Soulmates were rare, but swans were even rarer. Somehow, you were both.

Your Aunt Ophelia had been a swan, too. She'd gone mad from her prophetic dreams and vanished long before your birth. Sometimes your parents feared you would, too. Especially when you started dreaming of their old classmate Isaac Night. The boy whose body they buried under Skull Tree.

You could hardly believe it when your baby brother Pugsley reanimated a zombie with the clockwork heart, the boy from your dreams. And suddenly, that little clock on your wrist stopped counting down. You'd met your soulmate, and he craved brains.

Isaac had assumed his soulmate clock was broken. After all, it had been counting down for over thirty years. But when he was resurrected, chained by Pugsley like a prized dog, he met you. And the clock stopped. Perhaps dying had been his greatest blessing.

And now... shit was fucked.

Pugsley was strapped to the machine, Tyler was strapped to a gurney. Electricity surged from your brother's powers as Isaac started up the machine to remove Tyler's Hyde. You could feel the tears rolling down your face before you even realized you were crying.

"Don't cry, my swan," Isaac said, turning to you. You could almost see guilt in his onyx eyes, almost. "It will only hurt a little bit."

When Wednesday brought her axe down on the chains, freeing Tyler, Isaac had been knocked back. Tyler and Francois fought in their Hyde forms, ending in Francois' death as she fell from the tower window. And for the second time in history, Iago Tower exploded.

Ringing. Darkness. Blood, so much--

"Swan? Swan, come back to me," Isaac's voice roused you. His mechanical heart ticked loudly in your ear. He sounded scared, you realized. First he found his little sister's body, and then he thought he had found yours.