The breakthrough came three days later, from a source no one had expected.
A young woman appeared at my shop early in the morning, before I'd even unlocked the door, her face pale and her hands shaking. She was dressed in the plain clothes of a servant, and she kept glancing over her shoulder as if someone might be following her.
"Are you Elara Thornwood?" she asked.
"I am. Can I help you?"
"I need to talk to you. In private. It's about..." She swallowed hard. "It's about the Order."
I let her into my shop, locked the door behind us, and guided her to a seat in my back room. Only then did I notice what she was clutching: a folded paper, worn at the edges as if it had been handled many times.
"My name is Sera," she said. "I work in a house in the Outer Ring. The master there—he's been having visitors. Late at night, when the servants are supposed to be asleep. I wasn't supposed to see, but I couldn't sleep one night, and I heard them talking."
"Talking about what?"
"About power. About collections. About the ritual." She unfolded the paper and handed it to me. It was a sketch, roughly drawn but clear enough to make out: a chamber filled with crystalline structures, all connected by threads of light, with a central figure at their heart. "I heard them say they're almost ready. That the collection is nearly complete. That the Ascension will happen on the new moon."
I studied the sketch, feeling ice settle in my stomach. The crystalline structures were clearly Watchers' Stones—dozens of them, perhaps more—all connected in a vast network. And at their center, the figure had its arms raised, as if calling down something from above.
"The new moon," I said. "That's in four days."
Sera nodded. "They said the Thornwood woman was getting too close. That they needed to accelerate the timeline. And then they laughed, because..." She hesitated, then forced herself to continue. "Because they said she would understand soon enough. That it was her destiny."
My destiny. The Order had been waiting for me, specifically. Or for someone from my line.
"Where is this house?" I asked.
Sera gave me an address in the Outer Ring, one I didn't recognize. Then she stood, looking suddenly anxious. "I've told you everything I know. I need to go—they'll notice if I'm gone too long."
"Wait. You should come with me to the Guard. You can tell them—"
"No." Her voice was firm despite her fear. "I've done what I can. The rest is up to you. Just... stop them. Please. Before they do something that can't be undone."
She was gone before I could argue, slipping out the back door and disappearing into the morning crowd.
I contacted Chen immediately, and within hours, the Guard had the house under surveillance. It was unremarkable from the outside—a modest dwelling in a working-class neighborhood—but the magical signatures emanating from its basement were unmistakable.
"They've warded it heavily," Chen reported that evening. "We can't get a clear reading of what's inside without triggering their defenses. But the power levels match what we'd expect from multiple Watchers' Stone arrays."
"How do you want to proceed?"
"We wait until the night of the new moon. Catch them in the act." Chen's expression was grim. "It's risky—if we're wrong about the timing, they could complete the ritual and escape before we can stop them. But if we move too early, we might miss the leaders entirely."
"What about the servants? The people who might be inside?"
"Collateral damage, if they're loyal to the Order. Innocents, if they're not." Chen met my eyes. "I won't pretend this is easy, Thornwood. But we're dealing with people who have been planning this for two centuries. We can't afford to be careless."
I thought about Sera, her pale face and shaking hands. The courage it must have taken to come forward, to risk everything on the chance that someone might listen.
"I want to be there," I said. "When you go in. I want to see what they've built."
Chen nodded slowly. "Done. Get some rest, Thornwood. The new moon is in four days, and I have a feeling we're all going to need our strength."
I returned to my shop, but rest didn't come easily. I sat at my workbench, surrounded by the tools of my trade, and thought about destiny. About the Thornwood name and its dark history. About old Halvin and what he might have known, what he might have hidden.
The Order had been waiting for me. For someone from my line. That could only mean one thing: the ritual they were planning required something specific, something that ran in bloodlines. Something I might possess without knowing it.
Four days. Four days to prepare for whatever was coming. Four days to figure out what role I was supposed to play in a drama that had been unfolding since before I was born.
I opened my repair kit and began checking my tools, one by one. Whatever happened, I would be ready.
That was all I could promise.