They blinked.
They were eyes.
When I came away from the telescope, I gasped, and the glass dome of the observatory turned to water. It gushed and poured down the tower. Seconds later, I heard it splash against the ground. Then the walls around me crumbled to dust. The telescope grew hotter, burning bright white before melting into a puddle of liquid gold. It dribbled across the floor and off the side. The stone floor was all that was left.
It was just me and open air, nothing stopping me from diving headfirst into the night.
I didn’t want to. I just wanted to run, but behind me, there was no longer a door or a staircase that led back down to the warm halls of Cygnus. There was no way out. I turned forward again, staring up at the stars.
And something—or someone—pushed me.
I smiled as I fell. For one small second, falling felt like flying. I’d never been so free.
Then there was a sort of severance—my body kept falling, but my consciousness slipped out just before the fatal crunch against the ground.
From high above, I saw myself cracked in two on the stone below, starry blood rivering out. That is when the fear finally came rushing in. It was all I felt, all I knew.
I was dead. And I knew that when I woke up, the same fate awaited me. Lamour said this was how one of his friends died—pushed from the top of the tower, cleaved on the pavement below.
I was next. I knew it.
“Is this the fate you want?” the phantom voice called.
I woke up screaming for Sidarphion.
He is the only one who can protect me, but my searches for him have been fruitless. I’ve torn through every book in the library, every tome in the tower, and come away with nothing.
What more can I do?
Claudia adds the entry to her collection in the top drawer of her desk. She checks her timepiece again, and—
No, that can’t be right. Right before she started reading the diary, it was six in the morning. Now it says it’s nearly midnight. She turns to her window and throws open the curtains, wincing when the quick movement tugs at her wounds.
It’s pitch black. Across the courtyard, the clock tower spears the sky. It’s the same as her timepiece—fifteen minutes to midnight.
How did she lose an entire day in a matter of minutes?
There’s a knock at the door.
“Claud?” Alistair calls.
She opens the door to find him and Angel waiting there, and the two sigh with relief upon seeing her.
“Have you been in here all day?” Alistair asks.
“I think so,” she says. He touches her forehead, checking her temperature.
“We brought more medicine and new bandages,” Angel says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something wrapped in parchment. “And some strawberry tarts from the Treaty.”
She steps out of the way and lets the two inside. “Is it really midnight?”
“Yes. You must’ve slept through the whole day,” Alistair says, guiding her to the bed and readying his bandaging supplies next to him. Claudia splits her robe to expose her chest, and Alistair gets to work on changing the bandages.
“I wasn’t asleep. I was just reading and… ow,fuck.” She groans when he pulls the bandage away. It feels like he’s peeling her skin clean off. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible I lost track of time.”
Angel leans over to Alistair and murmurs, “Love, what was in that medicine you gave her?”
“Nothing that would cause an effect like this,” he says, spreading thick clear goo over the gashes before applying a fresh bandage.
