The city was not built on stone.
It was built on memory.
That was the first thing Elias realized as he followed Ayélè into the outer sanctums beyond the Archive of Horns, places so old their names had become gestures instead of words. Clay streets shifted subtly beneath his feet. Walls bore the imprint of prayers not spoken but pressed into them by generations of hands. And the air carried a weight that wasn't heat or scent, but anticipation.
The war had not begun yet. But the city could feel it coming.
In the Veil District, named for the thin, shifting cloth of rituals that constantly billowed through its alleys, people were preparing for a festival not listed in any calendar.
Masks of salt and clay were being shaped. Fires were lit with blue smoke, a sign that possession was being invited. And in the plaza called Ashen Mercy, the bones of saints were boiled to reveal what truths had calcified within them.
"We shouldn't be here," Ayélè whispered.
"But this is where the Watcher will come next," Elias replied.
"You don't know that."
"I do now."
The Book had left him changed.
Where before there had only been the cipher, the code etched into every reality he leapt through, now there was a second voice. Not a Watcher, not Rae, not even one of his past selves. Something more... instinctual. It lived in his spine, in the back of his eyes. It whispered things that felt like memory but came from no time he could remember.
And that voice had said:
The Watcher wears a child tonight.
They found her sitting alone in the Temple of Clay Mothers, hands sunk into a bowl of black mud, humming a melody made entirely of breath and silence.
She looked no older than ten. But her mask, made of ivory shards and stained glass, was sculpted into a serene adult's expression, its smile stretching far beyond what a human face could carry.
As soon as Elias stepped into the temple, the temperature dropped.
Ayélè's sword hissed in its sheath. The child turned her head slightly, not toward them, but toward the moment they had entered, as if she were navigating time itself instead of space.
"You are not Kéon," she said in a voice like wind through chimes.
Elias didn't answer. He didn't need to.
"And yet," she continued, "you wear him well. Better than most."
"Who are you?" Elias asked.
"The Watcher, as you name me. But I am not the same one you fled from in the skin of the Archivist. I am... adjacent."
"You're a different Watcher?"
"No. I am the same presence. Different limb. Different face."
The Watcher stood, letting the clay drip from her fingers.
"Do you know why we appear as children in this world?" she asked.
"No."
"Because your ancestors fed us through their children's dreams. Because in your past, you gave your futures to the mirror. And the mirror gave them to us."
She stepped forward. Ayélè moved between them.
"Touch him," she warned.
"I already have," said the Watcher.
The child-thing opened her hands. A ripple of clay surged outward from her feet, etching a perfect circle on the temple floor. Symbols began to glow—ones Elias recognized from the bone carvings in the catacombs. The same spiral.
"You've seen your futures," the Watcher said.
"I've seen possibilities."
"Then here is our offer, Elias. Reveal to us the path of your next leap. Let us shape it. Let us place you in a future of your choosing."
"That's not how this works."
"It could be. We no longer wish to consume you. We wish to collaborate."
"Why?"
"Because something is coming. A force that even we cannot feed from. It reflects nothing. It devours mirrors. You call it the Empire of Waking Glass."
Elias froze.
"So the empire is real?"
"More than real. It is outside of time. It is not a nation. It is an idea that hunts other ideas. And it has found you."
"You want to stop it?"
"We want to survive it."
The Watcher held out her hands again. Clay rose from the circle, forming a mask of Elias's own face, but older, broken, and burning at the edges.
"Choose the face you will wear. Choose the path. Let us help you leap there."
Elias stepped forward.
Ayélè placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't," she said.
"We need answers."
"Not from them."
He looked into the mask. It shimmered with every version of himself. Ones that loved Rae. Ones that killed her. Ones that became kings, exiles, monsters.
And deep inside one, a face he'd never seen before: no eyes, no mouth, only a mirror.
"No," he said finally.
"We already leapt into one trap. I won't choose another."
The mask cracked in the Watcher's hands. Her smile didn't falter.
"So be it," she said.
The clay beneath Elias's feet surged upward. Ayélè grabbed him and pulled him backward, just as a screaming column of bone erupted from the floor. The Watcher dissolved into clay, swirling around the edges of the temple in laughter and grief.
"You are not the only leaper," her voice echoed."And not all of you say no."
Then she was gone.
Outside, the city trembled. But this time, it wasn't metaphysical.
Smoke rose from the Outer Sand. The claimant Ayélè warned of had arrived and he brought not armies, but reflections.
They walked like people but moved like memories. Their faces shifted between possibilities, blinking from child to elder, from friend to enemy.
They carried no weapons.
Only mirrors.
As Elias and Ayélè returned to the high sanctum, messengers ran in chaos. Bells clanged.
A horn, deep, resonant, never heard in living memory, sounded from the Spiral Throne.
The city's pact was breaking.
Elias stood at the highest tower, watching the mirrored soldiers march.
And from the shattered temple behind him, a whisper returned:
"This city dies in most threads…"
"But one path remains unwritten."
He clenched his fists.
"Then I'll carve it myself."