Splinters of Regret

~ Chapter 8 of The Watchman Chronicles ~

Ambrose Always‑Regarded‑with‑Suspicion — so his Guild dossier proclaimed — stood quietly behind the counter polishing a brass lorgnette no one had asked to buy. Meanwhile two Guild wardens in slate‑grey coats moved methodically through the aisles, cataloguing curios under the wan glow of their inspection lanterns. Miles Fletcher examined a rack of bottled moon‑dust, eyes narrowed in careful study, while Tobias Finch paged steadily through Ambrose's catalogue. Cecil, the elderly bulldog, lay sprawled across the wooden floor, his short tail occasionally twitching.

The shop was a puzzle box of shelves and curiosities — vials shimmering with subdued light, books whispering inaudible secrets, and floorboards humming faintly under the weight of concealed power. Each careful footstep, each muted clink of glass, amplified Ambrose’s apprehension. He tightened his grip around the delicate lorgnette, jaw clenched subtly as the wardens continued their relentless inventory. Miles tilted a vial against the lantern’s glow, its contents swirling gently in the dim illumination. He looked then at Tobias as he was tracing an index finger along faded lines of handwritten entries, pausing to cross-reference the objects before him. Meanwhile Cecil stirred lazily, stretching with a groan worthy of a church organ and, in the process, sending his hindquarters bumping into a low shelf crammed with indigo vials labelled Condensed Regrets — Vintage 1174‑1176 — the sort of mishap an insurance clerk might file under “Act of Dog.”

“Cecil!…” Tobias started, too late.

The vial fell — a crystalline sigh rather than a crash — and for the space of a heartbeat nothing moved. But then a lavender mist boiled outward, curling across the floorboards like seawater meeting sand. The hanging lamps dimmed to guttering embers; every glass surface in the shop reflected a different, earlier moment, as though time itself were trying on alternate histories. Miles felt the Warden‑sigil on his palm ignite. The scent of marshfire and peat overwhelmed him — Tarnwood, again, with its chorus of half‑born shadows. He braced against the shelf, muttering a grounding charm through clenched teeth.

Tobias stumbled back, thread‑sense reeling under a storm of unmoored memories. Crimson strands winked in and out of being overhead, ready to snag on anything solid. He flicked his fingers and silver filaments leapt from his spool, weaving themselves into a hurried lattice that tried — vainly — to coax order from the chaos.

Ambrose, far from cowering, snapped the lorgnette shut and reached beneath the counter for a palm‑sized octagonal mirror etched with sigils. With a sharp phrase in a language older than guild seals, he hurled it into the fog. The glass hovered mid‑air, drinking in the violet fumes the way a low tide draws foam from the shore.

“Containment mirror’s buying us moments, not minutes,” he warned, voice steady but terse. “Regrets of ’74 are notoriously stubborn.”

“Moments are enough,” Miles answered, slamming his glowing palm against the widening ceiling fissure. Light spidered into the crack, slowing — but not stopping — its hungry crawl.

Across the room, Tobias coughed, eyes watering. “Distilled regrets were meant to be sealed, Ambrose!”

“They were sealed,” Ambrose shot back. “Until a certain bulldog got ambitious with his stretching regimen.” Cecil, oblivious, released a mournful grunt and shuffled behind the counter.

The mist, now funnelling into the hovering mirror, fought back, swirling in jagged currents that rattled every bottle on the nearest shelf. Two more vials popped their wax seals and hissed open.

Tobias cursed softly. “We need a balancing regret before the mirror saturates!” Ambrose’s eyes flicked to a high shelf where a single vial glowed the colour of old brass. He reached up, fingertips brushing the glass. “Voluntary offering—equal weight,” he recited, more to himself than the room.

“Ambrose, don’t—” Miles began, recognising the label: A Promise Unkept.

But the vial had already been uncorked. A ribbon of weak sunlight poured from the neck, twining through the lavender mist like a spindle and thread. The contending vapours collided, churned, and folded into one another until the mirror rang like a wineglass and snapped shut. It drifted to the floor, settling with a satisfied click. Silence flooded in, broken only by the hiss of cooling glass and Tobias’s ragged exhale. The ceiling fissure sealed itself with a hair‑line seam of frost that melted as soon as it formed. Only then did the spectral figure in the doorway step forward, frost blooming beneath each footfall.

“Merchant of Echoes,” he intoned, voice trailing vapour, “you barter with forces that do not belong to you.” Ambrose squared his shoulders, mirror shards glinting at his feet. “

And yet I contain them, Spectre. Which is more than can be said for your dramatic entrances.” A thin smile — or something like it — cracked the frost‑man’s features. He lifted an icicle spear, but Miles interposed himself, baton alive with sigils.

“Not one pace further. This street is under Guild authority!”

“Authority failed Latchmoor,” the Spectre replied, driving the spear forward. Wood splintered as ice met iron‑wood baton. Shards sleeted harmlessly across the floor, clinking into mute surrender. Tobias’s lattice tightened round the doorway, weaving a shimmering curtain that repelled the drifting frost. The Spectre’s eyes narrowed. “Temporary victories. The Boundary weakens.” With a swirl of snow‑fine particles he stepped back into the mist, vanishing beyond the reach of lantern light. A bell tolled — the seam‑quake alarm — its echo rolling through the lane like distant thunder. Miles lowered his baton and drew a slow breath, the sigils along its length fading to a dull glow.

"All right," he said, keeping his voice level. "Damage assessment, quickly, before anything else decides to burst."

Tobias knelt amid the glittering debris, his gloved fingers skimming over shards and spilled regret. The silver spool at his belt ticked softly as he noted each ruptured vial. "Four primary breaches, two secondary, all contained," he reported. "Residual mist is binding to the mirror’s internal sigils, but the seal is under strain." Miles crouched beside the octagonal mirror, testing the lattice of frost-webbed runes that criss‑crossed its surface. A faint tremor pulsed beneath the glass. "Breach deferred," he confirmed, "yet far from mended."

Ambrose exhaled, the earlier edge of bravado gone. "Deferred is preferable to Else seeping through the ceiling, wouldn’t you say?" He turned the half‑drained brass‑coloured vial in his hand—A Promise Unkept—watching the liquid sorrow swirl.

Tobias brushed shards from his knees and looked up, voice low. "So … what’s our next move? We can’t exactly sweep this under the carpet and hope the Boundary forgets."

Miles tapped the mirror’s faintly quivering surface. “First we stabilise what’s left, then we answer for it. Guild Rule 7‑B: if reality so much as hiccups, we cart the instigator off to the Oracle.”

Ambrose blew an exasperated sigh through his nose. “Splendid. Nothing like a cosmic scolding to round off the evening.” He brushed a fleck of glass from his sleeve. “Very well—let’s trot along before her lecture hall fills up. But someone must feed Moss and prevent Tiberius from alphabetising my cursed grimoires.” His glance slid to Cecil, still panting happily amid the wreckage. “…And perhaps enrol this four‑legged wrecking ball in a refresher course on spatial awareness.” Cecil issued a disgruntled huff that stirred settling dust, his jowls flapping like a bellows. Somewhere among the shards a single intact regret‑vial chimed, a lonely counterpoint.

Outside, frost on the threshold rearranged itself into a simple hourglass, each grain of rime slipping inexorably downward.

A warning. Or perhaps merely a countdown.