THE BRONZE WATCH
1172 Words
The house felt too quiet for mourning.
No sobs. No whispered prayers. Just the low ticking of a wall clock in the two rooms. A sound that now felt cruel in its consistency.
Winter Samaya nestled into her father’s old armchair, the worn leather creaking softly beneath her. With his leather-bound journal resting on her lap, she traced her fingers over the page, lost in the familiar script. The last words lingered in her mind, a message not meant for just any daughter, but for an heir carrying a weight she had yet to fully grasp.
You’ve always had the gift... though I prayed the gods would let you live free of it.
What gift?
She had never experienced healing through a touch. She had never encountered spirits or even managed to conjure a flicker of flame. Her so-called “magic” was really just a knack for growing plants and dreams that slipped away as soon as she woke. How could that ever be enough?
She gently closed the journal, almost like she was sealing a casket. A soft thud resonated through the stillness of the house.
A gentle breeze rustled the curtains. She glanced over at the window, but it was closed
Another whisper.... closer this time. Not wind or words.
She stood quickly, the floor creaking beneath her bare feet. And a clear whisper returned..
Tick, tick, child of time...
A chill ran through her spine.
She turned around, and the hallway behind her was shrouded in darkness. Her father’s door remained ajar, his body had been prepared and taken away by the town’s quiet wardens, who didn’t utter a word but whose gazes had lingered far too long on her father’s room. It was as if they were aware of something unspoken.
She stepped forward, only to halt as a faint glimmer shimmered into existence midair.
Right there... right in the middle of the hallway. A pocket watch was spinning gently in the air, hovering just above the floor, its soft ticking filling the silence. It was made of bronze, and she recognized the engraving, a beautifully detailed draconic sigil wrapped around the edge, part symbol, part language.
It clicked open.
She flinched.
A thin coil of bronze light leaked from the watch, unfolding in the air like the spiral of a clock spring. It began to circle her slowly, and her breath caught in her throat.
Then...there are many words echoing not through her ears, but inside of her bones.
The cycle turns. The Watcher sleeps. The bearer awakens.
He has passed the flame to you. Do you accept it, Winter Samaya?
She stumbled back a step, heart hammering. “Accept what? Who are you?”
No answer. Just ticking.
The spiral of bronze light tightened, winding around her wrist like a serpent. It is warm, not burning, but insistent. Then her father’s voice resurfaced in her memory;
"When the bronze dragon returns, it will be for you..."
"You’ve always had the gift."
A choice. It was always going to come to this.
Winter took a breath that felt like a thousand years in the making, she stepped forward, and reached toward the hovering watch.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The watch slammed shut.
Light exploded from it in a silent wave, filling the hall, pouring into her chest like stardust. She gasped, falling to one knee, eyes wide as something ancient and immense bloomed inside her mind: a vast sky of stars, gears turning in constellations, wings of bronze beating beneath the surface of reality.
And in the heart of it, the dragon, it's not large, not monstrous, but impossibly old. Its emerald eyes turned toward her. But it did not speak.
Winter now understood. When she opened her eyes again, the hallway was dark.
The watch was gone.
But on her wrist, where the coil of bronze light had touched her, a faint tattoo glowed, the sigil of the Watcher, etched in fire beneath her skin.
Something had awakened.
And far away, in a forgotten chamber beneath a crumbling chamber, another watch began to tick.
Far beneath the city, where no flame could flicker and the air was thick and heavy, the chamber began to awaken. It had been three hundred years since anyone had stirred it from its slumber.
Stone cracked. Dust, older than memory, lifted into the air like ancient ash. The great iron door sealed with ten names of power, began to tremble.
And in the center of the room, atop a dais carved from obsidian, a circular device flickered to life.
A second watch.
This one was not bronze. It was black iron, its surface covered in etched runes that pulsed with red light. It ticked slowly, and with each tick, the shadows in the chamber grew deeper.
A figure stepped forward from the dark, barefoot on cold stone. He wore robes once white, now stained gray with time. Long white hair hung loose around a face too smooth for a man so ancient. His eyes were pitch black, save for faint pinpricks of silver light, or a stars dying in reverse.
He was called many things in old tongues, but most had forgotten his true name.
Tonight, he remembered it.
“Caeren,” he said aloud, to no one.
The chamber echoed back the name like a threat.
He reached for the dark watch, and it leapt into his hand of its own accord, the air around it warping faintly.
One has accepted the Flame.
The voice came from the shadows. Not spoken, but Channeled.
Caeren closed his eyes. “Where?”
The southern sky. The Bronze has chosen.
He exhaled through his nose. The Bronze, the weakest of the four, but still dangerous. Still loyal to the old order. Foolish thing.
“Name the bearer,” he said.
A pause. Then:
Winter Samaya. Female. Twenty-three. Descendant of the Line of Emberglass.
That made him pause.
He knew the name.
“The Watch should not have returned to that bloodline,” he whispered.
And yet it has. The cycle reawakens. The flame spreads.
He turned slowly, facing the unlit mirror of obsidian behind him, a mirror that reflected nothing.
Until it began to ripple.
In its depths, the image of Winter formed, curled in her father’s armchair, journal in hand, the fresh mark still glowing on her wrist. The mirror pulsed with golden light.
Caeren raised a hand.
And slashed it across the reflection.
Golden sparks flew, and the mirror screamed.
The image of Winter distorted, writhing. For a brief instant, she seemed to glance up, not in reality, but within the vision, her eyes locking onto his, across time, across the planes.
Then the mirror went still.
Caeren turned to the shadows.
“Send the Lurian. She’s not trained. Not yet. Break her before the Watch binds too deep.”
And if she survives?
A moment pause. Before his voice dropped to a cold whisper.
“Then the gods will need to bury another timeline.”
- Writer
