The immediate escape from the Obsidian Labyrinth was fueled by sheer desperation and the raw power of the Temporal Compression Weave. Elias and Silas burst free, leaving the chaotic Crimson field of the Labyrinth to snap back to its violent, unstable state behind them.
The Master Key, integrated into Elias's mind as a Secondary Anchor, was a heavy, cold weight of Obsidian logic. It magnified his Cipher's function tenfold, allowing him to perceive the Threads with crystalline, terrifying clarity, but the psychic toll was immense.
"We need a temporary sanctuary, Elias," Silas urged as they scrambled through the rocky foothills. "The power you just wielded will be a beacon to both the Registry and the Cutters."
Elias, relying entirely on the codified coordinates of the Cartographer's Map in his mind, pointed toward the far-off horizon where a strange, vertical shimmer cut the cold blue sky.
"The second coordinate is our only sanctuary," Elias stated, his voice flat with exhaustion. "The map calls it The Nexus of Broken Silver."
After hours of relentless travel on foot, they arrived at a vast, desolate plain. The horizon was dominated by an impossible structure: a gigantic, fractured pillar of shimmering, pale metal that stretched vertically toward the sky, ending abruptly in a violently broken edge.
"That can't be natural," Silas whispered, staring at the ruins.
Elias focused his Cipher. The pillar, which he realized was made of a material unlike anything in Veridia, was saturated with the most powerful and damaged psychic signature he had ever encountered. The structure was drenched in a thick, weeping Silver Thread—but these threads were severed, frayed, and leaking causality into the air.
"It was a Pillar of Inception," Elias deduced, the Master Key Anchor providing the ancient knowledge. "The Custodians built it to stabilize the local Silver Thread before the Chronometer was created. The Registry or the Cutters destroyed it centuries ago. It's an open wound in the timeline."
The area immediately surrounding the ruins was a zone of extreme Causal Instability. The ground shifted subtly, colors flickered, and minor time loops played out: a gust of wind would suddenly reverse itself; a droplet of rain would freeze and then evaporate instantly.
"The Silver Threads are too damaged here," Elias explained, a genuine fear creeping into his controlled voice. "If we enter that field, our own threads—our memories, our identities—could be pulled apart or spliced with another timeline. We need a targeted defense."
Elias knelt at the perimeter of the fractured field, pulling out the Crimson-Bound knife.
"To traverse a zone of shattered causality, we must make our own threads momentarily un-splittable," Elias stated. "We will perform a Weave: Personal Time-Lock."
He explained the process: they needed to steal stable Crimson energy and use it to impose a perfect, rigid temporal loop on their own immediate vicinity—a micro-second bubble of absolute, unchangeable identity.
Silas found a suitable Anchor: a rusted, ancient piece of rebar that had been shattered in the collapse. It was humming with residual Crimson Thread from the destruction.
Elias grabbed the rebar, drawing the unstable, chaotic Crimson into his Cipher. He used the immense Order of the Master Key to filter the chaos into a usable stream of power. He then imposed the Intent of Identity—the concept that Elias Thorne is Elias Thorne—onto the stream and directed the resulting Weave onto Silas, then himself.
The energy hit them both, cold and sharp. For a micro-moment, Elias felt his entire personal timeline—his childhood, his office job, his flight—snap into a rigid, singular cycle. They were now temporally anchored to themselves.
"It is only temporary," Elias warned, the crimson flow subsiding. "The extreme instability here will rapidly dissolve the Time-Lock. We must be quick."
They stepped into the Nexus of Broken Silver.
The immediate effects were jarring. The psychic noise of the frayed Silver Threads was overwhelming, but their Time-Locks protected their minds. They walked through flickering realities: one moment the ground was solid earth, the next it was cold water, then dry dust.
They reached the base of the massive broken pillar, where the map indicated their objective was hidden.
"The Master Key component is hidden in the Nexus's core," Elias said, pointing to a small, dark aperture in the metallic base. "But the key is guarded. The map warns of a Causal Sentinel."
As he finished the sentence, the fractured Silver Threads around the aperture began to coalesce and reform, pulling the leaking causality into a single, cohesive form. The Sentinel was not a guard; it was a hostile reconstruction of the Nexus's original custodian—a ghost of Order, warped by the broken timeline.
The Causal Sentinel was tall, silent, and its body was made entirely of shimmering, solidified Silver Thread. It stood still, its eyes two points of pure, freezing white light, ready to reintegrate the anomalies into its own fractured existence.