Chapter 18 · Inside the Wound

Falling through time felt like drowning in memories not their own.

Kael saw the academy founded. Saw his father young, desperate, opening the wound to power harbor wards. Saw Serath arrive—thing wearing men like coats.

Saw loops begin—cohorts of students repeating, harvesting, failing.

Saw mother sign.

Saw himself die in explosions until he learned.

Landing hurt. They stood on a shore of glass shards under a sky of swirling clocks.

Father waited—translucent, chained to a pillar of hourglasses.

"Kael," he said. Voice like distant surf. "You came."

Dorian fell to his knees. "Father?"

"Ghost of one." The man smiled sadly. "Serath split me when I refused harvest. I've watched my sons grow in repeats."

Kael approached. "How do we stitch?"

"Willing release," father said. "I give remaining key. You give memory of loops. Painful. Permanent."

Corin spat. "Permanent is death."

"Permanent is adulthood," father said.

Pulse shook the shore—thirty minutes almost up.

Serath stepped out of a clock face—dean, Halven, mother's puppet, all at once.

"Touching reunion," he said. "Seal needs one more payment." Falling through the wound was not falling through air. It was falling through every choice Kael had made and unmade—