The Collector continued observing and keeping things in check. He can't help but remember that day when the air in the Grey Meridian didn't just move…it fractured.
That day, the Collector stood behind his desk, his pocket watch vibrating so violently against his ribs that it sounded like a dying bird trapped in a cage. Usually, souls arrived as whispers. They arrived as sighs or whimpers.
Eliza Vane arrived as a scream.
The gray fog tore open, and she stumbled into the chamber. She wasn't a soft, glowing light like the child with the ribbon. She was a jagged silhouette of indigo and silver, her spectral form flickering with the memory of the poison that had just finished stopping her heart.
She hit the obsidian floor with a sound like breaking glass.
"Entry 8,902,442," the Collector began, his voice habitual, a shield against the sudden heat radiating from her. "Name: Eliza Vane. Cause of death: Arsenic. Time of arrival—"
"Shut up," she rasped.
The Collector froze. In a thousand years of auditing the dead, no one had ever told the Void to be quiet.
Eliza forced herself upright. Her ghostly hands were clawing at the obsidian, her nails leaving white streaks on the impossible stone. She looked up, and for the first time, the Collector felt the "Smoke of the Living" on a soul. She wasn't ready to be filed. She was still fighting a war that was already over.
"You have sixty-four years of unspent time, Eliza Vane," the Collector said, stepping around the desk. His charcoal suit billowed like a storm cloud. "A significant surplus. A waste of a perfectly good thread."
"I don't care about the years," Eliza hissed, her eyes—two pits of frozen starlight—locking onto the space where the Collector's face should have been. "I want to go back. I want to put my hands around her throat and feel the moment her heart stops."
"Vengeance is a heavy anchor," the Collector murmured. He leaned down, his smoky form looming over her. "It will only drag you deeper into the Great Silence. Most who come here seek peace. They want the fever to end. They want the weeping to stop. You... you want to set the world on fire."
"I want the world to burn with me," Eliza countered. She stood up, her legs trembling but her spine as straight as a blade. "You have the power. I saw the watch. I saw the sand. Give me five years. Give me a thousand days, and I will pay you back in a currency the universe hasn't seen in an age."
The Collector tilted his head. A faint, violet light—the remnant of Aethelred—pulsed in his chest. "And what currency is that, little spark?"
"Justice," Eliza spat. "The Baron thinks he has balanced his books. Maryan thinks she has won her throne. If you are the Auditor, then you know their math is a lie. Give me the shears. Let me cut their threads myself."
The Collector felt a phantom ache in his fingers. He thought of Lyra. He thought of the Golden Loop that had collapsed because he had tried to save a soul out of love once. But Eliza... Eliza wasn't asking for love. She was asking for a weapon.
"I can send you back," the Collector whispered, his voice dropping to a terrifying, rhythmic hum. "But you will not go back as you were. I will brand you with the Hourglass. Every second of your new life must be bought with the truth. If your enemies lie and the world believes them, you will wither. If you act with the same malice that killed you, the sand will turn to ash."
He reached out, his fingers glowing with a cold, stellar light. "Do you accept the Tax of the Truth, Eliza Vane? Or will you take the peace of the silent?"
Eliza didn't hesitate. She bared her wrist, her jaw set in a line of pure defiance.
"Give me the mark," she said. "I've spent my life being a polite heiress. I think it's time I became a debt collector."
The Collector pressed his hand to her skin. The scream that tore from Eliza's throat wasn't one of pain—it was the sound of a storm finally breaking. The Grey Meridian shook. The obsidian desk cracked.
As she began to dissolve into the vortex of the past, the Collector leaned close to her ear.
"Go then," he whispered. "Make them pay. But remember, Eliza... when the sand runs out, I will be waiting at the finish line. And I never, ever lose a grain."
She vanished in a flash of gold and violet.
The Collector stood alone in the silence. He looked at the crack in his desk. Then, he reached into his pocket and touched the small, wooden bird. For the first time in a millennium, the Auditor smiled—a thin, jagged line of smoke.
"Finally," he murmured. "Someone who understands that Time isn't a gift. It's a war."