Part I: The Garden Under Glass
The light returned slowly.
First a glint of brass. Then the outline of glass walls blurred with frost. The corridor behind her was gone, swallowed in silence. In front of her: a wide circular space enclosed by a dome of fractured, soot-speckled crystal. Beyond it, the sky was black.
The air was warm.
Unnaturally so—thick with the smell of dried citrus, wilted herbs, and something like honey. Thale stepped forward cautiously. Beneath her boots: marble tiles cracked by old roots. Thin vines coiled across the floor, brown and brittle, as if they'd tried to grow here long after the world had stopped.
She stood at the threshold of a garden that was no longer alive.
Rows of skeletal trees lined a shallow path leading to a long banquet table at the dome's center. The trees bore no leaves—only metal tags that clinked softly in the warm artificial breeze. Names. Carved into bone. She didn't read them.
The table was the centerpiece.
Stretched nearly thirty feet, draped in a silver-mossed cloth, it was set with mismatched porcelain, jeweled goblets, candlesticks filled with wax that had never been lit. Every chair was occupied.
She stopped.
The "guests" were corpses.
Not decayed—not rotting—but embalmed. Preserved. Each sat perfectly posed in mid-gesture: one raising a toast, another caught mid-laugh. There was a woman with pearls sewn into her lips. A man with no eyes, but a monocle glued to his cheekbone. A pair of twins, holding hands, fingers fused together with silver wire.
She took a breath. The air didn't move.
They were staged, like theater. A frozen party, caught at the moment before the toast fell flat.
Thale approached the table slowly.
At the far end, a tall figure moved.
Not a person. A machine.
It glided along a narrow track embedded in the floor, rolling on quiet, caterpillar treads. Its upper body was humanoid—tall, gaunt, faceless. A brass skull sat atop a neck of glass tubing filled with black fluid. The thing wore a waiter's coat: white, pristine, buttoned to the throat.
Its hands moved with mechanical grace, pouring steaming liquid from a teapot into empty cups before each guest.
It did not acknowledge her.
When it reached the end of the table, it pivoted and began again.
Pour. Pause. Pour.
Thale watched as the tea pooled in every untouched cup.
And none of it cooled.
The corpses were warm. She could feel it from here.
She stepped forward, drawn without meaning to be.
Her eyes scanned the table. No two guests were the same—different races, ages, genders, uniforms. Some wore robes that looked religious. Others had cybernetic implants fused into their faces. One had a crown that looked grown from wire.
Who were these people?
The waiter paused.
Its head tilted toward her—though it had no face.
A faint click from inside its chest.
Then it resumed.
Pour. Pause. Pour.
She found herself whispering. "What is this place?"
Behind her, a child's voice answered.
"A waiting room."
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Part II: Patchwork Guest
Thale turned sharply.
The voice had come from halfway down the table, between a pale woman with her spine exposed and a slumped man holding an empty goblet like a scepter.
A child was perched in one of the chairs.
Except—no.
Not a child.
A thing in the shape of one.
It had a child's small frame, but stitched together from mismatched parts—one arm metallic, the other soft and papery like old skin. Its face was pale porcelain, cracked down the center. One eye glowed blue. The other was painted on.
It smiled.
"You're late," it said.
Thale took a step back. "What are you?"
"I'm Patch," it said cheerfully. "Head of the table today. You must be the ticking girl."
"The what?"
Patch hopped down from the chair with an awkward clank, knees locking at odd angles.
"The one who starts it over. You're here for the Last Pour. It's tradition."
"I don't follow."
"You will."
Patch scuttled to the mechanical waiter and patted its leg. "He's been waiting for you. Everyone has."
Thale looked at the corpses.
"They're dead."
Patch shrugged. "Mostly. Some of them just stopped moving. Some are dreaming too loud. Sometimes I help them remember how to sit right."
He reached into the sallow chest of the monocled man and adjusted something. The body jerked, then stilled. Patch smiled with childlike pride.
"They forget how to hold their cups sometimes."
Thale felt her skin crawl. "Why are you here?"
Patch turned his cracked head toward her, blue eye whirring.
"I'm what's left of the first pourer. And I wanted to see how you'd drink it."