When the timer started - and it started within moments of his awakening - the timer marked sixty-six years, eight months, two weeks, a day and some-odd hours to seconds.

The Cenobite Prince was always acutely aware of the seconds ticking away, and he never forgot what time it listed. It was his secret; something he shared with nobody but his gods, who in turn kept the secret of what it meant from him.

It is part of your soul, Leviathan had told him on the first day - that first day with so many questions, so much fear and hunger and confusion, before he came into himself. He had never encountered a child Cenobite, but he would always consider those the days when he was young and new, new to this realm and to existence.

He had been wrong about that.


Perhaps it was vanity that led him to being disappointed when he found another clock.

This was not his first student trembling before him, but he was still a student himself - peering at their wrist, ticking away days and hours and minutes instead of years as his did. His first impulse was to destroy it, but he remembered his lessons and quelled the urge before he could act on it. Instead he wrapped the wrists in leather cord and bound them against the chair, stepping back to study the young man who looked at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"What are you going to do to me?" He asked in a whisper, and the Prince focused on the question to distract himself from his own.

"Nothing yet," he said, and the man wept. The Prince conjured a kerchief and brought it to his face - tears were such a waste to him, but he could understand the strangeness of it all. It was the least he could do to be a proper teacher.


Fifty years and three months exactly: that was what his clock read when he encountered yet another, all zeroes.

All zeroes. It was on the wrist of a woman in her 20's who was fighting tears as she accepted their offer and had taken his hand. In her touch he heard the despair of a family that did not accept her, that denied her identity, that had her lover killed. He could see another girl's face behind her tears, the fallen beloved, and another set of zeroes on her wrist as the two embraced with joyful smiles - a bittersweet memory.

"The numbers," he asked gently as he led her to her new home, "what do they mean?"

"It's different for everyone," she said, forcing down a sob, "but that was when I met the love of my life. Now I'm never going to see her again."

Something within him ached, and at the moment he was unsure why.


There was no point in counting the seconds for fifty years, but he couldn't help checking once every now and then to see how much time was left.

He had encountered more clocks - not everyone had one, but the ones that did had colorful and varied stories. Some were still running their watches, waiting for what it promised. Some ran out when they opened the box, or met their true love, or when a terrible catastrophe befell them. Some ran out when they discovered something that changed them. One story he'd heard was a summoner's sibling - the timer ran out at sixteen, and that moment was when she realized that she was meant to be a woman. A timer had appeared on her other wrist and started counting up, measuring the seconds of her new life as herself.

He was unsure if he believed that one - he had seen few timers count upwards at all - but there was a charm to the thought. He contemplated his own clock as he thought of this, and as he looked at the numbers he realized something he had only been aware of on the surface, a realization that seized his chest and made him grow still.

There was only one week left.


He had lost count.

In his anticipation and his effort to contain it he had lost count - the Prince was so concentrated on preparing for the day that when it came the impossible occurred, the one thing he'd never imagined in all the possibilities laid before him. He'd been caught off-guard.

She was pretty, that was to be certain - but many women were pretty. He'd encountered so many souls that one more barely felt like anything. What captured his attention was that she was brave, that she was clever, able to find a way to slip out of their grasp even for a precious few minutes. When he and his Gash returned to the Labyrinth to wait and to listen, he found himself mulling over the encounter, and out of habit he pulled the thumb from his garment and peered under. A row of zeroes stared up at him, and he stared back.

He had missed it.


For the next two weeks nothing happened and his mask of calm tightened to keep him from screaming in frustration.

What had it been? When had the second that he'd been waiting for passed by? Not Frank, what a horrible thought, Frank escaping was a humiliating culmination of his patience. He briefly mused on the girl, on her restoring their lost quarry, but something about that felt... incomplete. Like that wasn't the point. But what was it?

Then the door was opened again, and he was forced to cover his thumb again. The leather was worn out from his habitual checking; he would have to have it repaired soon, or it would fall off completely.


He'd been wrong.

He remembered everything and he'd been wrong. Looking at Kirsty and the photo in his hand, he remembered - The Prince remembered himself, the man who used to be Elliot James Spencer. He remembered the war and the drugs and his vows on bottles and his body. He remembered escaping his despair chasing the high of a moment and hours of regret, the shame, the hunger. He remembered the first clock, now nothing more than a discolored patch on his wrist, what he'd considered the damnation of a beloved stranger.

He looked at his covered wrist, then at Kirsty's - he couldn't see if she had a clock, but even if she didn't, that really wasn't the point.

It was you, he thought, looking at her as his world came crashing down. You were the catalyst. You were what I was waiting for.

There was a guttural growl and he looked up at Channard, feeling an old fire spark within himself. It had burned within him decades ago as a soldier, long before the war snuffed it out. He readied himself for battle as his Gash did the same.

He would not let her die.


He wasn't dead.

He wasn't the Prince, he wasn't Elliot, and he wasn't dead. He swam somewhere between them as the world came back to him, the past and present merging into something else as he opened his eyes and took in the world once more. He was bleeding - he was bleeding, not anymore, now he felt no pain in his throat. There was only wet warmth and something squeezing his hand.

Already he could feel himself changing, the human mask cast on him melting away. His fingers lost their color as he sat up - and finally he realized he only had one hand free. He looked to his left, to her, holding his hand and staring at it.

"Oh my god," she whispered, and he started to correct her when she turned his wrist for him to see, alongside her own.

Two clocks, identical in color, size, and location. And time.

They were both counting upwards.


I'm not sure it was clear in the last chapter, but Elliot's two timers add up to around 100 years, the second one starting immediately after the first one finishes. Originally I was going to spell this out, but it felt a little too close to my other story First, since that's all about the 100-year motif. Either way, hope this clears things up!

... and I'm probably going to end up doing a part four. I intended for this to be the chapter where they both get a perspective in, but clearly that didn't happen. Oops.