Chapter 8: Burning Through is where things begin to unravel—just slightly, just enough to feel it. At this point in the story, Lira and the clockmaker have already discovered the key’s power, but neither fully grasps what it’s doing to them. This chapter lives in the friction between desire and caution, between the pull of the past and the cost of reaching back for it.
I wanted this moment—this reset—to feel like a kiss held too long. Not just in the physical sense (though yes, there’s that too), but emotionally: a reach that becomes a grasp, a need that flickers into doubt. The atmosphere hums with oil, smoke, and the kind of heat that doesn’t fully dissipate once it’s been touched.
There’s a shift in Lira here—small, but telling. She’s no longer just curious; she’s invested. And yet, there’s a pause in her body, a catch in her breath that doesn’t resolve. That tension—that ache to trust what can’t be trusted—is the thread I followed through this scene.
If Chapter 7 was ignition, Chapter 8 is the slow burn that follows. What they’ve awakened is beginning to change them, whether they admit it or not.
– Eric