Lyra was falling.
The roots coiled around her wrists like the grasping hands of the dead, their grip tightening as they dragged her down, down into the gaping maw of the world. The darkness around her was alive, breathing with a slow, measured rhythm that sent tremors through her bones. It wasn't just the absence of light—it was a living, pulsing thing, thick with the scent of ozone and something older, something metallic and sour. Blood. Not fresh, but lingering, clinging to the air like a ghost of violence long past.
Then—impact.
The force of the landing rattled through her, her knees slamming against the ground. But it wasn't earth or stone beneath her—it was worse.
Bone.
The floor was a vast mosaic of pale, polished tiles, each one formed from human remains. Names were etched into them in delicate, looping script, a language both foreign and strangely familiar. Lyra's breath caught in her throat as she scanned the inscriptions. Some names she recognized—ancient alchemists, masters of their craft, their legacies whispered about in the deepest corners of the Guild's records. Others were unknown, worn smooth by time, their stories lost but their bones forever bound to this place.
Her fingers trembled as she pushed herself upright, her palms sliding across the bone tiles, slick with a fine layer of dust—dust that might have once been flesh.
Then came the sound.
A slow, grinding groan, the deep reverberation of metal twisting against metal. Lyra looked up.
A cathedral of gears loomed around her, vast mechanisms interlocked in an intricate, nightmarish dance. Brass teeth clashed and turned, some the size of doors, others as massive as entire buildings. The air was thick with the shriek of grinding metal, the constant groan of the basilica's heart. The sound was ceaseless, deafening, a choir of tortured steel.
And within the gaps between the gears—
Eyes.
Faces.
Not carvings. Not statues. People.
Trapped.
Pressed against the machinery like prisoners behind glass, their mouths stretched in eternal, silent screams. Their eyes were hollow but aware, tracking her movements with eerie precision. Their skin was stretched taut over their bones, some frozen in expressions of terror, others with an emptiness so profound it sent a chill through Lyra's soul.
She had stumbled into something beyond comprehension.
And at the center of it all, hanging from tarnished silver chains, was the basilica's core.
A crucible.
Not made of gold, nor filled with fire, but glass—thick, warped, and pulsing with an inner glow. The light inside was murky, like liquid time itself, shifting and curling in ways that made Lyra's head ache just to look at it.
Something was inside.
A figure, small and fragile. A child.
Drowning.
---
THE SACRIFICE OF MEMORY
A hand clamped down on Lyra's shoulder, fingers digging into her flesh. She spun, expecting Finn, expecting Callan—
But it was neither.
Callan stood before her, his face drawn, his eyes shadowed with something more than exhaustion. His dagger was gone, his sleeves in tatters, and his arms—
His arms were bleeding time.
Thin, shimmering threads unraveled from his skin, curling into the air like smoke, dissolving before they could touch the ground.
Callan's voice was raw, almost broken. "They're grinding the past into fuel," he said, pointing to the gears. "Look."
Lyra followed his gaze—and her breath hitched.
Echo stood before the central mechanism, her palms pressed flat against its brass surface. Her hair, once dark, had turned white as bleached bone, her skin translucent, veins glowing like molten gold beneath the surface.
She was touching the gears—no, feeding them.
And beneath her hands—
A memory played.
A younger Callan knelt before the Guildmaster, his face unlined by years of burden. A blade gleamed in the dim candlelight as it pressed against his wrist. A cut—black blood welling to the surface—an oath whispered into the stone.
"I consent."
But the memory shifted.
The Guildmaster's face melted, reforming into Echo's. The words of the oath changed. The vow wasn't to protect Lyra.
It was to forget.
Callan staggered, his fingers clawing at his temple. "That's—" His voice cracked. "That's not mine—"
Echo turned to him, her eyes no longer human. They were gears now, turning in perfect, synchronized motion with the basilica's pulse.
"No," she whispered. "It's hers."
She lifted a hand and pointed to the crucible.
To the child.
To the real Titan.
---
THE HEART OF THE TITAN
The child's eyes fluttered open.
They were Lyra's eyes.
The crucible shattered.
Time unfolded.
Lyra saw—
A child, stepping into the crucible, trembling. The Guildmaster's hand on her shoulder, his voice thick with honeyed lies.
"You will be remembered," he had promised. "You will be power."
But it was a lie.
The fire wasn't hers to command.
It commanded her.
The first scream. The first stitch as they wove her into the very fabric of time itself.
Centuries of agony.
Centuries of use.
She wasn't a Titan.
She was a sacrifice.
The child reached out now, her fingers brushing against Lyra's cheek. Her voice was soft, broken, barely a whisper.
"You don't get to choose."
Her fingers curled.
"You're the key, not the hand that turns it."
A voice rang out—Finn's voice, fractured, desperate.
"LYRA!"
She turned.
Finn stood at the entrance of the basilica, his body—his glass body—cracking. Gold leaked from the fractures, spilling out like molten light. But it wasn't just him breaking.
His reflection in the glass of the gears showed something else—
A city in flames.
A door made of bone.
A version of herself with hollow eyes and a smile like a knife wound.
And in Finn's hands—
A knife.
Not just any knife.
The real knife.
The one that could cut threads.
Echo moved first.
"No," she snarled, lunging.
Callan was faster.
He tackled her, his arms—bleeding time, bleeding memory—locking around her waist. "GO!" he roared.
Lyra ran.
The child Titan screamed.
The gears reversed.
And the basilica began to unmake itself.
---
THE THIRD OPTION
Finn thrust the knife into Lyra's hands. His fingers were warm. Human.
"It's not a choice between binding or freeing," he gasped. "It's what you make."
The blade hummed, vibrating against the very fabric of reality.
Before her—
The child Titan, weeping liquid gold.
The crucible, trying to rebuild itself.
The gears, grinding memory into dust.
Lyra stepped forward.
Raised the knife.
And—
She did not cut the thread.
She cut the crucible.
The glass exploded.
The child fell.
And the Titan—
—woke up.