Chronicles of Caldrith's Hollow

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The Chronodancer
The first movement was little more than a twitch. A barely audible click inside her chest, deep beneath skin, bronze, and memory. When Tavron found her, Mireta was curled up on the mosaic floor of the Clock Hall, amid dusty numerals and silent gears. Her eyes were closed, but the metronome in her chest beat—slowly, irregularly, like a rhythm trying to remember itself. No one knew where it came from. She wore no clothes, only fine layers of metallic silk that wrapped around her limbs like woven shadows. Her body was warm, but not alive in the usual sense. And inside her chest ticked not a clock, but something deeper—a kind of inner clock whose beats measured not time, but truth. Tavron was the last chronomancer of Caldrith. He took her not to a workshop, but to the dance chamber of the Spiral Hall. For those who awaken to a metronome learn not to speak, but to dance. Thus began Mireta's training. She learned to think through movement. Step sequences were like sentences, turns like questions, and every lowering of the body meant: I am listening. The city responded to her. Doors only opened when entered with the right momentum. Streetlights flickered to her rhythm. Old gears began to turn when she danced in circles across the clock glass that crisscrossed the hall like a sunken river. But the metronome in her chest remained unreliable. It only beat when she was completely present—when her movements were not imitation, but expression. When she hesitated, it faltered. When she lied, it began to race, painful and false. And when she forgot herself, it fell silent. Not a beat, not a sound. Only emptiness. "Dance is not an ornament," said Tavron. "It is decision, memory, resistance." Once he led her into the Hall of Mirrors of Variations. There she saw herself reflected a thousand times over—Mireta smiling, failing, running away. She should dance among them without losing herself. At first she faltered. Their images distorted, turned against her, reflected alien movements. But then she fell, hard, mid-step—and the metronome struck. Not loudly. But cleanly. The images calmed down. And she began to truly dance. That night she climbed Caldrith's tallest tower alone. The wind smelled of metal and rain. Below her, the city slowly twisted in on itself. She raised her arms and stepped out onto the roof, barefoot, eyes open. She danced not for anyone. Not even for herself. But because movement was the only thing that remained when words failed. And as the metronome began to beat again in her chest, she knew: She had not been created. She had happened.