"All cities speak. But Eirene? She hums. Between her gears, in the fog, under the clock towers she has forgotten."
Fog licked the brass rooftops of Eirene, pale tongues drifting between chimneys and the thin spires of lanterns swaying above rain-polished cobbles. Morning was an orchestra of hissing steam and rattling carts, of gulls with brass pinions shrieking above airship masts, while the horizon burned a thin violet against the steel dawn.
Elias felt the cold in his bones, the ache of damp cobbles against his spine where he had tried to sleep beneath a dripping awning. His breath curled in the morning, vanishing like ghosts he had left behind in another time.
He stood, boots soaked, the weight of yesterday's visions pressing into the slope of his shoulders, each step a negotiation with hunger and the promise he had whispered into the collapsing world beyond the vortex.
The bread vendor's stall smelled of warmth and earth, of hope kneaded into crust and steam. Elias fumbled the coins—clumsy, unaccustomed to the weight of trade in this world—and overpaid. The vendor, a woman with tired eyes and flour dusting her wrists, returned the excess with a ghost of a smile.
"Don't lose all your coin on bread, stranger," she said, brushing the hair from her brow.
"You'd be surprised what bread is worth," Elias murmured, tearing a corner of the loaf, warmth bleeding into cold hands.
He bit into it and it tasted of something human, something now. Around him, the world moved: children chasing clockwork foxes, steam carts hissing like living beasts, merchants calling out like crows across the morning fog.
The tavern door swung open on brass hinges, spilling warmth, laughter, and the smell of spiced ale into the cold. For a moment, Elias stood in the threshold, eyes blinking at the glow of lanterns, at the hearth fire snapping like a living creature. Hope bloomed—brief, foolish.
"Rooms?" he asked, voice rough, foreign.
"Full," the barkeep said, his beard catching the firelight like copper wire. "Unless you'd like a corner in the stables with the mules."
The tavern roared with laughter from a nearby table. Elias managed a thin smile, shaking his head, stepping back into the fog.
"Not today," he whispered to himself, swallowing the bitterness.
Outside, the city exhaled. Steam rolled from vents along the street, the fog swallowing him as he walked, biting the bread slowly, tasting the memory of warmth fading on his tongue.
"Lost something, have we?"
The voice was warmth, quicksilver curiosity wrapped in a lilting accent. Elias turned to find her—Mistress Anais—leaning against her clock stall, arms crossed, gray eyes sharp beneath the curls tied into a loose bun.
Her stall was a world of small brass wonders: pocket watches ticking softly, wind-up birds blinking with glass eyes, and gears the size of a child's palm spinning lazily on velvet cloth.
"Not something," Elias replied, "somewhere."
Anais cocked her head, the corner of her mouth quirking. "Eirene is kind to those who learn her rhythm, but she's cruel to the stubborn. And you look like both."
A small clockwork owl on her stall hooted, flapping its brass wings. For a moment, Elias felt a pang of something close to laughter, so foreign it startled him.
"You know a place?" he asked.
"Depends." She offered him a gear-shaped cookie, still warm from a hidden kettle. "You look like you could use something sweet before you fall over."
He took it, biting into the crumbly warmth. It tasted like cinnamon, like mornings in a time that no longer existed.
They spoke, softly, of small things. Of the market's moods, of how the fog shifted when the sea winds changed, of how Eirene sometimes felt like she was breathing beneath one's feet.
"You're looking for shelter," Anais finally said, brushing a crumb from her palm. "But not the kind you find in taverns."
Elias looked at her, meeting her eyes, the ticking of a dozen clocks filling the pause.
"No. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere… high."
Anais tilted her head. "There's a man. An old friend, though he'd scold me for calling him that. Lives in gears and rust, claims the wind talks to him."
"And what's the price?" Elias asked.
Anais's eyes softened, a faraway look crossing her face as if she, too, were hearing the ticking of something long forgotten.
"His name's Brosco. Keeper of the old clocktower on the edge of the Gearlight District. It's abandoned, mostly. But he'd tell you it's alive."
The workshop was a cavern of brass, shadow, and oil-slick air, every surface littered with gears, old tools, and lamps that flickered with gentle flame. Brosco stood among them, a lean, wiry man with a beard like silver wires and goggles pushed high on his forehead.
His hands were fitted with brass braces, small pistons hissing as he flexed stiff fingers. He watched Elias with eyes that saw too much, measuring him against some silent metric.
"You're Anais's charity case?" Brosco rasped, voice like gravel under gears.
"I need a place," Elias said.
"A place," Brosco echoed, the word rolling around the workshop like a loose bearing. "It's a tower. A tower that breathes, boy. A tower that remembers."
"I'm not a machinist," Elias admitted, shifting under the old man's gaze.
Brosco grinned, a flash of yellowed teeth. "Did I ask for a machinist? She needs eyes, ears, someone who will treat her kindly. You can do that?"
Elias hesitated, thinking of the vortex, of the world screaming in its final moments, of the silence that followed.
"I can try."
Brosco turned, gesturing with a jerk of his head. "Then come. Let her decide if she wants you."
The clocktower loomed from the fog, iron gates creaking like tired lungs as Brosco pushed them open. The stones were warm beneath Elias's feet, the gears overhead ticking, echoing down the spiral stair like a slow heartbeat.
They climbed, each step a conversation between metal and air, the scent of brass and dust filling Elias's lungs. At the top, a small room opened before him—a cot, a narrow desk, a single window overlooking Eirene, where the lantern lights swayed like constellations fallen to earth.
Brosco handed him a heavy brass key, cold in his palm.
"Listen to her," Brosco said. "When she ticks wrong, tell me. When she groans, watch. Treat her like a friend, or she'll spit you out."
"And in return?"
"You get a place. A view. A chance to hear the city breathe."
They stood there, silent, as the fog curled around the tower, whispering against the glass like rain that had lost its way.
That night, Elias sat by the window, the gear-shaped cookie from Anais resting on the desk beside him. Below, Eirene's lights blinked through the drifting fog, steam rising from rooftops, the murmur of the city alive even in darkness.
He listened to the clocktower's breathing, to the soft whirr of gears aligning, to the low, patient tick that felt like the steady promise of time itself.
"I'll keep you safe," Elias whispered to the city, to the tower, to himself.
A creak, gentle, like a sigh, answered him.
And for the first time since he fell through the vortex of god, Elias felt something close to hope.