What’s to come from retiring second time — gold chain (8)
I believe the answer is:
tomorrow
'what's to come' is the definition.
(tomorrow is still to come)
'retiring second time gold chain' is the wordplay.
'retiring' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'second' becomes 'mo' (both are short periods of time).
'time' becomes 't'.
'gold' becomes 'or' ('or' is the heraldic name for gold).
'chain' becomes 'row'.
'mo'+'t'='mot'
'mot' in reverse letter order is 'tom'.
'tom'+'or'+'row'='TOMORROW'
'from' is the link.
(Other definitions for tomorrow that I've seen before include "___ Never Knows, 1966 Beatles song" , "It's another day" , "coming soon" , "The next day" , "Manana to the Spanish" .)