This chapter lives in the hum between the obvious and the unspoken. The clocks slip again, but it’s not just time that’s turning. There’s a moment here when Lira’s sketch comes back different—complete when it shouldn’t be. The dent was one thing; this is another.
I wanted this chapter to feel like a slow spiral—like their trust deepening even as their certainty frays. He can’t tell her what’s shifting in him. She doesn’t ask, not really. But the questions hum beneath every touch of the key.
“I didn’t finish this,” she says, looking at the sketch that shouldn’t be done. But it is.
This chapter is about the difference between what you remember and what you feel. About how every turn of the key writes something deeper—into wood, into skin, into the quiet that holds them.
Chapter 5: Smoke in the Gears is live.
—Eric