Knock! Knock!
Clyde opened his eyes slowly. Through the window, every lantern on the street was burning bright.
Mechanical day already? I barely feel like I slept at all.
"Come in!" he called out, his voice still rough from sleep.
Creak. The wooden door swung open slowly. Luchian stood in the doorway, already dressed, already looking like he had been awake for a reasonable amount of time like a normal person.
"There is a letter in the mailbox addressed to you." He held out the envelope.
"Thank you, Luchian."
"No need." Luchian turned to go. "I'm heading out to sell carrots. I already laid your suit out for you, it's just outside the door."
Click. The door shut behind him.
Clyde sat up and looked at the envelope in his hands.
What could be inside this?
He shook it lightly. Thud. Something solid shifted inside, heavier than just paper.
He tore the envelope open and tilted it. A folded letter slid out first, and then something else fell and hit the floor with a small clink!
A card.
Clyde picked it up carefully. Cold to the touch, noticeably colder than the room around it, the gold and silver and bronze of the cog designs across its surface catching the morning light brighter than they had any right to. The cogs were still spinning. The clock at the center was still ticking, its hands moving at their own steady pace.
The Astral Card from Marcus. This is it, isn't it?
He turned it over in his hands. The Lunar Sigil that would have belonged to Marcus was gone, dissolved away during purification, leaving only the Divine Ichor's own design behind.
Can I actually use this thing?
He unfolded the letter.
Come to the principal's office. Soren will teach you how to use the card. Be there by three mechanical day. From Aldric Nox Nocturne.
Clyde read it twice then looked at the card again.
Acceleration. That ability could actually be very useful down the line.
He slid the card into his coat pocket, picked up his suit from outside the door, dressed quickly, and fixed his collar in the small mirror above his washbasin.
Outside, the street smelled like cool fresh air and distant bread from the market stalls already setting up for the day. Clyde walked at a comfortable pace, hands in his pockets, the card sitting solid and slightly cold against his hip through the fabric.
The Academy was busy when he arrived. Students moving in clusters through the front gates, the kind of organized chaos that a school produced every morning without fail. He navigated through it without stopping and knocked on the principal's office door.
"Come in."
Clyde pushed the door open. "You wanted to see me, Principal Aldric?"
Aldric was behind his desk, composed as always, one hand resting on an envelope on the table in front of him. "Yes. Your reward for the successful elimination of the Howling last night."
He pushed the envelope across the desk.
Clyde picked it up and took a small peek inside.
One hundred shillings?!
He kept his face as neutral as he could manage, which took real effort.
"You are now an official member of the Lunar Sentinels," Aldric continued, leaning back slightly in his chair. "You will attend meetings, participate in discussions, and receive payment upon completion of each commission." He paused, and something in his expression shifted, became more serious. "I also need you to understand what that means going forward."
Clyde waited.
"The things you will encounter from here will not be like what you faced last night." Aldric's voice was even, but the weight behind it was real. "The Howlings you will likely face from this point onward are at Phase Six and above. At that level they carry power comparable to a demigod. You will be risking your life. Every commission."
Clyde was quiet for a second.
Luchian. I need to make sure he can live well. This is the only path that actually gets me there fast enough. And that timer I saw on the moon in my dream, whatever it's counting down to, it isn't something I can just ignore.
"I'm prepared," Clyde said.
Aldric studied him for a moment. Then nodded once.
"Good. One more thing." He opened a drawer and placed a folded cloth on the desk. Inside was a knife, its handle designed for flipping, its blade catching the light with the same faint shimmer that Hollow Edge carried. "A butterfly knife. Made from the same Lunarsteel as your sword. Learn to handle it carefully, it can cut the user if you are not precise."
Clyde tilted his head. "What happened to Hollow Edge?"
"We returned it to your room." Aldric glanced at the clock on his wall. "It's three. Go find Soren, he is in the alchemy lab."
Clyde picked up the butterfly knife carefully, pocketed it, and turned toward the door.
"Principal Aldric." He stopped. "I don't need to keep teaching here anymore, right?"
Aldric nodded once without looking up from his desk.
Clyde left.
Glug. Glug. Glug. The sound of something being carefully measured into a glass tube came from behind the alchemy lab door before Clyde even opened it. He knocked once and pushed inside.
Soren was at the central table as always, coat slightly rumpled, glasses slightly smudged, clearly in the middle of three different things simultaneously. He looked up when Clyde came in and his expression warmed immediately.
"Aldric told me about the card," he said. "Let me see it."
Clyde took the Clockwork card from his pocket and held it out. Soren took it with both hands, turned it carefully, held it up toward the lamp, tilted it at different angles while his amber Alchemist's Eyes scanned it in layers that Clyde couldn't see.
Then he put it down on the table and pulled a reference book from the shelf behind him, flipping through it with practiced speed.
"Clockwork Ichor," Soren said, landing on a page and pressing it flat. "The divine source of this ichor is the blood of Tempus."
"Tempus?" Clyde repeated.
"The God of Time." Soren set the book where Clyde could see it. "Ancient. One of the oldest divine sources we have records of." He adjusted his glasses. "I understand you want to learn how to use it?"
"Yes."
"Then here is how it works." Soren folded his hands on the table. "You offer blood to the card. Then you resonate with it, the same way you resonate with Hollow Edge, you align your wave with the card's frequency. If the resonance holds, the card responds to you and the ability becomes accessible." He paused. "There is also a chant required."
Clyde looked at him. "A chant?"
"Yes." Soren flipped the card over and pointed to the underside. Small symbols covered the surface, densely packed, each one precise.
Clyde leaned in. "I can't read any of this."
"It is Latin," Soren said. "The language of the gods. Every Divine Ichor card uses it." He reached under the table and produced a thin book, sliding it across to Clyde. "You will need to learn enough to read the chant correctly."
I have to learn a whole new language just to use this card?! This is absurd!
Clyde picked up the Latin book and stared at the cover with the expression of someone who had not been expecting this development at all.
"Let me demonstrate first so you understand what you are working toward," Soren said. He picked up the small knife from the edge of the table and made a precise, shallow cut across his palm. He pressed the bleeding hand flat against the Clockwork card.
Hissss.
The contact point sizzled faintly. The symbols on the card's surface brightened, the bronze and gold of the cog designs deepening in color, the hands of the small clock beginning to move faster.
Soren lifted his hand and spoke clearly and steadily.
"Tempus, umbra ultimae horae, dissolve filum tuum sine fine et sine ut potestas tua antiqua hunc secundum cruentem consumat."
Tempus, shadow of the final hour, unspool your endless thread and let your ancient power consume this bleeding second.
The room changed.
Whirr. Whirr. Whirr.
The cogs on the card spun faster, faster, until they were a blur of spinning bronze and gold, the sound of them filling the lab like a clockwork mechanism wound too tight. The air around Soren began to vibrate, a warmth spreading outward from the card in waves that Clyde could feel against his skin from three feet away, a pressure that was not physical but was very much present.
Clyde took a half step back.
That is a lot of power for something the size of a playing card.
Soren spoke again, quieter this time.
"Tempus auge."
Clock up.
And then Soren simply moved.
Not fast in the way Aurelian moved with his flash steps, not the sudden absence and reappearance of someone crossing distance in an instant. Faster than that, but differently, every single movement he made accelerated beyond what a human body should be capable of, each gesture and adjustment and blink happening in fractions of the time they should have taken, the space between actions compressed down to almost nothing.
Clyde watched with wide eyes.
So that's what Clockwork does. It doesn't move you through space. It compresses time around you.
Soren let the ability settle and looked at Clyde over the top of his glasses.
"That," he said, "is what you will be learning."