There was a room in House Luthien they never named.
It wasn't on any of the servant's schedules. No lanterns marked the entrance. No guards were posted there. It existed between wings, nestled where the stonework curved inward like a collapsed lung.
Izen found it by accident—or so he let them think.
He'd been ordered to retrieve a silk-wrapped package from the archive chamber two floors below Selreth's quarters. On the return path, he slipped away during a servant shift-change and ducked into the space where the floor dipped slightly, where the walls were painted bone-white instead of blood-red.
The moment he crossed the threshold, something changed.
Silence pressed on his ears like wool.
The air was colder, sharper.
There were no torches—just a thin vein of blue light running along the edge of the floor, like frost etched in glass. The corridor led to a single door, carved not with runes or sigils, but tiny holes arranged in precise geometric patterns—an intricate dot matrix that resembled the inner workings of a timepiece.
He pressed his fingers to it.
The door did not open.
But it vibrated.
He stepped back, pulse steady.
His thoughts were quieter in here, too. Less like the usual river of words, more like a trickle—controlled, curated. A strange pressure built in his chest. Not fear. Not yet. Just a kind of knowing.
Whatever lay beyond that door wasn't meant for him.
Not yet.
Later that evening, he stood in the Luthien dining hall, surrounded by silence.
No one spoke during meals.
Servants chewed with their mouths closed, eyes lowered, faces gaunt from some invisible pressure that aged them faster than time should allow. They ate efficiently—ten minutes, no longer. Conversation was permitted only in written form, passed through small black scrolls on silver trays.
He received none.
Wrote none.
Only observed.
Advisor Selreth did not dine with them.
But she watched.
Her shadow flickered across the upper gallery behind a hanging curtain of brass links, unmoving. Occasionally, the links would shift slightly, like breath from behind them disturbed the veil. But no one ever looked up.
No one ever addressed her.
To speak directly to Selreth without permission was grounds for erasure.
Literal.
Izen sat at the end of the table and cut his meat slowly.
Every movement calculated. Every blink measured. He knew they were watching—not just Selreth, but the others. The older servants. The ones with scars on their necks and the dull sheen of chemical obedience in their eyes.
Some of them had been here for years.
Living like ghosts in the belly of a machine.
Kaelith's note from the night before echoed in his mind: Soon.
But soon could mean anything in a place like this.
Minutes. Weeks. Death.
Time was different here.
Bent.
After dinner, he returned to his cell and found a scroll placed neatly on his pillow.
It was sealed with wax bearing House Luthien's crest—a serpent eating its own tail, wrapped around a clock hand.
He unrolled it slowly.
Report to the Needle Hall at the seventh bell. Wear the gray robes.
That was all.
No signature.
No explanation.
The Needle Hall was not marked on the standard maps of the academy. But Izen had already studied Luthien's architecture through glimpses, overheard conversations, and slight inconsistencies in servant rotation paths.
He found it tucked beneath the main archives, past a hollow wall he'd seen the cleaner servants avoid with unnatural discipline.
He wore the gray robes they'd left for him. Rough wool. Itched like they wanted him uncomfortable.
They succeeded.
The hall was… thin.
Like a corridor stretched until it forgot how to be a room. Tall ceilings. Narrow width. The floor was lined with silver tracks, and overhead, dozens—no, hundreds—of suspended wires ran from wall to wall, some trailing down like metal vines.
At the far end stood Selreth.
And beside her, something older.
It was a machine.
Or a statue.
Or both.
A human-sized structure made of whalebone, copper, and gold thread. Its face was a smooth porcelain mask with no features. Just a single vertical slit where the mouth should be, filled with rows of tiny rotating gears.
It pulsed softly.
Ticked.
"You are early," Selreth said, voice filtered through her veil.
She no longer sat behind a screen.
Tonight, she stood in full view, cloaked in heavy robes stitched with moving script. The words were alive, crawling across the fabric like ants spelling out names that Izen couldn't read fast enough.
She gestured to the machine.
"This is a Listener. One of the old ones. Before your kind made the Spiral bleed."
Izen stepped forward, eyes on the mask.
He felt the machine studying him.
Not with eyes. With… vibration. Soundless frequency. It was measuring him, not with warmth or intellect, but through something more primal. Like time trying to remember its shape.
Selreth extended a finger and drew a spiral in the air.
The Listener clicked once.
"Speak," it rasped.
The sound wasn't mechanical. It wasn't even vocal.
It was before sound.
Izen tilted his head.
"What do you want me to say?"
Selreth didn't answer.
The Listener repeated: "Speak."
Izen looked at Selreth again, then the wires above. Every strand hummed now, faintly—tuned to him. He could feel it.
Not in his skin.
In his blood.
"Time is broken," Izen said.
The Listener did not move.
But the wires above trembled.
Selreth smiled—just barely. "You are not incorrect."
Then she stepped forward and pressed her hand to the Listener's spine.
The floor beneath Izen shifted. A circle of the silver rails began to glow, then rise, revealing a spiral staircase leading deeper.
Into the real Needle.
Selreth descended without looking back.
Izen followed.
Beneath the hall, the air turned thick.
Metal gave way to stone. Stone gave way to bone. The walls were no longer carved but grown. Rib-like supports arched overhead, fused with ancient script etched by hand—some in ink, some in blood, and one or two in something that pulsed when Izen passed by.
Selreth stopped before a small chamber at the very end.
Inside were three chairs.
Two occupied.
One was a girl, no older than Izen. Pale, with pitch-black hair and veins that glowed faintly beneath her skin like bioluminescent ink. She didn't move when they entered.
The other was a man—blindfolded, wrists bound to the chair with living vines that tightened and loosened with each of his breaths.
Selreth gestured.
"Observe. Say nothing."
She stepped into the center and raised one hand.
The Listener's voice echoed again from hidden speakers embedded in the walls.
"Cycle begins. Layer four. Echo depth initiated."
The girl screamed—but her mouth never opened.
The sound came from her shadow.
And the man—he convulsed.
For a moment, Izen saw flickers behind him. A room. A face. A child, alone in a cradle of fire. It passed in a blink.
Then silence.
Selreth turned to him.
"This is not torture. This is transcription. Memory is a form of time. And time, as you may one day learn, can be read. Even stolen."
She gestured toward the blindfolded man.
"Would you like to try?"
Izen hesitated.
Not because he was afraid.
But because he was curious—and curiosity, in a place like this, was a weakness best feigned.
He stepped forward, placed one hand on the man's shoulder, and focused.
His breath caught.
The room changed.
A garden.
Bright. Too bright.
He saw his mother again—but older, weary. Speaking to a tall figure with a white mask. She handed him a knife.
Then he was back.
The man collapsed in the chair.
Smoke rose from his wrists.
Selreth nodded once.
"You're further along than I thought."
Back in his cell, Izen paced.
The Listener's voice still echoed in his skull.
The girl's silent scream had lodged somewhere behind his ribs.
His own vision of the masked man left a thread of nausea in his throat. He didn't understand it yet—but he would. He always did.
The Spiral wasn't just a symbol.
It was alive.
And it was watching him.
He opened his shirt and looked at the inner seam.
The coin was still there.
But tonight, it was warm.