The little bell above the door was supposed to be a warning. Tonight, it was a death knell.
It chimed its cheerful, tinny song, a sound so out of place in the near-reverent silence of my workshop that it felt like a scream. I didn't look up. My entire world had narrowed to the heart of the antique silver music box on my workbench. A filigree of stars and moons chased each other across its lid, but its soul—the clockwork mechanism within—was broken. I was its surgeon, my tools laid out with sterile precision: tweezers, loupes, a polished set of awls. The air smelled of cleaning oil, old wood, and the relentless Cinderfall City rain drumming against the front window. It was a scent I had curated, a scent of safety.
A lie.
It was two hours past closing. The hand-painted "Open" sign was flipped to "Closed," its cheerful lettering a stark contrast to the descending dusk. The heavy steel security gate, a grim necessity in the Undercroft district, was pulled halfway down, leaving a gap just large enough for a stray cat or a desperate soul to crawl through.
No one should be here.
"Mom?" Rowan's voice, soft as felt, drifted from the small apartment in the back. My heart, which had been beating in time with the slow, steady tick of the grandfather clock in the corner, stuttered. He was supposed to be asleep, tucked away with the worn copy of The Little Prince we'd read for the hundredth time.
"It's okay, sweet boy," I murmured, my voice a low, reassuring hum I didn't feel. "Just the wind. Remember the game. Be a quiet little mouse."
A soft rustle from the back room told me he'd burrowed under his covers. Good boy. He knew the games. Games that weren't games at all.
My hand, steady as a rock moments before, now trembled slightly as it slid from the delicate gears of the music box. It moved beneath the scarred surface of my workbench, my fingers brushing past jars of screws and spare parts until they found the familiar, cold comfort of steel. The stiletto wasn't a clockmaker's tool, but it had saved my life more times than I could count. Its silver-etched blade was designed for things far older and tougher than brass and copper.
"We're closed," I called out, my voice louder this time, deliberately flat. A test.
The drumming rain was the only answer for a long moment. Then, a soft, wet squelch as a heavy boot settled on the rain-soaked welcome mat. The door clicked shut, not with a slam, but with a chilling finality. The faint glow from the streetlights was cut off, plunging the front of the shop into a cavern of shadows punctuated by the faint moonlight glinting off a hundred glass clock faces. My stomach hollowed out. A customer would have apologized, flustered. A thief would have been louder, smashing and grabbing, or far quieter, a ghost in the dark.
This was something else. Something I hadn't hunted, but which had now come hunting for me.
My senses, honed by seven years of paranoia and the strange, unwelcome awakening in my blood, screamed at me. I could smell them now, an odor that cut through the comforting scent of my shop. Grave-dirt. Rotting leaves. And beneath it all, a sharp, electric tang like burnt ozone. The signature of a ghoul—a corpse animated by vampiric blood and dark will. Not just one. Two of them.
A shape detached itself from the gloom by the door, its form bulky and wrong in the tight space between a display of cuckoo clocks and a row of elegant mantelpieces. Then a second, flanking it. They didn't move like men. They moved like wolves, all predatory grace and unnatural silence, their joints seeming to bend at odd angles.
The first one spoke, its voice a low rasp, like stones grinding together in a tomb. "The Gilded Cage. Cute. Did you name it yourself?"
My grip tightened on the stiletto. They knew the shop's name. They knew I was here. This wasn't random.
"You're mistaken," I said, my voice dropping to a near whisper as I slowly rose from my stool, letting the deeper shadows of the workshop swallow my form. I was a phantom among the skeletons of timepieces. "There's nothing for you here."
The second one laughed, a wet, gurgling sound that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. "Oh, we think there is. We're collectors. And we've been sent for a very specific... acquisition."
My blood ran cold. The way it said the word—acquisition—was too clean, too corporate. It was a word he would use. A word that still haunted my nightmares.
The lead ghoul took a step forward, its form resolving in the dim light. Its skin was the color of tallow, stretched tight over a blocky frame. Its eyes were milky white, devoid of pupils, but they were locked directly onto me. "The Dravos heir. The Sovereign wants what is his. Give us the boy. He said you'd be... reasonable."
Dravos.
The name hit me like a physical blow, a fist to the gut that stole all the air from my lungs. It was a name I had buried seven years ago under a mountain of hate and grief. A name I had meticulously scrubbed from my life, from my very identity. Rhyian Dravos. The Sovereign of Cinderfall. The monster who wore a crown of corporate steel and ruled the city from his throne in The Obsidian Gate.
The man who had loved me. The man who had destroyed me.
And he knew about Rowan. The secret I had guarded with every fiber of my being, the one pure thing in my life, was out. How? After all this time, how?
"You tell your master," I snarled, the sound ripping from my throat, raw and feral, "that he has no heir. You tell him he buried any claim to that name seven years ago."
The lead ghoul's lips peeled back from grey gums in something that was meant to be a smile. "He also said you'd be difficult. A shame. The Sovereign will enjoy breaking you again."
My rage was a flash of white-hot lightning, burning away the fear. Breaking me again. He thought he could send his dogs to my door, to threaten my son, and I would just crumble? The girl he had broken was dead. I was the woman who had clawed her way out of the grave he'd left her in.
Before the ghoul's smile had fully formed, I moved.
I kicked my stool back, the screech of wood on wood a shriek of defiance. In the same motion, I swept a tray of tiny, razor-sharp clock hands off the bench. They scattered through the air like shrapnel, glinting in the gloom. It was a cheap trick, but it worked. Both ghouls flinched, a flicker of surprise in their dead eyes.
It was all the opening I needed.
I didn't charge the leader. I went for the second one, the one who had laughed. I flowed around a towering regulator clock, using its bulk as a shield. The Aethel blood in my veins sang, not with power, but with a cold, clear certainty. It showed me the path. It highlighted the weaknesses. I didn't have a vampire's strength or speed, but I had something better: instinct.
The ghoul lunged, its hands like claws. I dropped low, the wind of its passage stirring my hair. As I came up, the stiletto in my hand was no longer a tool; it was a fang. I drove it upward, not into the ghoul's chest, which would be like stabbing a side of beef, but into the soft, vulnerable space beneath its jaw, angling for the brain stem. My Aethel sense screamed that this was the anchor point for its animation.
The blade punched through flesh and gristle with a sickening wet crunch. The ghoul froze, a look of comical surprise on its waxy face. A tremor ran through its body, and it fell backward, crashing into a display of antique pocket watches, sending a shower of glass and gold into the air. It didn't get back up.
One down.
I spun, yanking the stiletto free, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The lead ghoul was no longer smiling. It was staring at its fallen companion, then at me, its dead eyes filled with a flicker of something new. Annoyance.
"You're faster than the reports indicated," it rasped, starting to move toward me, circling now. "A human shouldn't be able to do that."
"I'm full of surprises," I breathed, backing away slowly, keeping the cluttered workshop between us. My eyes darted around, cataloging potential weapons. A heavy brass pendulum. A soldering iron. The winding key for the grandfather clock, heavy and star-shaped.
It lunged, far faster than its partner. I wasn't ready. It caught me by the front of my shirt, the fabric tearing as it lifted me off my feet. Its strength was obscene. The smell of decay was suffocating. I slammed the heel of my palm into its nose—a human weak point, but on a ghoul, it just made a dull thud. It barely registered the blow.
Its other hand snaked toward my throat. I twisted, kicking out, my boot connecting with its knee. There was a crack of bone, but it didn't slow. It was backing me toward the wall, toward the door to the apartment. Toward Rowan.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced the veil of my rage. I couldn't fight it head-on. It was too strong.
I drove the stiletto into its shoulder, but the blade skidded off bone. It grunted, more irritated than hurt, and tightened its grip, my feet dangling inches from the floor. Black spots danced in my vision as its fingers constricted around my neck.
"Enough games," it snarled, its face inches from mine. "The Sovereign wants the boy alive. He never said anything about you."
Its grip was a band of iron. My lungs burned. My weapon was useless. Through the roaring in my ears, I heard a tiny, terrified whimper from the back room.
Rowan.
No. No. Not him.
With the last of my strength, I let my body go limp for a split second, then swung all my weight to the side, kicking off the wall. The maneuver caught the ghoul off balance. We crashed sideways into the massive grandfather clock. The ancient wood groaned, and the clock toppled, falling with the slow, majestic finality of a great tree.
The ghoul roared as the heavy oak case pinned its legs to the floor. Its grip on my throat loosened just enough. I gasped for air, scrambling away, my throat raw. I had a moment. An instant.
But it was already pushing the clock off its legs, the wood splintering under the unnatural strain. It was hurt, it was angry, and I was weaponless, my stiletto still embedded in its shoulder. It rose to its full height, a monster of myth silhouetted against the shattered remains of my sanctuary.
It took a step toward me, its dead eyes promising a slow, painful end. My back was to the wall. The door to Rowan's room was just a few feet away. I was out of tricks, out of time, and out of hope.
The ghoul raised its hand, claws extended, for the final blow. And in that moment, as I prepared to die to buy my son a few more seconds, the front door of the shop didn't chime.
It exploded inward.