Liora stepped through the midnight door into a cavern of gears and starlight. The air hummed with the sound of a thousand ticking hearts, and the walls pulsed faintly, as if alive. At the center of the chamber stood a clock unlike any she had seen—its face was not metal, but skin, stretched taut over bone.
A voice, neither male nor female, whispered from the darkness: "You were never the apprentice. You were the key."
Liora’s hands trembled. The clock’s hands began to move backward.