“What's it doing?” Corrin whispered.
Damian listened to the rhythm of the scratching, trying to decode its pattern. Three long scrapes, two short, four long. Over and over, with the patience of something that had all the time in the world.
“Carving,” he realized. “It's carving something into the wall.”
The scratching stopped abruptly, followed by the sound of footsteps retreating into the night. Damian waited until he was sure the Hollow had gone before investigating.
His fingers found the fresh marks in the stone, deep gouges that were still warm from the friction of creation. The symbol was complex, circular, made up of interlocking spirals andsharp-edged runes that seemed to pulse with residual heat. When he traced its outline, the marks grew brighter, responding to his touch with an intimacy that made his breath catch.
“Do you recognize it?” Corrin asked.
Damian nodded slowly, his throat tight with memory and fear. “It's identical to a mark that appeared on my mother's hand the night she died. A soulbinding sigil.”
The implications hung between them like a curse. Soulbinding was the most forbidden of all magics, the practice that had gotten his mother killed and cost him his sight. It created a connection between souls that transcended death, allowing one person to channel their life force into protective spells for another.
But soulbinding required two willing participants, a giver and a receiver. His mother had died trying to protect him, but what if her spell hadn't failed? What if it had simply been waiting for the right moment to complete itself?
“Damian,” Corrin said carefully, “if your mother's spell is still active, if it's been looking for a way to finish what she started...”
“Then I'm in more trouble than just time-debt,” he finished.
That night, Damian lay in his narrow bed and stared at the ceiling he couldn't see. The symbol outside his door pulsed with steady warmth, and every few minutes he found himself getting up to touch it, feeling the way it responded to his presence like a living thing.
He ran his fingers over the carved mark, unable to explain why he needed the contact. The symbol was warm, nearly body temperature, and seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. When he was distressed, the warmth intensified; when he was calm, it faded to a gentle hum.
Sleep, when it finally came, brought dreams not of the empty quiet that usually haunted him, but a silence so thick it felt likevelvet pressed against his ears. Within it, something vast and patient moved closer, breath by breath.
In the deepest part of his sleep, Damian heard something that wasn't quite a voice, wasn't quite a whisper, but carried the weight of absolute certainty: “Soon.”
He woke with the word echoing in his mind and frost covering his windows despite the warm night. Outside, a raven sat on his windowsill, watching him with eyes that reflected no light. When he opened the window, the bird didn't flee. Instead, it cocked its head and studied him with an intelligence that seemed distinctly non-animal.
“Soon,” the raven said, its voice like wind through gravestones. Damian knew then that something fundamental had changed. The waiting was almost over.
Whatever had been listening for his call was finally ready to answer.
Chapter 3
Burn Me to Remember
Damian
Damian woke from a nightmare where his healing hands were covered in blood he couldn't feel. The dream-blood was sticky and warm and accusatory, belonging to everyone he'd failed to save. Mrs. Kess, bleeding time from her withered veins. The woman at the clinic who'd begged to trade her final year. Children who'd died while he slept, their small hearts stopping in the darkness between one breath and the next.
At the edge of his hearing, in that twilight space between sleep and waking, someone whispered—a language unknown but painfully familiar, syllables heavy with meaning that pressed into his bones. The words felt ancient, weighted with power and sorrow, speaking of thresholds and crossings and the terrible price of mercy.
He rolled out of bed with hands that still felt stained, though he knew the blood was only dream-memory. His skin was damp with sweat that smelled wrong, like winter mornings and oldgraves. When he touched his face, his fingers came away cold despite the warm night air filtering through his shutters.
The city beyond his window was too quiet. Varos never truly slept, but today even the time-bells lagged, their mechanical heart stuttering, searching for a tempo that wouldn’t come. The cadence that marked his days for twenty years had fractured—like the city’s soul was miscounting the hours.
A knock at his door interrupted his brooding. Corrin's particular pattern, but faster than usual, urgent with barely contained alarm.
“Something's wrong with the city,” they said without preamble when he opened the door. Their voice carried the particular tension of someone who'd been awake all night, watching the world change in small, impossible ways.
“Wrong how?” Damian asked, accepting the cup of tea they pressed into his hands. The liquid was too hot, scalding his tongue, but underneath the pain was the familiar comfort of shared ritual.
Corrin paced the cramped space, shoes tapping out an uneven rhythm. “People are still talking about what happened with the clocks. The Exchange’s ‘mechanical failure’ story isn’t convincing anyone. Now there are rumors spreading—some say the hourglasses are changing, that the city itself is holding its breath. Whatever’s happening, it’s bigger than we thought.”
Damian set down his cup with trembling hands. Upward flowing sand meant temporal inversion, magic so advanced and dangerous that even mentioning it could draw the attention of the Time Exchange Authority. “How many people know?”
