The chamber exhaled a faint metallic chill as Asha stepped inside.
Mirrors lined every wall, tall as doors and rimmed with brass filigree that pulsed in the lantern light. Each reflection carried a fraction of her movement—one bending forward, another turning slightly late—as if the room remembered more versions of her than she had lived.
Kairon followed, lantern high. Its glow caught the still pendulum of the great clock at the center. The clock's face gleamed with careful engraving, the name ASHA cut so deep it felt alive beneath the eye.
She approached, heart quickening. "Who built this?"
"I don't know," Kairon said. He rested a gloved hand on the frame, the scar on his palm stark against the brass. "The chamber was sealed before I was born. My grandfather ordered it locked and told no one why."
Asha traced the edge of the engraving. The brass was warm, almost breathing. "This is my name. Not a family crest. Not a coincidence."
"Unless you've lived other lives," Kairon said softly.
Their reflections multiplied in the surrounding mirrors—two figures in endless repetition, lantern light flaring like captured moons.
Asha leaned closer to the clock. The pendulum gave a single, deliberate swing.
A low hum vibrated through the floor, a resonance that settled in her chest.
Kairon tensed. "It responds to you."
The clock ticked once, slow and certain. A gear within turned with a sound like a distant heartbeat.
Asha whispered, "It's listening."
They circled the chamber.
Each mirror held faint etchings at the corners: symbols half-erased by time, lines of language she almost recognized from her father's old blueprints. She pressed a fingertip to one sigil; the glass warmed under her touch.
"Not just a clock," she murmured. "An archive."
Kairon studied her reflection beside his own. "Could it… remove memory?"
"Or store it," she said. "Maybe both."
His eyes met hers in the mirror, the distance between them measured in heartbeats rather than steps. "Then this is the machine I asked you to build—before either of us existed to ask."
Asha turned toward him. "Or it's a warning."
The pendulum swung again.
A whisper of wind, though no door had opened, carried a faint scent of lemon oil and iron. The mirrors trembled as if the room itself remembered something painful.
"We should leave," Kairon said, voice low.
"I can't," Asha replied, her palm still against the warm brass. "Not yet."
The hum deepened. Tiny gears along the clock's rim began to move, each rotation sending a glint of light across the chamber walls. Reflections multiplied until the mirrors seemed to hold not just two people but dozens—each pair of eyes a slightly different past or future.
Kairon stepped beside her, close enough that the edge of his coat brushed her sleeve. His presence steadied the air.
"We'll come back," he said. "But not alone. And not without preparation."
Slowly, Asha lifted her hand. The clock quieted, the pendulum slowing until stillness returned. The warmth under her skin faded like a receding tide.
They sealed the chamber with the triple locks.
As they walked back through the silent corridors, the palace felt different—awake, attentive. Somewhere deep within, a single chime rang once, though no clock should have marked that hour.
Kairon glanced at her, lantern light sliding over the sharp plane of his cheek. "This changes everything," he said.
Asha tightened her grip on the ring, its gold a steady circle against her skin. "Or it's only the beginning."
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