Izen lay still on the thin cot in his servant quarters, staring at the curved ceiling above. The stone was always cold here, too smooth to be natural. The air smelled of damp limestone and ashwood ink—House Luthien's signature scent, soaked into every surface like rot beneath perfume.
The warmth in the coin hadn't faded.
If anything, it pulsed.
He hadn't touched it directly—not yet.
He didn't need to.
It was a thread now. Tethered to something unseen, buried beneath layers of thought and memory. His dreams that night were fragmented. He saw pieces of things he didn't remember ever living—an orchard of black trees under a pale green sky, a garden of rusted hourglasses leaking dust instead of sand.
And in the center of it all, a shadow stood beneath a crooked arch, offering him the same knife he had seen in the vision.
The blade glinted like a shard of frozen time.
He woke before dawn.
The academy bell hadn't rung yet, but the shadows outside his door were already moving—servants transitioning between ghostlike routines, footsteps muffled by ritual.
Izen dressed in silence.
Gray tunic. Dull belt. The clothing itched against his skin in the same way his thoughts itched against the back of his mind. Something was changing. Not drastically. Not yet. But piece by piece, the mask he wore was beginning to crack.
He couldn't afford that.
Not here.
The corridors of House Luthien had their own gravity.
He felt it more clearly now, especially after the ritual in the Needle Hall. Corners curved where they shouldn't. Walls whispered with tension just beyond audible range. Even time felt distorted—minutes dragged in silence, then snapped forward in abrupt bursts.
He marked it carefully.
Every hallway he walked.
Every blink that came too fast.
By mid-morning, he was sent on an errand—one that, on paper, meant nothing.
"Retrieve a box from the fourth wing archive," the order read. "Do not open it. Do not delay."
Most servants would have obeyed without a thought.
Izen did obey.
But he also questioned—quietly, precisely.
Because the fourth wing wasn't used anymore.
The corridor to the archive had been sealed. Not by locks, but neglect.
Dust lay thick across the arches, undisturbed by breath or motion. Vines crept through the cracks in the eastern wall, their leaves long dead. The hallway was colder than the others, and quiet in a way that felt personal—as if sound itself had been forbidden from entering.
He pushed the door open with his shoulder.
It creaked like something exhaling its last breath.
Inside the archive, time had stopped.
Books with rotted spines leaned sideways. Cabinets hung half open. A decaying curtain of velvet covered the back wall, and beyond it, a shattered window let in a shaft of sickly light that dust danced through like falling ash.
The box sat alone on a table.
Unmarked. Ordinary.
But he didn't believe in ordinary things anymore.
He picked it up and turned it once in his hands.
Lightweight. Metal edges worn with age. He did not open it. Instead, he pressed his fingers lightly along the seams, memorizing the grain of the wood, the weight, the faint metallic scent. There was something inside—he could feel the subtle shift as he moved it. A single object.
Small.
Round.
Like a—
Footsteps.
He tensed, head tilting slightly. They weren't heavy—not armored—but too deliberate to be a mistake. Someone else was here. He turned toward the shattered window, holding the box with one arm and stepping sideways into the curtain's shadow.
The figure stepped through the doorway.
Not Kaelith.
Not a servant.
It was a girl.
She looked about his age, but her uniform was red-trimmed—an internal observer, perhaps. One of Selreth's silent eyes. Her posture was too confident for a normal apprentice. She moved like someone who didn't think twice about cutting open secrets.
And she stared directly at him.
"You weren't assigned to this wing today," she said.
Izen didn't blink.
"I was sent to retrieve this," he replied, holding up the box.
She took a step forward.
Her eyes were strange—silver, but glassy. As if they were polished lenses rather than natural color. She stopped within arm's reach, not reaching for the box, but simply… observing.
"You feel it, don't you?" she whispered.
Izen tilted his head. "Feel what?"
"The weight. The itch behind your eyes. That's what this place does. That's what she wants it to do."
Before he could reply, she turned and walked past him—straight to the curtain.
Without hesitation, she pulled it aside, revealing not just the shattered window but a hidden panel of runes etched into the wall beneath the sill. Her fingers hovered above them, tracing the edges but not pressing.
"This is a memory lock," she said. "It only opens for someone who's been marked."
Then she looked back at him.
"You're marked."
He said nothing.
Didn't flinch.
But internally, something did flinch.
How did she know?
What exactly did she know?
She gestured toward the box. "They're watching to see what you'll do with that. They always are. But if I were you… I'd bury it. Or better yet, throw it into the river and forget you ever touched it."
Izen's voice was soft, steady. "And what would that change?"
She didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
She stepped through the broken window, out onto the ledge beyond. Her red-trimmed uniform fluttered in the breeze.
When she turned to glance back at him one last time, her smile was not kind—but not cruel either.
Just tired.
"You'll see," she said.
Then she vanished down the ledge like a ghost slipping back into the walls.
That night, Izen did not deliver the box.
He hid it—deep within the hollow of a broken pillar in one of the training gardens outside the estate. No one had used the garden in years. The trees were gnarled, the benches rusted.
And yet the wind there moved differently.
It wasn't safer.
But it was silent.
Back in his quarters, he finally pulled out the coin.
For the first time, he stared at it in full light.
Its surface was not flat. There were grooves, like a dial—but no numbers. Just twelve etched notches, and a faint pattern running along the edge. Spirals.
He turned it between his fingers, and as he did, he felt the world lean.
Only slightly.
Like a floorboard shifted underfoot.
Time didn't stop.
But for a breath, it skipped.
He sat down hard, heart suddenly racing.
No sound accompanied it. No glow. No thunderclap.
But everything in the room had moved an inch to the left.
He stared at his hand.
He hadn't meant to do that.
The coin cooled in his palm.
Whatever it was, whatever it could do—it wasn't ready. Or he wasn't ready. But the needle had twitched, and once it twitched, it would turn again. That was inevitable.
Time was not a weapon to be drawn.
It was a tide to drown in.
A knock on the door.
Two slow, one fast.
Kaelith.
He let her in.
She looked tired, but alert. Her eyes scanned the room, then settled on him.
"You moved something," she said.
Not a question.
He nodded once.
She shut the door behind her. "They've begun noticing you. You're stepping out of shadow too soon."
He ran a hand through his hair, then leaned back against the stone wall.
"I didn't do it on purpose."
Kaelith crouched beside him, whispering low.
"That's worse. It means instinct is waking up before your mind catches it."
She glanced toward the coin still resting on his cot.
"What did you see?"
He didn't answer.
Not directly.
"Someone told me I was marked," he said. "A girl in the fourth wing. She knew about the box. About the… weight."
Kaelith's face went still.
"…Red trim?"
He nodded.
She exhaled slowly.
"That's not a girl. That's Warden Veil. She was erased five years ago. Her presence here means something's gone wrong in the timeline."
Izen frowned.
"What do you mean 'gone wrong'?"
Kaelith met his eyes.
"It means the fabric's slipping. When erased things return, the Spiral doesn't sleep. It hunts."
She stood.
"You need to be more careful. You're not just in the academy anymore, Izen. You're in its memory. And it remembers everything."
As the door clicked shut behind her, Izen looked down at the coin one last time.
The etchings around the edge had shifted.
Not visibly.
But he remembered them differently.
And remembering differently was the first sign that time no longer obeyed the same rules.
Not for him.
Not anymore.