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The thirteenth chime was still reverberating through Alaric's bones when the darkness swallowed him whole. The thick air reeked of rancid clock oil and ancient parchment. Beside him, Seraphine gasped, her short sword trembling with a bluish glow.
"Don't look into its eyes!" she cried, but her voice came muffled, as if something was absorbing the sound.
Then the ticking began. It didn't come from the grand clock in the library, but from the walls, the floor, even the air itself. A mechanical rhythm that made their teeth hum.
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Magister Orlan stepped out from the shadows—transformed. His skin now bore patches of gleaming metal, and when he spoke, his voice echoed with the grinding of a thousand gears:
"Time spares no one, little von Drachenherz. Luthor learned that too late."
Alaric recoiled at the sight beneath the elf's tattered robes: bronze ribs opening and closing like clockwork, pumping mercury instead of blood.
"What did the duke do to you?" Alaric managed, feeling his own golden blood pulse in sync with the ticking.
Orlan turned his head at an impossible angle.
"The same thing he did to your mother. He turned truth into scattered pieces."
Seraphine coughed violently. When she pulled her hand away from her mouth, her fingers glistened with a thick silver liquid.
"It's just… mirror dust," she lied, but Alaric instantly remembered the portrait of the silver-eyed infant.
The magister let out a creaking laugh.
"You lie as poorly as your mother. The mercury in your blood betrays you, little sentinel."
And then Alaric understood: the silver blood was the price of her resistance to mirror-magic. A poison that protected her… and slowly killed her.
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A loud crash made them spin around. The library's shelves had shifted, revealing a hidden passage. The walls were etched with claw marks and dark stains, forming eerie circular patterns.
"Luthor's marks," Seraphine whispered, turning pale. "Father said he made them in his… final month."
Alaric stepped closer. The stains weren't just discolorations. When he touched them, the golden dust on his fingers revealed their true nature: clocks drawn in blood, each marking a different hour. The last one, beside the door at the end of the corridor, had broken hands stuck on the number XIII.
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Orlan reappeared in front of the forbidden door, his mechanical torso gleaming.
"Your father collects broken mirrors for a reason, Alaric," he said, mercury dripping from his joints. "Every reflection he shatters is a truth no one else will ever see."
A drop of the liquid metal fell onto the family portrait Seraphine carried. Instantly, the image changed: it now showed Duke Edric standing between two cradles, his reflection in a nearby mirror showing… something entirely different.
"Don't look!" Orlan tried to stop them, but it was too late.
The vision seized them:
A circular tower with twelve clocks, all screaming contradictory hours. In the center, a crystal cradle with a crying baby… its eyes shifting between gold and silver with each swing of a pendulum.
When they came to, Orlan was writhing on the floor, his gears seizing up.
"Run," he managed between metallic clicks. "Now that you've seen… he will come. The true Clockmaker will show you the cost of… rewriting… time…"
His words cut off as his heart mechanism ticked one final time—and stopped.
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