The world slowed to the ticking of clockwork hearts.
Edward moved like liquid shadow between the advancing cadets, his sword flashing with impossible precision. Each strike severed brass tendons and spilled black oil across the tower stones, yet his face held none of its usual levity—only a terrible, focused emptiness.
Sam barely raised his own blade in time to block a cadet's strike. The impact shuddered up his arm. *Too strong for a student.* The thing's chrome eyes reflected his face a dozen times, each reflection slightly distorted.
"You're not supposed to fight back," Headmaster Orlan murmured, watching Edward carve through his creations. "Thirteen was always... defective."
The servant girl grabbed Sam's wrist. Her fingers burned like dry ice. "Run. Now."
The Broken Mirror
They fled through catacombs where the academy's foundations gave way to older bones. The walls here pulsed with bioluminescent fungus, painting their flight in sickly green.
Edward's breathing came too evenly for their pace. "I remember London," he said suddenly. "Our office. The rain. You complaining about my tea habits."
Sam vaulted a collapsed archway. "And?"
"And I remember dying here three years ago." Edward's voice cracked. "Both can't be true."
The servant girl—Lira, she'd called herself—paused before a mirror covered in black velvet. "Memories are just stories told by electrical impulses. The Order rewrites them like scribes editing manuscripts." She yanked the cloth away.
The glass showed:
- Sam's reflection: His London self, holding a scalpel over a corpse
- Lira's: A crow-masked figure adjusting gears in a hollow chest
- Edward's: Nothing. Just the tower walls behind him
"Because you're not real enough yet," Lira whispered.
The Crowning Ceremony
The heart chamber stank of ozone and rotting meat.
At its center hung a massive orrery of flesh and brass, its orbiting bodies made from preserved organs threaded with copper wire. Around it stood thirteen figures in crow-feather mantles—one position stood empty.
Edward's place.
The lead figure turned. Bishop Aldric's face slid like wax beneath his mask. "We've been waiting, Thirteen. The eclipse reaches totality soon." His hand extended, offering a gear-shaped key. "Will you take your Crown?"
Edward stared at the key. Sam saw his fingers twitch toward it—a reflex, or something deeper?
Then the screaming started above them. Not from fear.
From transformation.
Chapter 5 End Hook:
The first transformed student crashed through the chamber doors—a seven-foot horror of fused flesh and grinding pistons. Its single eye locked onto Sam.
"Prime specimen,"it rasped. "The Architect will want this one intact."
Edward stepped between them, and for the first time, his shadow didn't match his shape.