The palace woke to a sky the color of forged steel. Dawn's light slid across the corridors, cool and sharp, turning every drop of last night's rain into a fleeting star.
Asha left her chamber early, the ring on her finger warm as if it had been dreaming with her. The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and distant rain.
Her workshop waited with the steady breath of gears and oil. She checked the half-built clock, its heart still pulsing from the night before, that strange single tick echoing in her mind.
The gear she'd left on the windowsill lay exactly where she'd set it, but a faint new mark ran across its rim—an etched line that hadn't been there yesterday.
She touched it lightly. The metal was warm.
The door opened.
Kairon entered without guard or herald, carrying a rolled parchment. He looked more shadow than man in the early light.
"You heard it too," she said before he could speak.
His eyes narrowed, reading more than her words. "What did you hear?"
"A beat. From the east wing. Slow. Deliberate." She placed the gear in his hand. "And this—someone touched it."
He turned the piece in his palm, thumb grazing the new etching. "No one entered your room," he said. Not a question—an observation heavy with the knowledge of every guard post in the palace.
"Then the palace itself is knocking," Asha replied.
Kairon set the gear down with care. "We investigate tonight. Together."
Evening draped the palace in a blue-gray hush. They moved through corridors of stone and echo, their lantern casting trembling halos on ancient murals. Guards stayed at a distance, aware that orders were different tonight.
The east wing smelled of damp stone and something older, a faint sweetness like pressed flowers hidden too long. The triple-locked door waited, brass catching the lamplight like a half-tamed flame.
Kairon produced a ring of keys, each metal a different color. "Iron, brass, obsidian alloy," he said quietly. "Built to hold back what memory cannot."
As he turned the first key, a low vibration passed through the floor—steady, like a heartbeat answering his touch. The second lock clicked, a sound soft enough to feel rather than hear.
Before the third, he paused. "If we cross this threshold, there may be no way to forget it," he said.
"I build clocks to keep time honest," Asha replied. "I won't turn away from it."
Their eyes held, the space between them charged with unspoken trust. Kairon turned the final key.
The door opened inward on a breath of cool air and the smell of long-kept secrets.
Inside lay a chamber lined with mirrors and old brass machines, each one humming faintly, as if a thousand memories were trapped in quiet conversation. At the center stood a single great clock, its pendulum motionless yet impossibly alive.
On its face, etched deep and unmistakable, was a single word.
ASHA
The sound of her name in silent brass filled the room more completely than any bell.
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