The following days settled into a grueling routine, a pendulum swinging between two opposite poles of learning. The mornings were spent with Silas, the afternoons with Isolde. One taught him to see the lies of the world, the other, to face the truth of his own soul.
Silas's lessons were deceptively simple. He did not teach Liam how to lie. He taught him how to see. He took him out of the Gearhouse and into the bustling heart of Terminus. They stood for hours in the Grand Bazaar, a chaotic sea of merchants, nobles, thieves, and beggars.
"Forget your powers for a moment," Silas instructed, his voice a low murmur amidst the crowd's roar. "Your Seal reads the past of objects. A useful, but limited skill. You must first learn to read the present of people. Look there." He gestured to a spice merchant haggling with a wealthy woman. "Watch his hands, not his mouth. His words are friendly, but his knuckles are white as he grips the counter. He is not bargaining; he is desperate. He will sell at any price."
He then pointed to a Mizan Guardian, standing stoically at an intersection. "See the scuff marks on his boots? They are worn on the inside edge. He has a limp he is trying to hide. He is not as formidable as he appears. He has a weakness."
For hours, Silas deconstructed the world for Liam. He revealed the hidden narratives playing out in plain sight: the pickpocket who used a loud argument as misdirection, the information broker who pretended to be a blind beggar, the noblewoman who met secretly with a known revolutionary in the guise of buying flowers. He was teaching Liam a new language, the language of human intent, a language written in posture, glances, and the smallest of tells. "Every person you see," Silas explained, as they sat at a small cafe, "is telling a story about who they are. Most of them are lies. To deceive, you don't tell a new lie. You simply find the existing lie and give it a convenient ending."
This new perspective was exhausting, but invigorating. Liam began to see the city not as a collection of buildings and people, but as a vast, complex mechanism of interlocking stories, a clockwork of secrets and desires.
But if the mornings were about observing the world, the afternoons were about surviving the storm within it. His meditation sessions with Isolde in the archive were brutal. Each time he took the chronometer in his hands, the echo pulled him back to that terrible day, and each time, the temptation to interfere felt more powerful. The memory had become a proving ground for his soul.
On the fourth day of training, he went deeper than ever before. The archive faded away completely. He was no longer an observer watching a memory; he was there. He stood in the corner of his workshop, an invisible ghost of himself. He saw the younger Liam, hunched over the astronomical clock, oblivious. He saw Elara enter the room, her smile a beacon of light. She was talking about her apprenticeship, about a new automaton design she had sketched. She was so full of life, so full of future.
The desire to scream, to shatter the scene, was a physical agony. He could feel the words building in his throat: "Get out! He's coming! Run!" The echo seemed to respond to his desire, the moment stuttering, slowing down, as if time itself was offering him a chance to intervene. He could feel his Seal straining, the power gathering within him, ready to unleash a wave of temporal force that could… what? What would it do? Create a paradox? Shatter his own mind? Erase his sister from existence altogether?
He fought it. He gritted his teeth, his entire being locked in a war against itself. He was the Watcher. His duty was to observe. He recalled Borin's harsh judgment, Isolde's soft advice, Silas's lessons on seeing the truth of a situation. To change this moment would not be an act of love; it would be an act of ultimate selfishness, a violation of the very fabric of reality for the sake of his own peace.
The strain was too much. With a violent wrench, his consciousness was torn from the past. He was thrown back into his own body, falling from his chair and landing hard on the wooden floor of the archive. He lay there, gasping and shaking, the chronometer having rolled under the table. The silence of the room was absolute. He had held on, but he had failed to find the stillness. He had only survived the storm.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Ronan, looking down at him with a worried expression. He must have heard the crash.
"Are you alright?" Ronan asked, helping him to his feet.
Liam was shaking, his face pale. "I can't do it," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I keep going back, and all I want to do is interfere. How can I be a Watcher when my only desire is to change what I see?"
Ronan was silent for a moment, his usual wit gone. He looked at the chronometer on the floor, then back at his friend. "I had a lesson with Greta this morning," he said quietly. "She told me I keep trying to force the dice to land on the number I want. She said a true Weaver doesn't force the threads; he just makes sure they don't get tangled." He met Liam's gaze. "Maybe the point isn't to stop wanting to change it, Liam. Maybe it's about wanting something else even more."
"What?" Liam asked, confused.
"The truth," Ronan replied. "Maybe you have to want the truth of what happened more than you want the fantasy of what could have been."