The air in the Red Theater still tasted of copper and ozone long after we fled the basement. Claire's boot clacked against the theater's rotting boards as we emerged into the gray dawn, the Astral Pocket Watch heavy in my coat pocket—now ticking softly, as if counting down to something.
"Edmund's waiting," Claire said, not looking at me. Her brass bracelets jangled with new urgency; the constellation on her left wrist, Ursa Major, glowed faintly. "He said to bring the watch. And the book."
I touched the frayed edge of Stellar Fragments in my pocket. Since retrieving the watch, its pages had been quietly shifting, as if the book itself were breathing. Last night, I'd caught a glimpse of a new illustration: a man in a tattered overcoat standing beneath a fractured clock, his hand outstretched to a swirling vortex of stars.
The "Edmund" we were meeting wasn't at the theater's usual haunt—the Black Sparrow Tavern—so we trekked to the edge of Port Belen, where the cobblestone streets gave way to cracked cobalt tiles. There, half-buried under ivy, stood the Clockwork Chapel: a derelict church retrofitted with gears and pendulums, its spire a rusted gear the size of a carriage wheel.
Claire pushed open the iron door. Inside, the air smelled of oil and burnt clockwork. Sunlight filtered through stained glass depicting constellations, casting rainbow shards on the floor—except where the light hit a figure hunched over a workbench.
"Edmund."
He looked up.
It was the man from the theater basement, but sharper now: his face carved by time like a pocket watch's gears, his eyes twin pools of starlit ink. His overcoat, patched with leather and brass, bore the scars of a hundred battles—yet his hands, when he gestured for us to sit, were steady as a surgeon's.
"Zhou Mingrui," he said, his voice a gravel road, "or may I call you Starwatcher now?"
I froze. "How do you know my name?"
"Because I've been watching," he said, tapping the pocket watch in my hand. "And because your name's in the book. Every Starwatcher's name is in the book. It's how we find each other."
Claire slid into a chair across from him, placing Stellar Fragments on the workbench. Edmund leaned forward, his gaze raking over the pages. "Ten years ago, I found this book in the ruins of the Royal Observatory. Same as you—stuck in a ditch, bleeding, with the weight of the stars in my pockets." He tapped his temple. "I didn't believe it either. Thought it was a delusion. Until the Leviathan's shadow ate my wife."
The room went quiet.
"Her name was Lila," Edmund said, softer now. "She was a clockmaker. Loved to fix things. Even after the voidspawn took her eyes, she kept trying to mend the pocket watch I'd given her for our anniversary." He opened a drawer and withdrew a locket—inside, a tiny, shattered timepiece. "That's all that's left. The Leviathan doesn't just kill. It unmakes. Erases you from the world, like you were never there."
I thought of the mad dockworkers, their eyes hollowed out. Of the corpses in the morgue, scribbling prayers to a star they couldn't see.
"Why me?" I asked. "Why's the book choosing me?"
Edmund's fingers traced the watch's runes. "Because you're not a hero. Heroes burn bright and die quick. You're a bridge—clumsy, stubborn, human. The Leviathan feeds on power. But you? You've got something it can't digest: doubt. The belief that maybe, just maybe, we can outthink it."
He opened a leather satchel and pulled out a vial of liquid, its surface swirling like liquid mercury. "This is Eclipse Elixir. Made from moonstone, void-touched vine, and the tears of a starwatcher who failed. It stabilizes the watch during the ritual. Without it, the Leviathan will tear the barrier to shreds before we finish."
Claire frowned. "Where'd you get it? The vine's extinct—killed when the Royal Observatory burned."
Edmund smiled faintly. "Some things don't die. They just… wait. In the cracks of the world." He pushed the vial toward me. "Tonight, at the church. The alignment's perfect. Seven stars, seven artifacts, one Starwatcher. We anchor the reality. Or we die trying."
As we rose to leave, Edmund placed a hand on my shoulder. His touch was cold, like ice under starlight. "One more thing. The Leviathan's not just a beast. It's a god. And gods hate being reminded they're not the only ones in the sky."
He nodded to the locket in his hand. "Lila used to say that. 'Stars die, Edmund. But new ones always rise.'"
That night, the church loomed over Port Belen like a sentinel. Its spire, once a symbol of order, now bristled with makeshift defenses: steam-powered cannons loaded with silver shot, coils of enchanted rope (crafted by the Night Owl Society's alchemists), and a circle of chalked runes—my runes, copied from the book.
Inside, the air vibrated with tension. Old Father Michael, the priest who'd once dismissed the anomalies as "hysterical vapors," now knelt before the altar, praying over a censer of burning sage. The seven artifacts lay on a velvet cloth: the moonstone gear, the cracked pigeon-whistle, the frozen pocket watch, and four others I'd only seen in sketches—a bronze astrolabe, a jade mirror, a silver bell, and a dagger with a blade of starsteel.
Claire checked the eclipse elixir, her knuckles white. "It's… warm. That's not right."
Edmund grunted. "The Leviathan's stirring. It's affecting everything." He turned to me. "When the clock strikes midnight, place the watch at the center. Recite the incantation from the book. And whatever happens—don't look at the windows."
I nodded, though my throat was dry.
Midnight approached.
The church bells tolled.
At the stroke of twelve, I laid the pocket watch on the cloth. Its hands, which had been inching toward 12:00, now sped, spinning like a top. The runes on the artifacts flared to life, casting prisms of light across the walls.
"Incantation," Claire said, her voice steady.
I opened the book. The pages, once fragile, now glowed with an inner light. The words shifted, rearranging themselves into a language older than Latin, older than time.
"Sic itur ad astra," I whispered. "Thus we go to the stars."
The church shuddered.
Outside, the fog thickened—black fog, thick as pitch, rolling in from the harbor. It seeped under the doors, curling around our ankles like cold fingers.
"Look at the stars!" Edmund yelled. "They're fading!"
I craned my neck. Through the church's shattered stained glass, the sky was a void—no stars, no moon, just infinite black.
And then, the windows burst.
Not from the outside. From the inside.
Black, veiny tendrils erupted through the glass, slithering across the pews, wrapping around Father Michael's legs. He screamed, clawing at his face as the tendrils burrowed into his nostrils.
"Voidspawn!" Claire shouted, drawing her star-knife.
They poured in—hundreds of them, small and large, their bodies made of shadow and bone, their eyes glowing with the same blue as the Leviathan's herald. One lunged at me, and I swung the Astral Pocket Watch, its edge slicing through the creature like a hot knife through butter.
But there were too many.
Edmund fought like a man half his age, his pocket watch spinning in a blur, cutting down spawn after spawn. Claire's knife flashed, but she was overwhelmed, a tendril coiling around her wrist.
"Zhou!" she yelled. "The ritual—finish it!"
I grabbed the book, my hands shaking. The incantation continued, words spilling from my lips I didn't recognize but somehow understood: "By the seven stars, by the anchor of time, we bind thee—"
A tendril slammed into my back, knocking me to the ground. The book flew from my hands, landing in the mud.
I looked up.
Through the shattered windows, a shadow loomed. Vast. Ancient. Covered in scales that glittered like broken glass, each scale holding a thousand eyes—all focused on me.
The Leviathan had arrived.
And it was hungry.