The space behind the clock is cold and dark, smelling of stone and the metallic residue of the mechanism that just moved. We step inside and the wall slides shut behind us with a muffled thud, the drawing room gone. A few paces in, the passage opens to a small landing. Heavy iron bars from floor to ceiling - no keyhole, no hinges visible. Through them I can see the gallery, glass cases catching faint light, gold frames. Right there and sealed.

  My breath is a hollow mechanical echo in the mask. I glance at Zeke. Through his goggles he gives me nothing - he steps back, crosses his arms, waits.

  I reach for the lenses and stop. The mask makes it impossible. I work by feel instead, trailing the rod along the walls beside the bars.

  The patterns look decorative - flowing etched lines, like vines going nowhere. But when the rod crosses them the response is wrong. A ward should have a pulse, something you can time and slip between. This is a constant vibration, directionless, feeding back into itself. The lines circle and close, a loop with no seam. Not a lock with a mechanism. A knot.

  No time to unravel it. I have to break it.

  I need bare skin to find the overlap - the exact point where the circuit feeds back into itself. My glove comes off.

  The passage air is cold against my hand. I press my thumb to the etched stone and the contact is immediate - raw pressure, unfiltered, the magic pushing back with no interest in meeting me halfway. I work along the pattern slowly, feeling for where the vibration shifts pitch.

  There. A jagged, uneven throb that moves through my wrist bones.

  I take the rod in my left hand and wedge the tip into the intersection where the lines overlap. Then I push - my own energy into the rod, using it to lever against the circuit's joint. The air pressure builds. A low grinding whine comes up from the stone. My arm shakes with holding the wedge in place. The flow snaps. A sharp crack, a spark of blue light that scorches the back of my throat. The whine cuts.

  The bars rise - slow, grinding - retreating into the ceiling.

  Glove back on before the blue light dies. I'm shaking but the gallery is right there. I gesture for Zeke and go through.

  The gallery is vast and cold. Rows of display cases, but nothing like the hoarding of a typical collector. Almost no jewlery. Instead I see jars with swirling vapor that moves against no current, bone fragments etched with dark ink, clockwork devices ticking with no visible power source. One case holds a dried blackened hand still gripping a silver coin. Another holds a vial of liquid metal pulsing in a rhythm that I don't want to look at too long.

  I pull the mask off. Zeke does the same. Lenses on, the world goes grey and overlaid with thin glowing tripwires sitting tight against every display case. Waiting for a seal to break.

  "Anything else?" Zeke murmurs.

  "Just the cases. She trusts the perimeter."

  I hold up the rod to show him the scale of what I'm looking for - roughly the size of a large bird's egg. "White metal. Dense, heavier than it should be. Won't shine like silver or tin. Geometric edges."

  We move down the rows, footsteps muffled on the thick runners. Halfway down the third aisle I grab Zeke's arm. Between two cases, on a marble plinth: one of the hunting cats. Head low, porcelain paws curled, gold tracing gleaming in the lens-glow. We both hold still. Through the lenses: no shimmer of a magic core, no active signature.

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  "Decoration," Zeke says.

  "Don't get close. Inactive isn't the same as harmless."

  Another row. Another. And then I find it in a small case near the back wall, sitting alone on a velvet cushion.

  White metal. Geometric edges that seem to pull the light toward them rather than throw it back. The cushion beneath it is deeply compressed, as if the object has been slowly winning that argument for years.

  Exactly as the sketches showed.

  I move to the base of the case and find the tripwire seam where the alarm circuit narrows to a single lead. I trace a shape directly over it with steady fingers until the glow flickers and holds. I lift the glass lid - perfectly balanced, rising without a sound. I reach in with my gloved hand and close my fingers around the white metal.

  The weight is the first thing. Far heavier than the size has any right to produce. Then the sense of touch simply disappears. I can feel the pressure of the object against my palm, but the texture of the leather, the awareness of my own hand - gone. Holding something through a wall.

  I try to pull my hand back. My fingers don't move. Joints rigid, grip complete, none of it mine.

  I try shaking my arm, but nothing changes. My hand is closed and it intends to stay that way. I reach for the glove cuff with my left hand to pull it back. The glove won't shift because the hand inside it won't open.

  Then the familiar yank at my left leg - the curse strings waking, reacting to whatever the artifact is doing to the rest of the system. My calf seizes, foot twisting inward, and I grab the edge of the display case with my elbow before my balance goes.

  "Ashley." Zeke's voice is sharp. He's stepped in close, alerted by the glass rattle. "The hand. The leg. I saw you stumbling at the Guild." He's looking at my face, not my hand. "Stop and tell me what's actually happening."

  I lean against the case. The white metal sits in my frozen grip. The cold is past my elbow now - I can feel it moving, and it doesn't belong to the room. An hour left, maybe less. Whatever the seals I carved had been doing to slow the progression, the artifact's presence has scrambled them. The interference I built has become a wall that's keeping the artifact from working, and now everything is accelerating at once, and the timeline I had in my head is gone.

  I look at him. Without the mask there's nowhere to put my face.

  "It's a curse." My voice comes out flat, the confidence stripped off it. "The runes I asked you about - they're in me. Spreading since the night I came to your office. The Guild's research laid out the whole progression." I stop. Make myself say the next part. "When it reaches my chest, I stop being a person. I'll be nothing more than puppet."

  He's still. Not disgusted, not calculating - just listening, which is somehow harder to deal with than either of those would be.

  "This artifact," I gesture with my locked hand, "the research said it would stabilize the progression. Buy time. I didn't expect it to fuse like this - the seals I carved are blocking the mechanism now. I'm out of time and out of hands and I cannot get out of this building on my own."

  He looks at the white metal. Then back at me.

  "I can't carry this and climb," I say. "I can't trust my steps."

  He doesn't answer immediately. He looks at the locked hand, at the way I'm holding myself against the case, at the color leaving the skin above my cuff. Working something out.

  "I need you to help me," I say again. Quieter. Not a plea - a statement of what's true and what it requires.

  The shame is there. I know where it is. But it doesn't change anything.

  He steps into my space and takes my arm, steadying me without making anything of it. "I said I'd see the job through. I don't leave assets behind."

  Dry, the same as always. But his grip is steady and he doesn't flinch from my hand or from what's happening to the skin above my cuff.

  "The gas in the drawing room," he says. "We need to go."

  I reach for my mask with my left hand. The fumbling is obvious - my brain keeps routing the signal to my right, the one that isn't answering. Zeke stops me. He picks the mask up himself, fits it over my head, and checks the seal at my jaw with two fingers. Through his goggles his eyes stay on mine for a moment.

  He pulls his own mask on.

  The hollow echo of my own breathing fills my ears.

  We turn toward the passage. I put my attention on each step - the weight placement, the balance, forcing my spasming leg to find traction on the thick carpet runners. Zeke's hand stays on my shoulder. Behind us the porcelain cat sits on its plinth in the dark, a reminder that the things built to hunt in this house are the least dangerous thing I'm carrying out of it.

  Now there's only the walk back.