A chill, fine as powdered quicksilver, traced Kaelen’s spine. Reflected in the tarnished mirror, a visage not quite his own stared back, contorted by a single, egregious wound. Not himself, not entirely, but this Silas Vane, now wearing Kaelen’s thoughts, presented a sight of impossible vivacity beneath impossible injury. How could a man with such a gaping chasm in his temple still draw breath? How could Kaelen be this man? He turned his head slowly, testing the stiff muscles of his neck. Even at a distance, shrouded by the room’s oppressive crimson light, the wound remained – a raw, weeping fissure, staining the pale skin with a grotesque crimson. Dark, almost black, effluvium oozed from the edges, pooling in the hollow beneath his eye. “This… this cannot be,” he rasped, the words alien and rough in his throat. A tremor ran through him, threatening to unravel the fragile composure he clung to. Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, Kaelen pressed his palm against his left chest. Beneath his fingertips, a frantic, insistent rhythm hammered. Life. Raw, undeniable life, surging through his veins with a horrifying vigor. His skin, cool on the surface, hummed with an inner warmth. Kneeling, he flexed his knees, testing the integrity of bone and muscle. Each movement confirmed the unthinkable: he was undeniably present, undeniably alive, despite the ruin carved into his very being. Rising, he found a precarious calm. “What calamity is this?” he murmured, a frown deepening the lines between his brows. The wound pulsed faintly, drawing his attention. He needed a closer, more thorough examination. The pallid glow of the sanguine moon through the window offered insufficient clarity, merely distorting the horror. Two steps forward, then a sudden halt. A flicker of recognition, not his own, but belonging to Silas, stirred in the depths of his mind. Eyes darted to the wall beside the heavy, burled desk. Grayish-white pipes, intricate clockwork mechanisms, and a metallic-gridded lamp – an alchemical gas lamp, a standard fixture in Arkanos for those of a certain station. Its flame, regulated by subtle pneumatic pulses, offered stable, powerful illumination. Silas Vane, Kaelen now understood, had needed such a lamp. His studies, perhaps, had been exacting, demanding unwavering focus through the long Arkanos nights. A memory fragment, crisp and unbidden, unfurled. Silas’s elder brother, Elara, practical and unyielding, had insisted on proper lighting. During Silas’s entry examinations for the Great Archive of Arcane Studies four years prior, Elara had deemed it paramount to their family’s future, arranging for the apartment’s alchemical gas lines to be upgraded. Negotiating with their landlord, Master Grimsby, a wiry man with an unfortunate fondness for moth-eaten velvets, Elara had secured the necessary modifications under the guise of “enhancing rental appeal.” He had even acquired a lamp mechanism at cost through his connections at a Chronomatic Import-Export Guild, sparing their modest savings. Guided by Silas’s imprinted habits, Kaelen moved to the desk. Fingers, surprisingly deft, manipulated the valve on the pipe, then twisted the lamp’s brass ignition switch. A faint hiss. A dry click, a grinding of internal cogs. But no ignis. No warm, incandescent glow. He twisted the switch again, a growing frustration mingling with his persistent dread. Still nothing. The lamp remained inert, a metallic gargoyle mocking the encroaching gloom. “A malfunction, then.” He retracted his hand, pressing against his left temple, searching for answers within Silas’s residual thoughts. A few seconds later, an answer presented itself. He turned, walking towards a similar mechanism embedded in the wall near the door, a network of grayish-white pipes feeding into its bronze casing. A chronometric flow regulator. The city’s alchemical gas wasn’t limitless; it required periodic replenishment, marked by these intricate devices. From a pocket in his trousers, Kaelen extracted a coin. It was dark, a dull bronze, depicting a stern-faced, crowned automatist on one side, and on the reverse, a ‘1’ etched above a stylized cog-wheel and a sheaf of metallic grains. This was a single Cog-Penny, the most basic unit of currency in the Arkanos City-State. Its purchasing power, he understood through Silas’s memory, was roughly equivalent to several rations of nutrient paste. He’d seen larger denominations: five-Cog pieces, half-Cogs, even Quarter-Cogs, though these fractional coins were rarely encountered outside of specialized markets. Flipping the coin – minted, Silas knew, after Automata Emperor Valerius III ascended to the Clockwork Throne – Kaelen inserted it into the narrow, vertical slot of the regulator. A soft *clink*, then a deeper *clang* as the penny settled. Immediately, the mechanism whirred to life, a brief, melodious grind of hidden gears. The faint scent of alchemical vapor, clean and almost sweet, filled the air. After a few moments, Kaelen returned to the desk, his hand reaching for the lamp’s ignition. A sputter, then a sharp, metallic *snap*! A small, vibrant plume ignited within the lamp’s glass housing, growing rapidly. Bright light, warm and stable, banished the shadows, pushing back the oppressive crimson glow that leered through the window. A profound, almost illogical sense of relief washed over him. Now, with the room awash in the steady, golden light of the alchemical lamp, Kaelen approached the mirror once more. This time, he scrutinized his temple with painstaking attention, missing no detail. The raw wound was still a gaping maw, but the active flow of the dark, viscous liquid had ceased. It appeared as though the most meticulous hemostasis had been applied, the edges already beginning to congeal. What unsettled him most was the faint, almost imperceptible squirming just beneath the surface, a grayish-white texture resembling nascent neural tissue, slowly, methodically, knitting itself together. Flesh and blood seemed to regenerate with horrifying speed. In a matter of hours, perhaps, it would be nothing more than a faint scar. “An Axiomatic Essence, perhaps?” he whispered, a cold dread tightening his chest. “Or a peculiar side effect of this… transmigration?” Regardless, he was alive. The sheer, overwhelming fact settled deep within his bones, bringing with it a strange sense of reprieve. With newfound resolve, Kaelen pulled open a drawer in the desk. Inside, nestled among parchments and stylus implements, was a small, compressed block of alchemical soap. He retrieved a coarse, worn towel from a peg beside a small cupboard. The air in the room, despite the light, still felt heavy, charged. He needed to wash. Opening the door, he stepped into the corridor. It was a cavern of inky black, punctuated only by the distant, malevolent glow of the sanguine moon at its far end. The crimson light, reflecting off dusty automatons and shadowed doorways, resembled watchful, predatory eyes, silently observing the late-night stirrings of the living. Kaelen moved cautiously, his footsteps muffled on the worn floorboards, a shiver chasing its way down his spine. He was heading for the communal ablutions chamber, shared by the inhabitants of this tier of Arkanos. Inside the washroom, the moonlight was stronger, revealing the tarnished copper basins and rusted pipework. He reached for a tap, twisting the knob. A gushing sound of water, startling in the quiet, filled the small space. A fleeting, almost humorous memory from Silas’s past surfaced: Master Grimsby, their landlord, a short, thin man perpetually adorned in a moth-eaten waistcoat, held an obsessive vigilance over water consumption, which was included in the rent. Grimsby would often pace the corridors, listening for overly enthusiastic gushes, then pound on bathroom doors, bellowing about “darn thieves,” “shameless waste,” and the “most value-for-money apartment in all of Arkanos!” Dismissing the absurd image, Kaelen soaked the towel. He scrubbed at the drying crimson on his face, feeling the grit and stickiness give way to clean, cool skin. In the pitted, scarred mirror above the basin, only the horrifying wound on his temple and a stark paleness remained. He exhaled slowly. Next, he peeled off the stiff, linen shirt, its front a canvas of dark stains, and began washing it with the alchemical soap. Mid-scrub, a sudden, chilling thought seized him. The wound had bled profusely. His person was only part of the problem. The room. The very floorboards of Silas’s chamber were likely still marked by the event. Minutes later, the shirt wrung out and hanging precariously from a hook, Kaelen hurried back to his apartment, the damp towel clutched in his hand. The alchemical lamp cast long, dancing shadows. He found a dark handprint on the desk, easily wiped away. Then, sweeping the lamp’s illumination across the floor, he discovered it – a substantial amount of dried blood beneath the desk. And, glinting innocently against the base of the wall, a small, brass-colored projectile. “A revolver shot to the temple?” he murmured, piecing together the fragments. Silas’s strange state, the wound, the gun. A narrative began to form, horrifying in its implications. He didn’t rush to verify it. First, the cleanup. He meticulously wiped away every trace of blood from the floor and the desk, erasing the macabre scene. Then, he picked up the brass bullet. Returning to the desk, he opened the cylinder of a heavy, brass-bound revolver he had noticed earlier, pouring out its contents. Five polished brass rounds and a single, spent cartridge shell tumbled onto the polished wood. “Indeed,” Kaelen nodded, a grim resignation settling over him. The empty shell was a stark confirmation. He reloaded the live rounds, leaving the spent casing separate. His gaze drifted to a notebook lying open on the desk, its pages filled with Silas’s elegant script. A sentence stood out, stark and chilling: ‘All will return to ash, even I.’ Questions piled upon questions. Where had Silas obtained such a weapon? Was it suicide, or a meticulously staged murder? What kind of cosmic horror could a humble scholar of obscure knowledge entangle himself with, leading to such a desperate end? And why, precisely, had so little blood been left, given the nature of the wound? Had his arrival, Kaelen’s transmigration, been a timely intervention, a strange, restorative process? After a moment’s deliberation, Kaelen changed into another clean linen shirt, his own clothes, he realized, were not here, only Silas’s. He settled into the chair, the raw ache in his head a constant companion, and turned his thoughts to more pressing concerns. Silas Vane’s demise, while perturbing, was secondary. The true, agonizing question was the reason for Kaelen’s sudden, violent arrival here, and if, by some miracle, he could return. His family. His friends. The intricate web of his own Arkanos life, before the Sunken Sigil. The desire to return was a burning ember in his gut. *Click. Click. Click…* Kaelen’s right hand, almost without conscious thought, repeatedly pulled out the revolver’s cylinder and slammed it back into place, the metallic rhythm a strange counterpoint to his racing thoughts. This new existence, this Silas Vane, offered little discernible difference from his former life, save for an overwhelming sense of displacement and profound cosmic dread. Yet, why him? Why this baffling transmigration? He was merely a quiet scholar, obsessed with hidden histories. He recalled a string of escalating misfortunes in the past lunar cycle: a stolen pocket-chronometer, a research grant inexplicably denied, errors in his carefully prepared alchemical tinctures. He had dismissed it as merely bad luck. Bad luck… A thought, sharp and unbidden, pierced through the fog of confusion. *Yes.* He had attempted a luck-stabilization ritual just before his last meal! A qualified scholar of obscure histories, a dabbler in forgotten lore, he had always considered himself broadly knowledgeable, if not deeply expert. One such area was the ancient practice of Arcane Alignment. Last year, visiting the dilapidated stalls of the Old Bazaar District, he had stumbled upon a brittle, vellum-bound tome titled ‘Quintessence of Primal Alignment and the Chronomantic Arts of the First Era.’ It had seemed a fascinating curio, perhaps even useful for impressing colleagues with esoteric knowledge. But the archaic symbology and fractured glyphs had made reading a laborious chore. He had only skimmed the initial chapters before casting it aside. Yet, the recent string of misfortunes had brought it to mind. A particular luck-stabilization ritual, detailed in the tome’s introductory pages, had promised simple, foundational methods. No complex Axiomatic Essences or profound Cognitive Alignments were required. All it demanded was the placement of four portions of local staple sustenance – dried algae cakes, in his case – in the four corners of his chamber, atop any surface. Then, standing in the precise center, one had to take four deliberate steps counter-clockwise, forming a perfect square. The first step required a sincere, whispered invocation: ‘By the silent rotation…’

The Chronometric Regulator