Night bled over the slums in streaks of blue and rust.
The wind carried the faint metallic hum of distant gears — the sound of the Core adjusting its clocks again.
Eryndor Valein walked through the alleys with his hands deep in his coat, the vial Kael had given him swinging from a cord around his neck. The sand inside it glowed faintly, whispering when he breathed too close.
He hadn't slept since the Bell Collector took his mother's body.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that sphere of glass swallowing her last light.
He needed to know where they took the rest of her.
---
The city's curfew lights flickered overhead as he crossed the outer barrier — a wall of copper arches humming with blue electricity. On the other side was a district most people pretended didn't exist.
The Reclamation Zone.
Scrappers called it the Clock Graveyard — where broken chronotech and emptied bodies were dumped when the Order was finished draining them.
It was said the air there still ticked.
---
A hand caught Eryndor's sleeve as he slipped between the fences.
"Thought you'd go without me?"
Kael stepped out of the shadows, grin half-hidden under a cracked visor. The glow on his wrist had nearly vanished — [00:00:03:11] — but he didn't seem to care.
"You followed me?" Eryndor asked.
Kael shrugged. "You were heading toward the Graveyard. No one does that unless they've lost someone."
Eryndor didn't answer.
Kael tilted his head. "Was it her? The woman from yesterday?"
He nodded once.
Kael's grin faded. "Then let's go find what's left."
---
They moved quietly through a maze of rusted pipelines and dead clocks.
Huge metal faces lay half-buried in the dust, their hands frozen at random hours. Some still whispered faint ticks, like old hearts refusing to stop.
The ground was littered with shards of glass — pieces of old ChronoMarks, maybe, or bits of time that had leaked out and turned to crystal.
Eryndor knelt, touching one. It was warm. The moment his fingers brushed it, he felt something flash behind his eyes — a woman laughing, sunlight on her face — and then it was gone.
He jerked his hand back. "Did you see that?"
Kael blinked. "See what?"
"The light. The memory."
Kael smirked. "Welcome to the Graveyard. Time doesn't die here — it just forgets who it belongs to."
---
Far ahead, a faint glow pulsed in the fog — rhythmic, steady.
They followed it, stepping over collapsed gears and old coffins of glass. The glow led them to a wide pit surrounded by towers of scrap.
Eryndor peered down. His breath caught.
Hundreds of bodies lay below, perfectly arranged in circles, their wrists connected by silver wires. At the center, a machine the size of a house throbbed with light, drawing thin streams of blue from each corpse.
Residual Flow.
Kael whistled softly. "So that's how they keep the Core alive."
Eryndor felt sick. "They said they returned it to the Flow…"
"They did." Kael's voice was sharp now. "The Flow runs through their machines."
One of the bodies in the outer ring shifted slightly — as if breathing. The glow from its wrist flickered weakly.
Eryndor's pulse jumped. "They're not all dead."
"Half-drained," Kael murmured. "The Order keeps them alive just long enough to finish the extraction. Easier that way."
Eryndor clenched his fists. "Monsters."
Kael looked at him. "Now you get why I steal from them."
---
A metallic groan echoed above them. The machine's lights flared, and a group of masked engineers entered the pit — Order technicians, robes trimmed with gold.
Kael pulled Eryndor behind a wall of rusted gears. "Stay down."
The priests began checking readings on their wrists, adjusting valves that pulsed with blue fire.
"Flow levels stable," one said. "Sector Nine's bodies still hold residual charge."
"Good," another replied. "The Archon will be pleased."
At that name, Eryndor's heart skipped.
Archon — one of the immortal rulers, the ones said to command time itself.
He looked again at the pit. The machine's central core wasn't just glowing — it was breathing, expanding and contracting like a lung. Inside the glass casing, faint silhouettes drifted, shapes of faces dissolving in and out of the light.
Eryndor whispered, "Are those… souls?"
Kael's eyes were wide. "They're storing them."
---
A sudden alarm sliced through the air — sharp, piercing.
One of the priests turned. "Unauthorized presence detected."
Eryndor froze. A red lens swept across the scrap piles, searching.
Kael grabbed his arm. "Run."
They bolted through the maze, boots crunching glass. Blue light chased them, growing brighter, faster.
"Left!" Kael shouted. They slipped through a gap in the wall, tumbling down a slope of broken cogs into darkness.
When they stopped, Eryndor realized they were inside a collapsed tunnel — old train tracks twisted into spirals.
Kael coughed, laughing breathlessly. "Well, that was close."
Eryndor stared back toward the light. "They'll find us."
"Not down here. This tunnel's off-grid. Time doesn't flow right."
Eryndor frowned. "What do you mean?"
Kael tossed him a small stone. "Watch."
He dropped it. The stone fell halfway… then hung in midair, vibrating slowly before sinking the rest of the way.
Eryndor stared. "The Flow's broken here."
"Exactly," Kael said. "This is where the old machines bled out too much ChronoEnergy. Time slips, freezes, loops. The Order sealed it off."
Eryndor touched the air. It felt thicker, heavier — like walking through water. His heartbeat echoed louder in his ears.
For the first time, he felt time itself pressing against him — alive, restless.
---
They followed the tunnel until they reached a small chamber. In the center stood a cracked pedestal, half-buried in dust.
On top of it lay an object shaped like an hourglass, but the sand inside flowed upward.
Eryndor reached for it without thinking.
Kael grabbed his wrist. "Don't. It's one of their relics — pre-Ecliptic. The priests call them Chrono Blades. They're not meant for us."
Eryndor's gaze stayed locked on it. "Then why's it here?"
"Because even the Order's afraid of it."
The glass shimmered softly, whispering in a voice that wasn't a voice — more like the echo of a heartbeat.
Eryndor stepped closer. The vial around his neck began to glow in response. The two lights pulsed together — once, twice — syncing like matched pulses.
Kael backed away. "Eryn… maybe we should leave."
But he couldn't move. The sound filled his head, soft and rhythmic.
For a moment, the whole tunnel felt still.
Then the hourglass cracked.
A thin stream of golden sand drifted out and circled his hand like smoke. It didn't burn — it moved through him, seeping into his veins.
Visions burst behind his eyes — clocks spinning backward, cities turning to dust, stars collapsing into themselves.
He gasped and fell to his knees. The light vanished.
When he looked up, the relic had gone dark.
Kael rushed to him. "What did you do?"
"I… I don't know."
On Eryndor's wrist, his dead ChronoMark flickered — for the first time since the Life Bank.
A faint glow. Just a single symbol.
∞
---
The air went silent.
Even the broken clocks stopped ticking for a moment.
Kael whispered, "What is that?"
Eryndor stared at the mark, his heart pounding.
"I think," he said slowly, "it's time that doesn't end."
---
They didn't speak for a long while.
Somewhere far above them, the bells of Ecliptica began to ring again.
But down in the Clock Graveyard,
something older had awakened —
and it had chosen Eryndor Valein.
To be continued...