor, gasping.
The chair sat empty.
The spiral coin was cracked in half beside him.
And the door above was no longer open.
He didn't panic.
He crawled to the stairwell and tried the hatch.
It didn't budge.
Then he noticed the walls.
They were changing.
Shifting.
Turning—ever so slowly—inward.
The Vault wasn't just a chamber.
It was a clock.
A trap.
And the gears had begun to turn.
Izen pressed his hand to the wall and felt it humming with mechanical intent.
He had minutes—maybe less—before it crushed itself inward.
Unless…
Unless time bent again.
He closed his eyes.
Focused.
Not on power. Not on escape.
But on pause.
On stillness.
On the hum of the spiral that lived in his spine.
He remembered the moths. The mirrors. The heartbeat rhythm.
And then—
The world slowed.
It didn't stop.
Not yet.
But the air thickened.
The gears slowed.
And his breath moved in clean, slow lines.
He saw the latch mechanism in the wall above the hatch—thin, rusted, nearly hidden. A final failsafe. He jammed the broken spiral coin into the seam and twisted it.
The door popped open.
He didn't wait.
Didn't look back.
He scrambled through just as the room below collapsed inward like a dying lung.
He stood panting in the Archives, clothes soaked, coin cracked, heart steady.
He was changing.
Not just waking up.
But becoming what they feared.
What they designed.
And he would make them regret it.