The wind that howled over the valley of Serenhal was hollow — like it passed through the bones of something ancient.
Below, cradled by frost-covered hills, lay the Sleeping City. Its towers were half-swallowed by vines and mist. No birds sang. No lights flickered. And not a single soul stirred — because no one had moved in Serenhal for over a thousand years.
The city was cursed.
Time had stopped here.
And yet… Elara felt a heartbeat echoing beneath her feet.
---
Into the Stillness
Kael tightened his grip on his blade, scanning the ruins. "No signs of traps. No movement. But everything here feels… wrong."
"It should," Mira muttered, placing a warding rune on her wrist. "Serenhal was frozen during the Great Collapse. The city tried to cast a preservation spell to survive — but something twisted it."
Liora stepped beside Elara, eyes scanning the buildings. "What exactly are we looking for?"
Elara closed her eyes.
"The Third Marker. If the Watcher was right, it's buried deep within the Chronos Vault — the heart of Serenhal's central clocktower. But we need to get there without breaking the spell holding the city together."
"Otherwise?" Kael asked.
She opened her eyes. "We'll unfreeze a thousand years of lost time. All at once."
---
Ghosts in Glass
They moved through the city slowly. Statues stood on every corner — only they weren't statues.
They were people, caught mid-breath, mid-thought, mid-emotion. A child reaching for a butterfly. A couple about to kiss. A soldier raising a horn to sound an alarm.
Frozen. Forever.
Mira swallowed hard. "This is worse than I imagined."
Elara touched the shoulder of a woman kneeling with a book in her lap. "They didn't die. They just… stopped."
"And they'll start again," Liora whispered. "If we make a mistake."
---
The Inner Sanctum
Reaching the clocktower was easy.
What wasn't easy… was the door.
It shimmered like quicksilver and pulsed with temporal magic — wild, unstable, alive.
Kael placed a hand on it and recoiled. "This door doesn't just block entry. It guards against future itself."
Elara stepped forward and raised the key she'd taken from the Dead Archive — a sliver of woven starlight and memory.
The door trembled.
"I need to align the key with the exact moment Serenhal froze," she said. "Otherwise, the vault will consume us."
"And if you guess wrong?" Mira asked.
"I don't guess," Elara replied. "I remember."
---
The Vault of Time
Inside, time was fluid.
The walls moved like water. Steps reshaped themselves as the group walked. Memories from a thousand years ago flickered in the air — soldiers preparing for war, children learning spells, rulers arguing in glowing chambers.
And at the center: a crystalline pedestal. Upon it sat the Third Marker — a sphere of black glass pulsing with blue flame.
Elara approached cautiously.
The marker watched her.
Then it spoke — not with words, but memory.
A vision pierced her mind — Theren standing in another ruined city, holding two markers, his eyes glowing with stolen light. He raised a hand and tore a hole in the sky.
And behind him stood… something else. Tall. Faceless. Waiting.
Elara gasped.
"He's not working alone," she whispered. "He's serving something older than the veil."
---
A Choice in Silence
As she reached for the marker, a second vision erupted — herself, burning, screaming, being consumed by magic as the veil collapsed and reality broke into pieces.
"Don't touch it," Kael growled. "It's a trap."
"No," Elara breathed. "It's a test."
She stepped forward.
The marker pulsed.
Then accepted her.
With a flash of light, the crystal dissolved into her hands — the Third Marker claimed.
The entire city shuddered.
Time screamed.
---
Awakening
The preservation spell began to crack.
Frozen citizens blinked.
Rain that had hung in mid-air began to fall.
Elara turned to the others. "RUN."
They dashed back through the streets of Serenhal as bells began to ring — the city coming back to life in a single heartbeat.
A soldier blinked awake and sounded an alarm.
Children screamed.
Magic flickered in streetlamps that hadn't burned in centuries.
By the time they reached the outer gate, the entire city was moving again — confused, scared, and collapsing under the weight of too much time too fast.
Mira sealed the entrance behind them with a pulse of light.
"Well," she breathed. "That was fun."
Kael looked at Elara. "Three down. Nine to go."
But Elara wasn't smiling.
She held the Third Marker to her chest and whispered, "Whatever Theren's awakening… it's not just power. It's vengeance. And it remembers me."