That night, Elion woke up gasping.
The image of the endless hall, with its suspended clocks and cracked mirrors, still burned in his mind like a freshly stamped seal. His throat felt dry, his heart slowed, and there was an icy pressure on the back of his neck, just behind his right ear.
Sitting up, he noticed the sheet of paper still there, on his desk, as harmless as ever. But he knew the truth. It was no longer a simple relic.
It was a threshold.
He didn't go to work that morning. He feigned illness, a common occurrence among classifiers handling unsealed relics. No one cared. Only his signature was required on the report, and that could wait.
Instead, he went down to the underground archive.
The basement had been sealed for over a decade. He had heard rumors among the veteran clerks: an accident involving a relic of an unknown class, an unexplained disappearance, clocks that still chimed at the same time today.
3:33. Always 3:33.
Elion carried a portable lamp and descended the rusty steps. The air smelled of rancid oil, trapped moisture, and dust from another era.
The door to the archive was half-open. No one must have been there in years.
Inside, the light revealed a circular room, its walls covered with clocks of every kind: pendulum, hourglass, mechanical, solar—all broken, stopped, or spinning backward.
And in the center, like in his dream, a chair.
But this time, it wasn't empty.
A man was watching him. Or, at least, something that looked like a man. He wore a dark gray suit with antique, worn details. His face was covered by a polished copper mask, with no eyes, no mouth. Just a spiral slit.
He didn't speak. He just pointed at the chair.
Elion felt the urge to run away, but his legs moved on their own. He sat down.
And then, time shattered.
All the clocks began to spin in unison, creating a deafening noise that only he seemed to hear.
> "Elion Grahm," said a voice… inside his mind.
"You have been called. You have answered.
Now listen."
A wave of images washed over him:
A veiled silhouette, whispering truths to a sleeping city.
Blindfolded eyes that saw through time.
An ear carved from stone, at the bottom of a mirror-filled abyss.
A solitary figure standing before a revolving cathedral.
> "Way of the Deaf Spectator," the voice whispered.
"Sequence 9: The Echo Initiate.
You have been granted the first sense. Use your inner ear wisely… or it will use you."
Elion screamed voicelessly. His head was burning. The spiral on the stranger's mask began to spin, faster and faster, until it dissolved into light.
And then everything went out.
He woke up again in his room. Alone. No burns, no marks. Except for one:
a small black spiral, the size of a fingernail, just behind his right ear.
He couldn't explain it. He couldn't understand it.
But when he picked up the blank page again, it no longer ignored him.
He listened. He responded.
Hours later, in a windowless office, a man in white gloves was closing an untitled book.
Around him, hooded figures stared at a table where a projected image glowed:
Elion, descending into the underground archive.
"The Whisperer has awakened," one of them murmured.
And for the first time in years, the clock in that room stopped at 3:33.