The clash began beneath the pale shimmer of dawnlight, where the forest of the western edge of Section 9 cast long, broken shadows across the cracked earth. Ghouls surged from those shadows—feral and relentless, their flesh clinging like wet rags to bone, their mouths gaping with that terrible, breathless hiss.
Harriet stood at the front, sleeves fluttering in the windless air, his golden eyes calm, focused. Behind him, a handful of Grade 5 and 4 Idents moved in, exchanging practiced nods and wasting no words. They had done this before—too many times, too recently.
The first wave of Ghouls lunged.
Spectral hands erupted around Harriet—flickering, furious things. They struck with the weight of falling stone, cracking skulls, tearing limbs, sending bodies flying like rotten sacks of meat. He ducked low and spun as invisible fists rained down with merciless rhythm.
Beside him, a sharp whistle pierced the air.
A streak of silver. Then another.
A tall woman stood behind a mound of crumbling stone, her bow—a strange construct of interwoven bone and lacquered wood—bent with each shot. She loosed arrow after arrow with inhuman grace, never blinking, never hesitating. Where her arrows struck, Ghouls disintegrated, their corpses pinned against walls or blasted clean through.
"Left flank," she muttered, more to the bow than to anyone else.
Harriet heard her—and so did the hands.
Four more Ghouls leapt from the ravine below. Harriet's invisible limbs caught two mid-air and smashed them into the ground. The other two met a storm of arrows before their feet could even touch soil.
The battle was swift. One-sided. Again.
They didn't even need to regroup afterward. The bodies burned fast in the lightless flame cast by one of the Grade 5 Idents. The area returned to silence, save for the hiss of char and rot.
Harriet stood amidst the aftermath, glancing out toward the horizon.
No one else said anything. They were used to this now.
Too used to it.
And even though no one voiced it, every one of them felt the same tension pull beneath the skin.
Harriet could feel something wasn't right. Why did the Ghouls keep coming? And more importantly… Why here?
The heat of the fight still lingered in the air, but Harriet moved like the wind had already passed. His boots crunched over ash and brittle bone as he stepped across the battlefield toward the figure crouched beside a heap of fallen Ghouls.
She didn't acknowledge him at first—too focused. Her long hair, the color of faded parchment, was braided tight and slung over one shoulder. With gloved hands, she parted the chest cavity of a half-melted Ghoul, the jagged edge of her arrow still lodged between its ribs. Her eyes, pale green and sharp as carved glass, flicked across the innards with clinical curiosity. Not revulsion. Not even fascination. Just the quiet focus of someone used to pulling secrets from silence.
Harriet stopped a few steps away and gave her a small nod. "Morning, Sylvara."
She glanced up then, a fleck of dark ichor catching the corner of her cheek. "You didn't leave me much to collect."
"Sorry," Harriet said with a sheepish smile. "I thought we were trying to stop them, not preserve them."
She arched a brow but said nothing—just returned her attention to the corpse and began delicately removing something from its shoulder joint with the tip of a small bone blade. It wasn't clear what she was keeping, but whatever it was, she wrapped it quickly in cloth and slid it into one of the many small pouches lining the inside of her coat.
"You're getting faster," she said, her voice low and even, almost like she was commenting on the weather. "Cleaner. Less waste."
Harriet scratched the back of his head, watching as she turned the next body with an almost reverent sort of care. "Well, we have been getting more practice lately…"
Sylvara hummed in agreement. She made another clean incision, precise as clockwork.
"You ever wonder why they keep coming?" Harriet asked, not even sure why the words came out of his mouth. "Feels like it's been nonstop lately."
Sylvara didn't answer immediately. She paused, pulling off her gloves with a practiced flick and dabbing a cloth against her hands, then tucked the bundle of strange components into a sealed satchel at her hip.
"Everything has a pattern," she said eventually, rising to her feet and tightening the straps of her quiver. "Even chaos, if you look long enough."
She looked at Harriet then—really looked at him.
"But you're not one for waiting around to study patterns, are you?"
Harriet smiled faintly, brushing off a bit of blood from his sleeve. "Guess not."
Sylvara gave a slight nod, then turned and began walking toward the edge of the ruined field, her boots leaving clean tracks through the scorched earth.
As they began to make their way back to the Colosseum, the ground beneath their feet crunched with each step. The aftermath of the battle had left the earth scarred and bare, but the air was oddly still, as though even the wind dared not disturb the quiet that followed a victory like this. Harriet walked at the front, his steps steady, the weight of his golden eyes never wavering from the horizon.
Behind him, the small group of Idents moved in a loose formation. Some were quiet, perhaps lost in their thoughts, while others exchanged low murmurs—expressions of relief or residual tension. Harriet felt their eyes on him, but he kept his gaze forward, giving them no more attention than he might give the air itself.
"Not bad, all things considered," one of the Idents muttered, his voice gruff but not unkind. "Could've used a few more heads to crack, though." His words were light, an attempt to add a touch of humor to the otherwise grim proceedings.
Harriet glanced back, his lips curling into a subtle smile. "Guess we're getting better at this," he said, keeping his tone even, more for his own sake than anything else.
Another Ident, one who had been unusually quiet during the fight, spoke up next. "Did you see that move you did earlier? Like you knew exactly where they'd be before they even moved." There was no praise in his voice, just a statement of fact.
Harriet didn't answer immediately. He had heard comments like this before. But it wasn't skill alone that guided him. He simply nodded and gave a slight shrug. "I guess I just have a good sense for it."
The rest of the group fell into a more natural silence, though Harriet could feel the shift—just a change in the air, a quiet recognition that moved through them like the first hints of a spring breeze. They weren't in awe of his power. They weren't looking for a leader, not really.
As they neared the Colosseum, the others began to break off into small groups, heading toward different entrances or corners of the crumbling structure.
"See you later," one of the younger Idents called to him, offering a brief nod. Harriet gave a small nod and continued toward the entrance.
Beneath the shattered bones of the Colosseum, in the deep-veined halls carved from old stone and memory, Harriet descended.
Harriet walked without hurry, boots clicking softly on the stone floor, the scent of scorched iron and ash still clinging to him like a second skin. He reached a heavy door with the brass plate above barely legible.
Garron Veldt – Section 9 Director.
Harriet paused, then knocked once and entered without waiting for a reply.
Inside, the air was thick with the sour edge of cheap liquor. Books lay scattered across the floor in uneven stacks, maps curled along the edge of the desk, and a single oil lamp flickered beside a half-empty bottle. Behind the desk sat Garron Veldt.
Opposite him stood Klara posture rigid, hands clasped behind her back in an almost soldier-like stance.
"It's not just another breach," she was saying, voice low, measured. "The earth near the western edge is bleeding, Father. Something's wrong under the stone. We need to send someone."
Garron grunted, swirling the liquid in his chipped glass. "Two weeks," he muttered. "Every damn night. Same direction. Same damn screaming." He didn't slur the words this time—just let them fall like lead.
"They haven't come from anywhere else," Klara said, standing near the desk, arms crossed tight across her chest. "It's always the west now. That has to mean something."
He shot her a look from beneath heavy brows. "You think I don't know that?"
Klara didn't flinch. "No, I think you know. I think you're ignoring it."
He barked a hollow laugh and leaned back in his chair. "Oh, there she is. The little bird with steel in her bones. You sound like your mother when you're angry."
Klara's expression faltered for just a second before she masked it. "Then maybe you should listen harder."
Harriet, who had been lingering by the doorway, shifted his weight slightly. He didn't speak yet—just watched, eyes moving between the two like he was tracing a fault line.
Garron let the silence hang for a beat before sighing and rubbing at his eyes. "I didn't ignore it, Klara. I hoped it'd stop. That's different."
"You hoped wrong," she replied, her voice quieter now, but no less firm. "We need to do something."
Garron leaned forward, resting his forearms on the edge of the desk, the wood creaking under his weight. His fingers drummed once more—this time slower, more deliberate. The half-full glass stood forgotten beside him, casting long amber streaks beneath the flickering light.
"We'll need more than just the two of you," he muttered, eyes fixed on the far wall as if trying to see through the stone itself. "An expedition team. At least fifty bodies. No less."
Klara raised an eyebrow. "Fifty? That's more than half of what we can even scrape together."
"I know." Garron exhaled through his nose, tired and bitter. "But anything less, and we're just feeding more names to the dark."
A silence followed, broken only by the distant groan of pipes in the old underground structure. The place felt like it was breathing sometimes—tired, like the man who ran it.
"I wish Hannelore was here," he said quietly, not quite looking at either of them. "Or Kinei. Hell, even one of them'd do."
Klara glanced at Harriet, then back at Garron. "They're still on mission, aren't they? Far east?"
Garron gave a grunt—half-confirmation, half-frustration. "Too far to call back. Too far to matter right now."
"That just leaves me," Klara said, her voice even, but her jaw clenched. "We only have three Grade Threes in Section Nine. And I'm the only one here."
He looked at her then. His bloodshot eyes—sharp even through the haze—met hers. "Exactly. That's why I'm sending you, not marching beside you."
Harriet frowned faintly. "And the rest of the team?"
"We'll scrape up what we can," Garron muttered. "Newbloods. Vets who still remember which end of a sword is sharp. Anyone not bleeding out or half-dead."
He pushed himself back with a grunt, standing tall. Even now, hunched by years and dulled by drink, Garron Veldt cast a long shadow.
"You'll lead them, Klara," he said. "You've got the brains for it. The spine. And more sense than I ever did."
Klara's lips thinned, but she gave a small nod. "Then I'll choose who goes."
Garron grinned—crooked and tired. "Thought you'd say that."
"And I want Harriet on the team."
That made Garron raise an eyebrow. "You sure about that?"
Klara looked at Harriet beside her. "He doesn't wait around. I need that kind of stubborn."
Harriet looked surprised for a moment—then gave a small nod.
Garron didn't argue. He just sat back down and reached for the glass. His fingers lingered on it this time—but he still didn't drink.
"Then you better start assembling your team," he said.
As Klara and Harriet turned to leave, Garron's voice cut through the room once more—rougher this time, and laced with something just beneath the surface. Not fear. Not quite. Something older.
"After you build your team," he said, "take every step with caution. This isn't just ghouls anymore."
Klara paused, hand resting on the doorframe. "What do you mean?"
Garron looked up at her, and for a brief moment, the haze in his eyes cleared. "We might be dealing with the Clock Hand."
That name—Clock Hand—fell like a rusted bell striking the air. Not shouted, not whispered. Just said, and yet the weight of it was felt in the marrow.
Klara narrowed her eyes, her voice firm. "What makes you think that?"
Garron didn't answer right away. He leaned back, and his gaze wandered to the far end of the ceiling.
"Two weeks now," he muttered, "and still the west keeps bleeding. They're not just coming anymore. They're waiting. Watching. Like teeth just beneath the soil."
He swirled the amber in his glass, watching it whirl like a slow storm. "Back in the old wars, before you were even born, there were places where the air would go still—too still. Like the world was holding its breath."
He looked at her again. "Then the clock would start ticking."
A silence passed between them.
"You don't hear it yet," he said. "But I do. Tick by damned tick."
Harriet shifted slightly beside Klara, the unease creeping into his expression. But Klara kept her gaze fixed on Garron, studying him, weighing his words.
"And if it is the Clock Hand?" she asked, quieter now. "What happens then?"
Garron gave a slow, crooked grin—but there was no humor in it. Only a grim kind of resolve, the sort that forms after decades of losing more than you win.
"Then it means the hour's drawing near," he said. "And I've got one last dance left in me."
He set the glass down—softly, like a man placing a tombstone.
"I've fought their Distal Phalanx before. Once. Long ago. Thought I'd never see their shadows again around here. But if they're crawling back out of the dark…" He trailed off, eyes growing distant. "Then I'll meet them in it."
Klara and Harriet walked out into the underground corridors, the door shut gently behind them.
Their boots echoed against the old stone floor, the corridor dimly lit by flickering lanterns embedded into the arching walls. Dust hung in the air like a breath being held too long.
"Clock Hand…" Klara muttered, arms crossed as she walked, her tone laced with disdain. "Those wretched bastards never learn. Always digging through the bones of the old world—for all the wrong reasons."
Harriet walked beside her, hands tucked into the long sleeves of his coat. For a moment, he didn't respond. Then, softly, like he wasn't sure if he should say it aloud:
"I fought one before. A middle Phalanx."
Klara slowed her pace and turned her head slightly. Her steel-blue eyes studied him in the dim light.
"How did it go?"
He gave a breath of a laugh—half fondness, half ache. "It was the first time I was ever beaten. Completely outmatched. And yet…" He paused, and a distant look crossed his golden eyes. "It was also the first time I reached someone. Really reached them."
He tugged down the edge of his collar, revealing a pale, jagged scar that ran diagonally across his chest—a wound old but never quite forgotten.
Klara looked at it, then at him. She didn't comment right away. Just nodded once, solemnly. "A scar that's more than just flesh," she said.
Harriet gave a faint smile, though his eyes betrayed the weight behind it. "Yeah. That's the one."
They walked a little further in silence before Klara spoke again, her voice quieter now.
"I fought a middle Phalanx once too," she said. "Not long after I got my grade. I thought I was ready. I wasn't."
Harriet raised an eyebrow. "But you won?"
She nodded. "Barely. It wasn't strength that saved me. Or wit. It was her." She tapped her chest once—lightly. "My mother. Her power. I wouldn't be here without it."
Her tone wasn't boastful. If anything, it carried the weight of legacy and expectation, and a hint of doubt she rarely let slip.
Harriet looked at her with something like understanding. "Carrying someone else's strength... it's a strange kind of pressure, isn't it?"
Klara smiled faintly, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. "Strange and heavy. But it reminds me I'm not alone. Not really."
They reached the end of the hall where the path split—one stairway up to the briefing rooms, another down to the barracks.
But even as she led the way, the memory of that battle—the echo of a middle Phalanx's footsteps—lingered in both their thoughts, like a shadow just out of sight.
As they stepped into the deeper corridor, the flicker of the lanterns grew dimmer, and the silence of the underground pressed in like a shroud. The walls here were older—etched with faded sigils long since forgotten, their meanings swallowed by time. The air grew colder, laced with the scent of damp stone and iron.
Klara's steps were slower. "It's strange, isn't it," she said, her voice softer, "how the ones closest to us continue to protect us—even when they're gone."
Harriet looked over at her. "Your mother?"
"She left me more than a name," Klara replied. "When I was pinned beneath rubble, bones shattered, breath shallow, I reached for her—and her will reached back. Not in voice, not in form. But in the spark. The power she left behind... it burned through the paper in my hand like lightning through silk."
Harriet's brows lifted slightly. "You summoned her will?"
Klara nodded. "One word. Written with blood and resolve. That word tore the sky open above us. The Phalanx didn't expect it." A pause. "Neither did I."
Harriet watched her for a moment, the corridor's quiet wrapping around them. "It's a beautiful thing, I think," he said. "That our pasts can still fight beside us. That we can still be shaped by the people we carry."
Klara didn't answer right away.
She walked a few steps ahead, fingers brushing the cold stone wall. Her boots echoed lightly in the corridor, but her shoulders had lost their earlier rigidity. When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter—still measured, but touched with something else. Not hesitation. Something gentler.
"I used to laugh a lot," she said. "When I was younger."
Harriet glanced at her, surprised.
"Really?"
"Mhm." She smiled faintly. "I was told I had this horrible, shrill laugh—like a screeching kestrel. Used to drive the old guards mad."
Harriet let out a short laugh of his own. "Hard to picture."
"I know," she said with a sigh, mock exasperated. "Somewhere between drills, monster reports, and Garron's constant snoring, I learned to put it away. Being taken seriously meant buttoning up every part of myself that wasn't sharp."
She looked over her shoulder at him, raising a brow. "What about you? Were you always so... poetic?"
Harriet chuckled. "Not really. I just listen more than I speak. When you grow up learning how to catch things without arms, you get good at noticing what others don't."
There was no bitterness in his tone—just truth.
Klara turned toward him fully now, walking backward. "You don't seem bitter about it."
"I'm not," Harriet said. "It's just... who I am. Besides, the hands I use now? They're mine too. Not born from flesh, but from something I don't fully understand yet. But they feel like me."
He raised one gloved arm, letting the sleeve fall just enough to reveal the shimmer of light that danced around the invisible shape of a hand.
"I used to want to be normal," he added. "Now, I think I'd rather just be... known."
Klara stopped walking. She tilted her head at him, that silver streak near her temple catching the lanternlight like moonlight on metal.
"I think you're more known than you think," she said. "You don't hide things. Not really. You're just waiting for the right person to ask."
Harriet looked at her, then smiled. "That goes for you too, doesn't it?"
She hesitated—then gave a small, crooked grin. "Maybe."
They stood there for a moment, the air thick with unsaid things and a soft warmth neither of them expected in the depths of stone.
Then Klara let out a dramatic sigh, putting her hands behind her head in mock defeat. "Ugh. I miss pranks."
Harriet blinked. "Pranks?"
"Yeah," she said, deadpan. "Once, when I was nine, I filled Garron's flask with soup broth. He didn't notice until he downed it in front of the entire section."
He burst into laughter. "You're joking."
"I am not," she said, pointing a firm finger. "He nearly choked on a mushroom chunk. And then he declared war on every kitchen boy in Section 9."
"Oh, you're evil."
"I was. But now I'm the serious commander with a clipboard and a glare sharp enough to slice marble." She folded her arms, mock-proud. "Discipline over chaos."
"And yet," Harriet mused, "you still talk about it like you're proud."
She gave a playful shrug. "Maybe I am. Maybe I'm saving all my chaos for a day when the world really needs it."
Harriet nodded, looking ahead into the deeper corridors where the dim light faded into shadow.
"Well," he said, "something tells me that day's coming soon."
Klara's smile faded, but not completely.
"Yeah," she said. "Me too."
Two souls shaped by blade and burden—threaded together by memory and the faint, flickering ember of something like kinship.