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đź“– Chronicles of the Watchers
Chapter 11: The Keeper of Hours
Far from the shattered mountains, beneath a sky where no stars shone, stood the Sanctum of Hours.
A hall of black stone stretched endlessly, lined with thousands of silent hourglasses. Some ran with sand, some with blood, others with fragments of light that burned and dimmed in steady rhythm.
At the center sat a throne of fractured mirrors.
And upon it—
the Keeper.
He was not one man, but many. His form shimmered as if caught between moments: a dozen versions of himself overlapping—young, old, scarred, robed, armored—blurring together. Where his face should have been, only a void remained, with a single golden hourglass burning in its place.
The Hunters knelt before him, masks lowered.
"The vessel awakens," their voices spoke as one.
The Keeper's answer echoed like stone grinding against stone.
"Yes. I felt the Bell toll. The Watcher's spark is stirring again."
One Hunter raised his head. "He destroyed one of us. His mark fractured the hour."
The Keeper leaned forward, and the air in the hall froze. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.
"Not destroyed," he murmured. "Each Hunter that falls returns to me. But the boy… the boy is different. He bends what should not be bent."
He lifted his hand. In his palm appeared a shifting vision: Kairo leaping into the white shatter of the river.
"The child is both threat and key," the Keeper said. "If the Watcher fully awakens in him, he will unravel all the chains Kronas set upon the world. The flood will rise again."
Silence. Only the drip of time through the countless hourglasses.
"Shall we end him?" a Hunter asked.
The Keeper's voices layered, countless and endless.
"No. Not yet. If he dies too soon, the Watcher's spark will simply find another vessel. The boy must be broken, piece by piece, until he yields willingly."
The golden hourglass in his face flared brighter.
"Follow him. Harrow him. Drive him to despair. When he kneels, the Watcher kneels with him."
The Hunters bowed deeper, their voices hissing like sand sliding through glass.
"As you command, Keeper of Hours."
The Bell tolled once more—
and in the mountains far away, Kairo shivered, though he did not know why.
⚡ End of Chapter 11.