The first thing Elara noticed was the hum.
Not a sound exactly — not something she heard with her ears — but a vibration that lived under her skin. It was low, constant, like the deep purr of some great machine that had been running for centuries.
She opened her eyes slowly.
The sky was gone.
Above her stretched a ceiling of light, but it wasn't sunlight — it was alive. A wash of violet that slid into pale gold, the colors shifting in lazy spirals, as though the whole world above her were breathing.
Her back ached. She was lying on something smooth, cold, and faintly ridged. When she turned her head, the ridges came into focus.
Clocks.
Thousands of them.
They weren't separate objects, but carved into a single vast plane of stone. The hands moved at different speeds — some spun in frantic jerks, others crawled so slowly she couldn't tell if they moved at all. The glass that covered each face had no reflections. It swallowed light instead.
Elara pushed herself up, the soles of her shoes sliding slightly on the surface. She rubbed her eyes, willing her heartbeat to slow, but the hum inside her chest seemed to set the clocks around her trembling.
The horizon — if it could be called that — was endless. The circular surface stretched outward forever, vanishing into a violet-gold haze that pulsed in and out like lungs. No wind. No scent of air. Just the hum, the stone, and the shifting light.
Her fingers went instinctively to her side. The journal was there, pressed against her ribs under her arm. She yanked it free, clutching it like a lifeline.
It was warm. Too warm.
She flipped it open.
Every page was blank.
No flickering ink, no warnings, no hidden diagrams blooming across the paper. Just empty parchment.
"No, no, no…" Her voice cracked. She turned the pages faster, frantic. "Come on, don't do this to me now."
Her hands stilled. The surface beneath her gave a single, slow shudder — like a giant stone heartbeat.
She froze.
The hum grew louder.
"Elara."
The voice came from behind her, low, almost affectionate. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a call. It was the sound of someone confirming she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Elara turned slowly toward the voice.
The woman standing a few paces away could have been a trick of the light — the violet haze curled behind her, softening the edges of her form. But there was no mistaking the outline, the way she held herself, the subtle tilt of her head.
It was her.
Not just older — refined. Lines at the corners of the eyes, but not the weary kind; these were carved by decisions made and survived. Her hair was longer, darker, streaked faintly with silver. She wore a long coat the color of ink spilled in water, and though the stone underfoot was cold, she stood barefoot.
"Elara," the older woman said again, and this time it felt like being wrapped in a blanket fresh from the sun. The tone was warm, protective — but there was a quiet ownership to it, like she was addressing something she already possessed.
Elara's fingers tightened around the journal.
"Who… are you?"
The woman smiled faintly, as though amused at the question.
"I think you know."
"No," Elara said, taking a step back. The clocks beneath her feet didn't shift or creak — they stayed perfectly still, as if waiting for something. "You can't be me. I'd remember being here."
"That's the thing about here," the older woman said, glancing toward the horizon. "It doesn't belong to memory. Not until it's over."
Elara's pulse quickened. "Where is this? What happened after—"
She stopped herself. The last thing she remembered was… what? The journal's last page before it went blank? The room tilting? Casimir's voice calling her name from somewhere far away?
The older woman stepped closer, the violet light catching in her eyes. They weren't softer with age — they were sharper, like they'd learned to cut through years.
"You're safe," she said gently. "That's all you need to know right now."
Safe. The word felt wrong here, where nothing breathed and the air didn't move.
The hum beneath Elara's skin deepened for a moment, and the older woman's gaze flicked upward, as if she heard something Elara couldn't.
"You've arrived between tolls," she said softly. "That's fortunate. The first one is always the hardest."
Elara's grip tightened on the journal. "Toll?"
The woman smiled again, but this one didn't reach her eyes.
"Twelve. That's how many you'll hear before this path is finished."
The hum in the air grew deeper, like someone had turned a great wheel beneath the floor.
Elara's older self straightened, tilting her head slightly, listening.
"It's coming," she said softly.
A sound rose from nowhere — low, resonant, and impossibly far away. It wasn't a chime or a bell. It was older than either. The note vibrated in the bones of the clocks beneath Elara's feet, running up her legs, through her ribs, until it reached the back of her skull.
She clapped her hands over her ears. It didn't help. The sound wasn't in the air — it was in her.
The older woman didn't flinch. She watched Elara instead, as if studying her reaction was more important than the toll itself.
When the sound faded, Elara realized her hands were trembling.
"What was that?" she demanded.
"The first toll," the older woman said simply. "One of twelve."
"What does it mean?"
A pause.
"You'll find out."
"That's not good enough!" Elara snapped, stepping closer. "If there's something here that can hurt me, I need to—"
The woman reached out and touched her cheek. The hand was warm, steady, the kind of touch Elara's mother used to give her when she was too tired to cry anymore.
"It already has," the woman said softly.
Elara's stomach tightened. She pulled back, clutching the journal to her chest again.
"What did it take?"
The older woman's smile was faint, unreadable. "Not everything taken is something you can name. Not at first."
Before Elara could argue, the floor beneath them shivered — the faint grinding of stone on stone — and the vast field of clocks shifted in a slow, deliberate rearrangement.
A path was forming.
The clocks slid into place with a grinding sigh, locking together so seamlessly it was hard to tell they had ever been separate.
A single strip of them now stretched forward, narrowing as it reached into the violet-gold haze. The rest of the vast field was still — no hum, no shifting hands, no sound at all.
Elara hesitated at the start of the path. The clocks beneath her feet on either side of it were frozen, their glass faces dark and lifeless. But on the path itself… the hands moved. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as though each second was choosing whether or not to arrive.
The older woman stepped onto the path without looking back. "Don't step off," she said.
Elara frowned. "Why would I—"
"Because it will ask you to."
They walked in silence for what felt like minutes, maybe hours — the shifting light above gave no hint of time. Then, faintly at first, Elara heard it.
A voice.
It was thin, trembling, carried on no air she could feel. She stopped, glancing toward the frozen clocks to her left.
"Elara…"
Her breath caught. It was her father's voice.
She turned her head fully. The sound was coming from somewhere beyond the frozen clocks, deep in the haze. The dark glass faces nearest her flickered faintly, and for the briefest moment she thought she saw movement beneath them — like shadows swimming under ice.
"Elara, please… help me."
Her chest ached. Her father had been gone for years, his voice a memory she'd long stopped trusting herself to recall accurately. But this — this was perfect. It was him.
She took a step toward the edge of the path.
The older woman's hand caught her wrist. Not hard — just enough to stop her.
"That's not him."
Elara's throat felt tight. "You don't know that."
"I do." The older woman's gaze was steady. "It's the Path. It knows what will slow you. What will make you turn. It doesn't like walkers who make it too far."
The voice called again, more desperate now. "Elara! Please! I can't—"
The older woman stepped in front of her, blocking the sound with nothing but presence. "If you leave the path, you won't come back. And if you somehow do… you won't be you anymore."
The voice faded, swallowed by the haze.
The older woman released her wrist and turned away, walking forward again. Elara followed, her hands cold despite the warmth of the journal against her ribs.
She didn't look back — but she thought she saw the faint outline of her father's shape standing just beyond the frozen clocks, smiling too widely.
They had been walking long enough for the violet light to deepen toward indigo, though there was still no sun, no sky — just an endless gradient of shifting color.
The silence between tolls was heavy here, like the pause before an intake of breath.
Then the hum returned — not from below this time, but from everywhere at once.
Elara slowed. "Do you hear that?"
The older woman didn't answer. She was standing perfectly still, eyes forward.
The hum thickened, a slow pulse that seemed to press against Elara's chest. It rose, twisted, and became something like a voice — not speaking in words, but in impressions. Images, half-thoughts, sharp as glass:
A pendulum swinging over an open ocean.
A candle burning in reverse, wax climbing upward into the flame.
Twelve black keys on a piano, pressed one by one in perfect sequence.
The sensation coalesced into something direct — and Elara understood it, the way you understand a dream while you're in it:
You are mine until the twelfth toll.
Elara stumbled back. "What was that?"
The older woman's face was unreadable. "The Keeper."
"The—" Elara swallowed. "It just… talked to me."
"It doesn't talk," the older woman said. "It claims. It's letting you know you've been counted."
"Counted for what?"
"For the tolls." She stepped forward again, as if the matter were settled. "And for the end."
Elara didn't move. "You're saying it's— it's alive?"
The older woman finally looked at her. "Alive isn't the right word. But it's aware. And it never forgets what it's owed."
The hum receded, leaving a faint ringing in Elara's ears. Somewhere in the haze ahead, a faint golden light was beginning to glow.
The older woman gestured to it. "That's where we stop for the night."
"Night?" Elara said, glancing up at the unchanging sky.
"You'll understand when we get there."