The glass had broken.
The mirror—world dissolved behind them like a breath held too long. But when Eveline and Rowan stepped out of the looking glass and back into the real Greymoor, the silence that met them was not relief.
It was suspense.
Like the house itself was holding its breath.
Dust hung frozen in sunbeams. Time, too, seemed slower—sticky around the edges, as though unsure how to resume. Eveline glanced at Rowan. He looked older somehow, eyes heavier with time, but his hand was warm in hers.
"We're out," she whispered.
"We're not done," he said.
The door to the east wing creaked open—unprompted.
Greymoor had never been subtle.
As they walked, Eveline felt the weight of the house settle on her again. Not as a prison now, but as a presence. A witness. A being that had once obeyed Lady Harrow's grief—and now didn't quite know whom to follow.
"Grief built this house," she thought. "But love haunts it."
They passed the ballroom—the one where the clock had first stopped. The hour hand still trembled at six.
And in the dust on the floorboards, someone had written, in finger-dragged letters:
"WE REMEMBER."
They found the door behind the chapel open at last.
Inside: a study neither of them had ever seen.
Rowan's gasp was soft, stunned.
"It's hers," he said. "Lady Harrow's real chamber. Where he wrote the vows. Where she…" He swallowed. "…bound the hour."
The room pulsed with memory.
A desk with a cracked journal. A locket on the floor. The scent of rose oil, long faded. Eveline picked up the journal. Inside:
"If I cannot hold him in life, let time hold him for me."
She looked at Rowan. His face was unreadable.
"She thought it was mercy," he murmured. "But it was fear. Fear she called love."
Outside, thunder rolled.
The storm from the mirror-world had followed them back. But this one was real—cold and wild and rising.
"It's ending," Rowan said. "This house. This loop."
What happens now?" Eveline asked.
He reached out and touched her cheek. "Now we unmake the vow."
They descended to the cellar.
Past the locked doors. Past the buried portraits. Past every version of the truth.
At the heart of Greymoor was the clock.
The real one.
Its gears were still gilded. But cracked. Bleeding oil like sap.
Rowan approached it slowly.
"I remember winding this," he said. "With her beside me. The night she asked if time could love us back."
"And you said?" Eveline asked.
"I said time could only keep us honest."
He placed his palm to the gear.
It groaned.
The house shook.
Eveline stepped beside him.
"You don't have to do this alone."
"You never did," he said.
Together, they turned the final gear.
The Sixth Hour struck.
And the clock—
Shattered.
The light that burst from it was not blinding, but soft. Warm. It filled the room like memory, like closure, like a sigh that had waited centuries.
In that light, they saw her one last time.
Lady Eveline Harrow.
Not angry.
Not pleading.
Just watching.
And for the first time, she smiled—not the sharp curl of control, but something else. Something softer. Sadder.
"Thank you," she mouthed.
Then she was gone.
The storm broke above them.
The house exhaled.
And Eveline Thorne stepped into the rain with Rowan beside her, knowing the hour had finally passed.