The day passed quietly.
Too quietly.
No classes were held.
No curfews enforced.
Even the instructors, those ancient and stubborn guardians of routine, remained absent from the halls.
It wasn't peace.
It was a pause.
Like the academy itself was holding its breath.
---
Kairo stood at the top of the western observatory, where a bronze telescope pointed toward the heavens.
Below him, the Wellspring Tree shed no more leaves.
The name Kairo had vanished from its bark.
But something else had appeared in its place.
> "The Twelve are stirring," he whispered.
Lyra, sitting cross-legged behind him, looked up.
Her sleeves were rolled, her knives cleaned.
> "Who are the Twelve?" she asked.
He didn't answer at first.
Because to answer meant remembering.
And remembering meant pain.
---
A long time ago...
Twelve individuals knelt in front of him in a place called the Hall of Chains.
They weren't students or scholars.
They were monsters dressed in purpose.
Each one had given up something to serve him:
One gave up their name.
Another, their face.
One gave up the right to sleep.
And the last gave up their mortality, becoming an eternal observer—trapped in time's loop, reliving the same minute forever.
They called themselves the Order of the Bound.
And Kairo had once been their Axis.
---
He clenched his jaw and turned back to the telescope.
> "They were my... protectors. Or jailors. It depends on how you look at it."
Lyra raised an eyebrow.
> "And you think they're here now?"
> "Not yet. But they've awakened. Just like I have."
---
Meanwhile, in a ruined cathedral east of Eldholt...
The stained-glass window depicting a chained crown cracked.
A man without a face—wrapped in scholar's robes and shadows—stood from the altar where he'd been kneeling for centuries.
> "The Fourth has broken," he said in a voice stitched from silence. "The Axis turns."
He walked without walking, stepping through memory instead of space.
---
Back at the academy...
Headmaster Enver returned that night.
No announcement. No procession. Just a sudden pressure in the air—like gravity leaning a little harder.
He stood before the cracked Wellspring Tree.
Laid a hand upon it.
And then turned his gaze upward.
> "You were supposed to sleep longer, boy," he whispered. "You're not whole yet."
Behind him, a familiar voice spoke.
> "He's awakening faster than you predicted."
It was Professor Arlen. Pale-eyed. Calm. Dangerous.
> "Should we intervene?" he asked.
Enver shook his head.
> "No. Let the seals break. The more he remembers, the more useful he becomes."
> "And if he remembers everything?"
A pause.
Then:
> "Then we kill him before he remembers what we did."
---
Elsewhere, in a dreamless corridor hidden beneath the library...
Kairo walked alone.
This was not the real world.
It was the space between memories—a narrow, white corridor with no doors, only flickering lanterns that whispered as he passed.
He came here sometimes in his sleep.
Not by choice.
But by summons.
Tonight, something was waiting for him at the end.
A letter.
It floated in the air, sealed with a symbol he hadn't seen since the day he was first chained:
An eye closed by thorns.
He opened it.
And the ink rearranged itself mid-read, as if rewriting based on his understanding.
The letter said:
> To the One Who Was Broken:
> "You are not alone.
The others remember pieces.
When the Seventh cracks, the Clockwork Choir will begin to sing.
Do not let them bind you again."
> —The Dreamless
---
He awoke sweating.
The sun wasn't up yet, but something else was.
He felt it in the marrow of the air.
A presence at the edge of the academy.
Something old. Something not meant to walk under stars anymore.
He ran to the window and looked toward the eastern wall.
A figure stood atop it.
Cloaked. Silent. Watching.
Lyra stirred in the bed beside his—one eye blinking open.
> "It's one of them," he said.
> "One of who?"
> "The Twelve."
---
They both dressed quickly.
By the time they reached the eastern watchtower, the figure was gone.
But where he had stood, the stone had melted.
And carved into the melted rock was a symbol:
> ∞ — the mark of Timelessness.
Kairo touched it.
And for a split second, he remembered a boy on a battlefield screaming at the sky—his voice hoarse from betrayal.
He remembered hands reaching for him as he fell into a pit made of memories and false crowns.
Then the vision ended.
---
Back in the present...
He turned to Lyra.
> "When the Seventh Seal breaks," he said, "I might stop being me."
She didn't flinch.
> "Then I'll remind you who you are."
> "What if I forget you?"
> "Then I'll carve my name into your soul."
He smiled faintly.
But said nothing.
Because deep down, he feared she wouldn't be able to.
That the person sealed within him—the one who ruled chains and forgot mercy—might be too strong to resist.
And worse—
Might be right.
---
That night...
Far away, the Clockmaker opened his third eye.
A silver gear inside his pupil began to turn for the first time in centuries.
> "The boy dreams again," he said.
"The Choir must rehearse."