The eighth bell struck low and slow across the city — not from any tower, but deep beneath the cobbles, tolling like a heartbeat in the bones of Calligro.
Ilia crouched in the shadows behind the old coin exchange, watching the heavy-lidded clerk lock the gate and shuffle down the alley. The shop had been condemned for years, but the basement vault was still intact — according to the map Vex had handed her, anyway.
No lights. No backup. No margin for mistakes.
She found the side grate just where the boy's message had implied: beneath a rusted plaque that once read TRUST IN TRADE. With some effort and a snapped fingernail, she pried the grate loose and slipped inside.
The tunnel sloped downward fast, slick with mineral runoff and spiderwebs. Ilia moved by feel, counting her steps and breaths, until the wall gave way to a yawning silence. A cavernous room opened before her.
She lit nothing. But she could sense it — the shape of the air. She stepped forward carefully, hands trailing the damp stone, until her boot struck something metal.
She knelt.
A hatch. With no lock.
Ilia exhaled once. Twice.
On the third breath, she opened it.
A rush of cold air greeted her, carrying the faintest hum — not mechanical, but musical. Something with harmonics too complex for the ear to catch all at once.
The chamber beneath was spherical. Ilia could barely see it, but she felt it in her skin, like pressure. The floor sloped downward in a perfect curve. At the center stood a pedestal. Hovering just above it: a cube.
It wasn't floating in the air.
It was floating in time.
She stepped closer. The cube ticked softly, once per second, but irregularly. Like it was correcting itself, rewriting the rules around it.
Ilia's breath hitched. This was not just Shadari tech. This was pre-Fractional. A time fragment. She'd only ever seen drawings in banned textbooks.
She reached for it—and something grabbed her wrist.
"Don't."
The voice was smooth, calm, and absolute. A man stood just behind her, hood low over his face, robes the color of ash. His other hand held a strange knife — narrow, gleaming, with a hilt made of crystal glass.
"How did you get in here?" she asked, pulling away.
"The real question," he said, "is why you were sent."
Ilia bristled. "I don't take tests from people who hide in vaults."
"And yet here you are."
She turned slightly, angling her weight, calculating whether she could knock him off balance and run. He didn't move — as if he already knew what she was thinking.
"I don't want the cube," he said. "I want to see what you do with it."
Ilia's fingers hovered near the fragment. "It's a trap, isn't it? If I touch it, I'll be marked. Traced. Or worse."
"Yes," the man said. "But you were marked long before this."
Her eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
Instead of answering, he stepped back into the shadows.
"If you choose to take it, you'll carry more than time. You'll carry responsibility. And not just for yourself."
Ilia hesitated.
Then she reached out and touched the cube.
The moment her skin met the edge, it sank gently into her palm. The pedestal blinked out. The air went silent.
And the man was gone.
She stood there, alone, with the cube in her hand. It was warm — and still ticking, softly, like a second heart.
Far above, the ninth bell chimed.