ANYA
The journey to the palace was a disorienting glide from one world into another. The carriage's wheels barely seemed to touch the ground as we left the familiar, gritty cobblestones of the Artisans' Quarter behind. The rhythmic clang of the ironworks and the distant shouts of the merchants faded, replaced by an unnerving, insulated quiet. Outside the carriage window, the city transformed. The crooked, tightly packed tenements gave way to wide, sweeping avenues lined with pristine, manicured gardens where not a single petal dared to fall out of place. The air itself changed; the comfortable scent of coal smoke and industry was scrubbed away, replaced by the clean, sharp smell of wet roses and something else, something I couldn't place—a faint, electric tang that prickled at the back of my throat. Magic.
I tried to quell the frantic ticking of my own heart by thinking like an engineer. This was just a problem to be solved. A problem with unknown variables and dangerously high stakes, but a problem nonetheless. Identify the components. Assess the structural integrity. Do not let fear compromise the design. It was a mantra my father had taught me, a way to build a scaffold of logic around the terrifying unknown. But as the carriage passed through the final gilded gate and the palace itself rose before us, my logic crumbled.
It was a fortress of impossible beauty. Carved from a luminous white stone that seemed to drink the daylight, its towers soared into the sky, their slender spires defying the laws of gravity I held so dear. There were no visible supports, no buttresses—just pure, unapologetic magic holding it all aloft. Glowing crystals, each the size of a small barrel, pulsed with a soft, inner light along the parapets, illuminating the structure even as the last of the sun's rays disappeared behind the clouds. This wasn't a building; it was a statement. A monument to a power that my gears and sprockets could never hope to replicate.
The guards escorted me not through a grand front entrance, but a small, discreet side door that opened into a maze of cold stone corridors. We walked in silence, our footsteps echoing off the walls, until we reached a set of immense oaken doors, intricately carved with scenes of ancient battles between mages and mythical beasts. One of the guards knocked once, a sharp, respectful rap, and the doors swung inward on their own, a silent display of power.
The throne room was a cavern of cold splendor. My eyes, accustomed to the warm, cluttered chaos of my workshop, struggled to take it all in. The ceiling was a dome of what looked like solid crystal, refracting the magical light from a massive chandelier into a thousand shimmering rainbows across the marble floor. Rich tapestries depicting the history of the Sterling bloodline lined the walls, and I could have sworn the woven figures subtly moved, their silk eyes following my approach.
At the far end of the room, on a simple but imposing throne of dark, polished wood, sat King Theron. He was not the towering, formidable monarch I had imagined. He was a man drowning in his royal robes, his shoulders slumped with a weariness that seemed to have settled deep into his bones. His crown looked too heavy for his head.
Standing to the right of the throne was another man, and I knew instantly that he was the one I had to fear. He was tall and slender, dressed in the deep blue robes of the Arcane Conclave. His face was a mask of elegant control, his silver hair swept back from a high forehead. He was Archmage Valerius, the leader of the Conclave and the most powerful mage in the kingdom. The faint ozone smell of magic was strongest around him, a tangible aura of power. His eyes, the color of a winter storm, met mine, and there was a chilling, analytical condescension in his gaze. He wasn't just looking at me; he was dissecting me, dismissing me.
"You are Anya Valerius," the King said, his voice surprisingly soft, yet it carried across the vast room with perfect clarity. A simple magical projection, but an effective one.
I curtsied, a clumsy, half-remembered gesture. "Your Majesty."
"We have summoned you on a matter of the gravest importance," the King continued, his gaze flickering to the Archmage. "Our kingdom's finest mages, under the expert guidance of Archmage Valerius, have attempted to resolve a… medical affliction concerning my son, the Prince. They have been unsuccessful."
The Archmage's lips tightened at the admission of failure. It was the only crack in his perfect, icy composure.
"We have heard whispers of your… craft," the King said, and the way he spoke the word "craft" made it sound like a provincial, slightly embarrassing folk art. "Your father, before his… departure, was known as the finest clockmaker in the kingdom. We have been led to believe you have inherited his skill."
"My father was more than a clockmaker, Your Majesty," I said, and the words were out before I could stop them. My father's pride, his spine of steel, asserted itself through me. "He was an engineer."
A flicker of surprise, perhaps even grudging respect, crossed the King's tired face. But the Archmage's expression was pure, undiluted scorn.
"What we require, artisan," Valerius said, his voice as smooth and cold as polished ice, "is not a lesson in semantics. The Prince is suffering from a curse of magical origin. We have exhausted all arcane avenues. As a final, desperate measure, we are turning to the… mechanical arts. An appeal to the lesser sciences, if you will."
The insult was deliberate, a finely crafted barb designed to put me in my place. But it also told me something vital: they were desperate. Truly, utterly desperate. Magic had failed them, and now they were turning to the very thing they despised.
"What is the nature of the Prince's affliction?" I asked, keeping my voice level and professional. If they wanted to see me as a mere craftsman, I would show them the disciplined mind of a master.
"We have come to call it the Crystal Heart," the King said, his voice heavy with grief. "It is a curse that is slowly, inexorably, transmuting his heart's tissue into crystalline lattice. With every beat, the process advances. His emotions are being suppressed, encased in crystal, and his life… his life is measured in the fractures that form with each contraction. The royal healers predict he has no more than a year."
I struggled to keep my expression neutral, my mind racing. A heart turning to crystal. It was impossible. It defied every principle of biology, of mechanics. Clockwork and gears operated on a system of predictable, logical motion. A curse was chaos, a perversion of natural law.
"You want me to… fix it?" The question sounded absurd even as I asked it.
"We want you to build something," the Archmage corrected, a cruel glint in his eye. "A device. A mechanism. A… contraption. Something of your craft that can halt the crystallization process. Contain it. Reverse it, if your so-called science is capable of such a thing." He said the word science like it was a foreign obscenity.
Now I understood. This wasn't just a commission; it was a public test, designed by Valerius for me to fail. If the kingdom's greatest artificer failed to solve a problem that had baffled its greatest mages, it would prove once and for all the inferiority of artifice. It would be the final, crushing blow to the Artisans Guild and a solid victory for the Arcane Conclave.
"This is a royal command, Anya Valerius," the King said, his weariness replaced by a glimmer of steel. The gentle father was gone, and the monarch had returned. "Succeed, and your family's name will be cleared. Your father's exile will be rescinded, and your debts erased. You will be granted a royal patronage, the first ever for an artificer."
It was everything I had ever dreamed of. The salvation I had mapped out in my planner, offered to me on a silver platter. And then came the other side of the bargain.
"Fail," the Archmage said, his voice a soft, venomous whisper, "and the penalty for meddling with the lifeblood of the royal line… is absolute. You will understand, of course. We cannot have it said that we allowed a mere artisan to tinker with the Prince's heart and fail."
The unspoken threat hung in the air between us, as sharp and clear as a shard of glass. Banishment. Or worse. My throat went dry.
"Do we have an accord?" the King asked.
It wasn't a choice. It was a sentence. "Yes, Your Majesty."
A guard stepped forward. "This way, artisan."
I was led out of the throne room and through another series of cold, silent hallways until we reached a heavy iron door at the end of a deserted corridor. The guard slid a key into the lock and pushed the door open.
"Your workshop," he announced.
I stepped inside, and my breath caught in my throat. I wasn't in a workshop; I was in an inventor's paradise. The room was twice the size of my entire apartment, with a high, vaulted ceiling and a massive, floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the palace grounds. It was filled with tools I had only ever read about in expensive textbooks. A seven-axis lathe stood in one corner, its brass and steel components gleaming. A micro-forge sat beside a collection of pristine glass beakers and alembics. The walls were lined with drawers filled with every gear, spring, and screw I could possibly imagine. It was a treasure trove of artifice, a gift of impossible value.
And then I noticed the details. The magnificent window, I saw now, had no handle or latch. It was sealed shut, the glass an inch thick. The intricate patterns on the walls weren't just decorative; they were finely wrought silver wires, a magical alarm system that hummed with a low, constant energy. The heavy iron door behind me closed with a solid, echoing thud. I turned to see the guard lock it from the outside. A final, definitive click.
They had given me a paradise. But it was a gilded cage.
My tool roll, the one the guards had packed, was sitting on the central workbench. It looked small and worn, a relic of my old life in this new, gleaming prison. I walked over and unrolled the leather, my fingers finding the familiar, comforting shapes of my own tools—the calipers my father had made for me, the loupe with the scratch on the lens, the worn wooden handle of my favorite screwdriver.
I sank onto the stool, the full, crushing weight of my task finally settling upon me. They had provided every possible resource, every perfect tool, every conceivable advantage. They had given me everything I needed to build a miracle.
But as I looked at the impossible challenge before me, I felt a despair so profound it threatened to swallow me whole.
They had asked a clockmaker to fix a broken soul.
And I didn't even know where to find the first gear.