The hourglass pact

ed against Elias's eardrums, slid cold fingers into

ke the Pa

st motes and the impossible upward flow of the glowing sand. The pedestal's woven iron threads seemed to t

mages flickered – his father's hands, slick with oil and something darker, etching

? What Pact?" His own voice sounded thin, swal

"Forged to bind the fractures. To keep the Deep Time sleeping.

, ancient smell of desert stone. Elias felt a terrifying lurch, a sense of the ground beneath the ground shifting. The walls

into urgency. "The Wardens smell the breac

ts prime-numbered ticking had stopped. Silence pressed down, heavier than before. Then came a new soun

nce now, almost... recognition? "Nyra. The Shattere

buried under the weight of his father's death and the suffocating gloom of the Gutter District. Nyra, with eyes like

vibrating through the stone floor. Dust sifted from the ceiling. Time itself felt thin her

he hourglass breathed, its light be

by the frantic hammering of his own heart and the escalating chaos from hi

e here. For him. For this. His father's warnings screamed in his me

ll and ordinary. Had it all been a hallucination? The pressure, the whispers, the visions? But the glyphs were dark. T

oorboards. He had to get out. Hide. Run. As his head cleared the

attered watch faces littered the floor. The display case lay in splinters. And stan

ilt of a starlight blade. Her eyes, wide and shockingly famili

ing, etched with a decade of ghosts. "Wh