Chapter XXVII: Displacement Over Velocity
Dawn should come with warmth.
But London's sky bleeds only bruised violet, a color that does not belong to any morning Nathaniel Cross remembers. The clouds drift unnaturally slow, like they are painted canvases being dragged across the horizon by an unseen hand. And below them, the city waits. Breathing. Listening.
Nathaniel staggers down Ludgate Hill, his shoes slapping against puddles that ripple too late, as though water hesitates to acknowledge him. His chest still burns from the encounter at Westminster, every breath rasping against lungs that feel coated in glass dust.
The rain has softened, but it falls in strange rhythms—two drops quick, then a pause, then one heavy strike like a knuckle tapping against a coffin lid. He flinches at each pause, waiting for the knock that follows.
His reflection is gone from the puddles now. No more smiling doppelgängers, no fractured timepieces shimmering back at him. Only the hourglass lingers in his thoughts, its silver sand burning into his skull like an afterimage. Each step he takes feels stolen from something else.
The world has not righted itself. It has only grown patient.
He cuts through an alley near St. Paul's, desperate to avoid the main streets. His coat clings to him, soaked, his hair plastered against his forehead. The alley narrows until it feels like the brick walls are leaning inward, ready to crush him.
He glances left. Windows. Dozens of them stacked along the wall, their curtains drawn, but he knows—he knows—there are eyes behind them. He feels the weight of their gaze, prickling against his scar.
When he dares to look closer—
They aren't windows at all.
They are frames of glass filled with silver fog. Each one shows a different scene.
One window displays him kneeling on the bridge, blood pouring from his mouth. Another shows him older, gray at the temples, his hand clawing against an unmarked gravestone. A third shows him screaming into a void of light, his teeth breaking one by one as silver pours from his gums.
The scenes flicker, unstable, but each one has him.
Every window is Nathaniel.
He backs away, his pulse hammering. "No... no, no, no—"
A sound interrupts him.
Knuckles. Rapping lightly against glass.
One of the Nathaniels inside a window leans close, pressing its pale forehead against the surface. Its lips move, shaping words Nathaniel cannot hear.
Then, the glass fogs. A message appears, jagged and childlike:
"WE ARE STILL WAITING."
The window shatters outward, shards slicing the air like silver birds. Nathaniel ducks, stumbling against the opposite wall. The shards embed themselves into the brick, vibrating, glowing faintly as though alive.
He doesn't wait to see what crawls out. He runs.
By the time he reaches Blackfriars Bridge, his legs ache, his chest screaming with each breath. The Thames lies below, swollen from the rain, its surface black as oil.
He grips the railing, staring down, hoping the water might steady him, ground him.
It doesn't.
The river does not move.
The current is gone. The tide is gone. The water lies still, a mirror stretched across the width of the city.
And in it, he sees the skyline upside down—except the buildings reflected are not the ones above.
The inverted London gleams silver, its towers spiraling upward like twisted spines, its bridges sagging like ropes of flesh. Veins of light pulse through the inverted streets.
Something stirs in that reflection. A ripple, as though a giant hand drags beneath the surface.
And then—
The hourglass appears again. Floating on the inverted Thames. Its sand pours upward instead of down.
Nathaniel grips the railing tighter, his knuckles whitening. His scar sears, heat biting into his chest.
"No... please, no..." His voice cracks. "Leave me alone!"
From the still water, a single bubble rises. It pops with a sound like a knock.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The hourglass tilts.
The sand inside begins to run faster.
Nathaniel reels away from the bridge, his body moving before his mind can decide. He pushes into Fleet Street, its lamps flickering erratically above.
There—an abandoned building. Boarded windows. Broken sign. He stumbles through the door, desperate for cover.
Inside, the air smells of mildew and rust. Dust thickens every breath.
And masks.
Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, nailed across the walls. White porcelain faces with hollow eyes, some smiling, some frowning, some cracked in half. They hang like trophies, staring blankly into the dim.
He edges deeper. His footsteps echo too loudly. The masks seem to turn toward him, though they don't move.
Until they do.
One by one, the masks creak on their nails. Slowly. Purposefully. Each tilts its face to follow his movement.
He freezes, heart thundering. His throat is raw, but the words escape anyway.
"Stop..."
Every mask whispers back in unison, voices scraping like shards across metal:
"TRADE."
The sound builds, layered upon itself, until the air vibrates. His scar pulses like a drum.
The masks begin to fall, one after another, clattering against the floor. But they don't stay shattered.
They crawl.
Fragments piece themselves together, forming crude heads with jagged mouths. Dozens of porcelain-faced things rise from the ground, their bodies shadows stitched from dust.
Nathaniel bolts.
The door slams shut before he reaches it.
The creatures advance, their chorus growing louder, suffocating:
"TRADE. TRADE. TRADE."
He grabs a chair and hurls it, smashing a cluster of them to shards—but the pieces writhe, stitching themselves back into form.
He backs against the wall, his breath tearing ragged through his lungs.
Then, without warning—
The scar on his chest ignites.
Silver light erupts outward, a pulse that blasts through the room like a shockwave. The porcelain things screech, disintegrating into dust. The masks shatter against the walls. The noise collapses into silence.
Nathaniel slumps, shaking, clutching his chest. The silver glow still lingers in his veins, crawling beneath his skin like fire searching for escape.
For the first time, he realizes—
The scar isn't just a wound.
It's a door.
And something on the other side is trying to come through.
He stumbles back into the night, rain washing dust from his coat. His legs move without aim until he finds himself at the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral.
The great dome rises above him, haloed in stormlight. The bells should be silent at this hour.
But they toll.
Slow. Heavy. Each strike dragging through his bones.
He climbs the steps on trembling legs, his hand grazing the stone. It throbs faintly beneath his touch, like skin stretched over a giant's chest.
The cathedral doors are already open.
Inside, candles flicker in endless rows. The air tastes of iron, thick and metallic.
And the statues breathe.
Saints carved in marble shift subtly, their chests rising, their stone eyes dripping faint trails of silver. They do not move fully, but their stillness is a lie—like actors holding a pose between scenes.
Nathaniel forces himself forward, past pews that groan like ribs. His footsteps echo, swallowed too quickly by the vastness.
At the altar stands an hourglass taller than him, sculpted from bone-white stone. Its sand flows neither up nor down—it hovers, suspended mid-fall, trembling as though undecided.
He approaches, pulse hammering. His scar burns brighter, silver leaking faintly through the fabric of his shirt.
He whispers, "What do you want from me?"
The hourglass trembles harder.
And then the suspended grains of sand ignite, flaring like stars.
Voices erupt all at once, filling the cathedral, layered and endless, every pitch and tone overlapping until his ears bleed with sound.
"YOU ARE THE HOURGLASS."
The words slam through him like hammers. His knees buckle.
"YOU ARE THE VEIN. THE MEASURE. THE DOOR."
He screams against the noise. "I DON'T WANT THIS!"
The sand bursts free, exploding into silver dust that swirls through the air, surrounding him, choking him, blinding him.
The cathedral dissolves. The world tilts.
And Nathaniel falls.
When his vision clears, he is lying on cold stone. He pushes himself up, gasping.
He is still in London. But not.
The streets are hollow, their buildings shells of themselves, outlines filled with silver mist. The sky burns white, featureless, too close.
And everywhere, statues of himself stand in rows—hundreds of Nathaniels carved in black stone, each frozen in agony. Some claw their throats. Some tear their chests open. Some kneel, reaching upward toward something unseen.
He stumbles through them, his breaths shallow, his scar searing with each step.
The statues whisper as he passes. Not words. Just his own voice, endlessly replayed in different tones—begging, sobbing, cursing, praying.
At the center of the hollow city, an enormous crack splits the ground. Silver light pulses within it, veins spreading outward, webbing across the streets.
The hourglass floats above the fissure, turning slowly. Sand trickles both ways—up and down—defying gravity, defying sense.
Nathaniel collapses to his knees, tears streaming down his face. His voice breaks apart.
"Please... someone... anyone..."
The statues answer in unison, their voices like a tide:
"TIME IS ALREADY BROKEN."
And as the last grain falls—
The ground beneath him splits wide.
Nathaniel plunges into the fracture, swallowed by silver light. The hollow city collapses above him, the statues shattering into dust, the hourglass exploding into endless shards.
And for the first time—
He is not falling through air.
He is falling through himself.