The door creaked open. Linden Hawthorn stood frozen in the threshold, his hair unkempt and collar askew, as if he'd dressed in the dark. The landlady hadn't bothered clearing the apartment. Dust coated every surface, and the smell hit him first—mildew and something sharper, like burnt wiring.
He didn't know how long his father had been gone. Weeks, maybe. Time blurred these days. The police report said misplaced person, a term for those who wandered into alleyways and didn't wander back.
Linden stepped inside.
The room felt suspended. A desk overflowed with gears and yellowed papers. A journal lay splayed open, its pages blank. He touched the spine—cold. His father had always been a ghost in his life, more absence than man, leaving behind only this: clutter and questions.
He flipped through the journal. Empty.
A splinter of glass bit his thumb. Beneath the papers sat a pocket watch, its brass casing tarnished, face cracked. The hands were frozen.
3:07.
He pressed it to his ear. No ticking. Just a wet, rhythmic clicking.
Then it moved.
Pain seared his palm as the watch's broken glass teeth clamped down. He staggered, vision swimming—
A river. Fog. A rotting barge. Corpses with copper pennies for eyes. A porcelain doll, arm raised, voice like a music box spring snapping:
"He's waiting."
Linden woke on the floor. The watch sat innocently beside him, glass now whole. Two crescent scars marked his palm.
He lurched to the sink. The mirror showed a stranger—pale, hollow-eyed, a streak of grease on his cheek he couldn't recall earning.
Something was missing.
Not the barge, not the doll. A memory. Small, ordinary. The taste of his father's coffee, bitter and over-sugared. Gone.
The journal now held a single entry: The Martyr's Compromise.
A fist pounded the door.
"Out by sundown!" the landlady barked. "Or I toss it all!"
Linden barely heard her. The watch hummed against his thigh, warm and alive. Outside, the church bells rang—three chimes, then two, then seven.
He tucked the watch into his coat.
Time to go.