The city tried to sleep, but its dreams bled into the streets.
Steam curled from the underground pipes, carrying whispers that were not whispers, but fragments of thoughts once owned by others. Aeren heard them, brushing against his mind like the touch of moth wings: Regret me. Rewrite me. Remember me.
He tightened his grip on the Codex. Its cover shifted under his hand, sometimes leather, sometimes iron, sometimes something like skin. Pages fluttered of their own accord, revealing words that rearranged themselves faster than he could follow. What he saw was not ink—it was ash, drifting upward before fading away.
And then a page stopped turning.A name was written there.Aeren.
His heart stilled.
He tried to close the Codex, but his fingers refused to obey. Instead, the book drank in the air, pulling light from the streetlamps until the city dimmed around him. The page bled black, letters dripping like oil. Beneath his name, a single sentence appeared:
"Debtor of the First Hourglass."
The Codex shuddered, and from its pages spilled shadows shaped like men in robes. Their faces were blurred clocks, hands spinning too fast to read. They did not walk. They ticked forward, one second at a time, the sound rattling through his bones.
Aeren stumbled backward, nearly dropping the book. "No—stay away!"
The figures ignored his plea. They raised their palms in unison. From each palm unfurled a fragment of parchment that floated through the air. One drifted into Aeren's chest. For a moment, he felt nothing. And then—pain. A memory was being torn free.
His mother's voice.Her laughter, soft as falling rain.Gone.
"No—please!" He clutched at the vanishing thread, but his hands met nothing.
The Codex glowed faintly, almost hungrily, as if pleased by the exchange.
The shadow-men melted into the mist, their task complete. But one remained, slower than the rest. Its clock-face tilted, its voice like a broken metronome:
"Every debt must be paid. The Endmaker waits."
And then it vanished.
Aeren collapsed against the nearest wall, gasping. The warmth of the backward clock pulsed against his chest again, though he had not touched it since it floated. It was calling to him, binding him closer with every hour.
He whispered into the empty street, half-prayer, half-curse:
"How do you fight something that already owns your name?"
The Codex did not answer. But far above, on a rooftop, something shifted—wings of black parchment, feathers rustling with stolen memories. The Endmaker was not yet here. But it was closer.