The "Emporium of Lost Shards" was a place where time went to die.
By the third day, my hands were no longer just shaking; they were numb. Kael hadn't given me a bed. Instead, I slept for three hours a night on a pile of moth-eaten rugs behind the counter. My stomach was a constant, gnawing void, only silenced by the stale bread and thin soup he provided once a day.
"The clocks, Six," Kael barked as he headed out to the central market. "If the gears aren't turning by the time I'm back, you'll be sleeping in the rain tonight."
I looked at the corner. There were five of them—massive, floor-standing brass clocks. They were beautiful, or they had been once. Now, they were choked with dust and verdigris, their pendulums frozen like silent hearts.
I approached the first one. It was taller than me, topped with a carving of a weeping willow. I opened the glass casing and was hit by the smell of old oil and stagnant time.
In this world, most people didn't "fix" things. A person with a "Mark of the Mechanic" would simply touch the brass, their light would glow, and the gears would hum back to life as if by a miracle. They didn't need to understand the why; the magic did the work for them.
But I didn't have magic. I had a rag, a small screwdriver I'd found in the trash, and a stubbornness that was starting to feel like a weapon.
I began to take the first clock apart.
Piece by piece, I laid the gears out on the floor. My fingers fumbled at first. Without a Mark to guide me, the logic of the machine felt like a foreign language. But as the hours ticked by, something strange happened. Because I didn't have a "feeling" for it, I had to look closer. I had to study the teeth of every gear, the tension of every spring.
I was seeing the world in a way the "Dreamers" never did. They saw the result; I was seeing the soul.
By noon, I was working on the third clock—a strange, dark-wood piece with no markings. As I reached into the back of the casing to clear a thick web of dust, my fingers brushed against something cold.
It wasn't brass. It was smoother.
I pulled it out. It was a small, circular locket made of a dull, heavy metal that seemed to absorb the dim light of the shop. There was no keyhole, no latch. But as I held it, a sudden, sharp chill raced up my arm.
Thump.
I gasped, nearly dropping it. It felt like a heartbeat.
Thump-thump.
For a second, the gray void in my mind flickered. I saw a flash of white—a laboratory? A woman's face? Someone screaming?
The memory vanished as quickly as it came, leaving me breathless and trembling on the floor. I stared at the locket. It was vibrating slightly against my palm.
Across the street, through the grimy window, I saw a nobleman walking by. His forehead glowed with a brilliant violet light—the Mark of the Seer. He stopped, looking confused, his head tilting as if he heard a faint sound. He looked toward the shop, his eyes scanning the windows.
Terrified, I shoved the locket into the hidden pocket of my tattered dress.
A second later, the nobleman looked away, his Mark dimming as he continued on his way.
My heart was hammering against my ribs. Whatever that locket was, it was "loud" to those with Marks. It was something that shouldn't exist in a shop full of junk.
I turned back to the clock, my mind racing. I wasn't just a girl who cleaned silver anymore. I was a girl with a secret.
I picked up my screwdriver and went back to work. I worked faster now, the adrenaline masking the pain in my joints. If I could fix these clocks without a Mark, it proved I wasn't "empty." It proved that a Blank could do more than just survive.
When Kael returned at sunset, he found me standing in the center of the room.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
All five clocks were moving. The sound filled the shop, a rhythmic, mechanical heartbeat that drowned out the noise of the rain outside.
Kael stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at the clocks, then at my dirty, grease-stained face. His yellow Mark flickered unevenly.
"How?" he whispered. "You don't have the Mark. No one fixes a willow-clock without the Spark."
"I just... cleaned them," I said, keeping my voice flat, my hand pressing against the hidden locket in my pocket.
Kael walked over to the weeping willow clock. He touched the brass, searching for the magical residue he expected to find. When he found none—only the cold, hard reality of a well-oiled machine—his expression shifted from shock to greed.
"A Blank who can mimic the Marks," he muttered to himself. "Do you know what people would pay for a servant who doesn't use magic? For someone who can work 'off the grid'?"
He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw real danger in his eyes. I wasn't just a floor-scrubber anymore. I was an asset. An illegal one.
"Go to your rugs, Six," he said, his voice dropping to a low hiss. "We have a lot of work to do. And don't think about leaving. I've just doubled the locks on the door."
That night, as I lay in the dark, I pulled the locket out. It didn't glow. It didn't sparkle. It was just a heavy, silent weight.
But as I closed my eyes, a voice—soft, like a fading echo—whispered in the back of my mind.
...Find the girl without a dream...
I clutched the metal tight. I didn't have a dream yet. But I finally had a lead.