The collapse was not immediate, explosive, or grand, as legends liked to describe temporal catastrophes. It was silent, intimate, and profoundly wrong. The ground of the depression did not split open or cave in all at once; it simply began to exist inconsistently. One step was solid, the next stretched too long, and another seemed to repeat itself, as if someone had forgotten to advance the scene.
Lin Ye felt the air grow thick—not from pressure, but resistance. Breathing was like pushing against an invisible current. The sounds of the group—orders, curses, the scrape of boots—arrived distorted, some delayed, others premature, layered in an unnatural overlap.
The fragmented clock appeared in his consciousness with brutal clarity.
The broken gears began to turn for the first time—all at once.
This was not a voluntary activation.
It was a defensive reaction.
The eye at the center opened, revealing an incomplete pupil formed of overlapping layers of dark light and silent lightning. A sharp pain pierced Lin Ye's temple, followed by something worse: desynchronization. As if his body were slightly out of phase with the rest of the world.
"Major dead instant detected."
The voice was emotionless, but this time there was something more—an implicit pressure, a warning that needed no further words.
"Forced use will result in irreversible loss."
Lin Ye had no time to ask what that meant.
Wei Shun shouted something he couldn't fully hear. Han Lu was halfway through ordering a full retreat when the distortion wave struck them. One of the scouts was hurled backward—but his body did not fall at once. It hung suspended for an impossible heartbeat before crashing to the ground with a dull thud, as if time had decided to release him all at once.
Lin Ye acted.
Not because he wanted to.
But because if he didn't, someone else would die.
The world slowed around him—not uniformly, but in fragments. Some particles of dust hung motionless, others fell too quickly. Lin Ye instinctively extended his hand, and in that simple gesture, the fragmented clock consumed something that did not belong to the world.
A second.
Not one measured by ordinary clocks, but a discarded second—an instant reality had tried, and failed, to correct. Lin Ye seized it before it vanished.
The pain was immediate.
Not physical, but existential. It felt as though something had been torn from within him—not a part of his body, but a possibility. A future that would no longer exist.
During that stolen second, the world obeyed.
The distortion wave froze just long enough for Lin Ye to shove Wei Shun out of the critical zone and shout an incoherent command that was nonetheless understood. Han Lu reacted instantly, dragging another scout away and activating an emergency withdrawal signal.
Then the second ended.
Time resumed.
The collapse sealed in on itself with a low moan, like a poorly sutured wound. The depression fell silent, covered in inert cracks. The group had survived—but not unscathed.
Lin Ye dropped to his knees.
His breathing was uneven, and a thin line of blood slowly trickled from his nose. He didn't feel fatigue—something worse instead: emptiness. The fragmented clock had almost completely shut down, its gears motionless, the eye tightly closed, as if refusing to look.
Han Lu reached him in two strides.
"Hey!" he shook him. "Look at me. Are you conscious?"
Lin Ye nodded weakly.
Wei Shun stood a few steps back, his face pale, eyes fixed on Lin Ye. There was no superiority left in his expression—only the uncomfortable realization that he had come far too close to something he didn't understand.
"That thing you did…" Wei Shun began.
"No," Han Lu cut him off sharply. "Not here. Not now."
He activated a retreat beacon, and within seconds an imperial formation enveloped the group, extracting them from the Gray Zone with a jolt so abrupt it nearly induced nausea.
When Lin Ye opened his eyes again, he was in a medical chamber within the camp. The ceiling was white, etched with stabilization formations. The air was clean—too orderly.
He tried to move, and a dull pain ran through his body.
"Don't," said a calm voice. "Not yet."
Zhao Wen stood beside the bed.
Lin Ye looked at him without surprise. Deep down, he had known this would happen.
"You survived a major distortion," Zhao Wen continued. "And you did so without cultivation, without visible tools, and without triggering any registered formation."
He paused.
"That should not be possible."
Lin Ye closed his eyes briefly.
"And yet it happened."
Zhao Wen did not smile.
"You paid a price," he said. "I don't know exactly what it was, but you did. I can see it in your pulse… or in the absence of one."
He stepped closer.
"Listen carefully, Lin Ye. The Empire does not punish those who break the rules if they produce results. But it does observe. And when it observes something it cannot classify, it decides whether it should be used… or eliminated."
Lin Ye opened his eyes and met his gaze.
"Then decide."
Zhao Wen studied him in silence for a long moment.
"Not yet," he said at last. "You're still… incomplete."
When the inspector left, Lin Ye was alone. He closed his eyes and sank into his consciousness.
The dark space appeared—but it was damaged.
The fragmented clock now bore a new crack. Small, almost imperceptible, but real. One of the gears was missing a fragment, and that fragment was nowhere to be found.
"Stolen second consumed."
The voice echoed, more distant than before.
"Loss registered: possibility anchor."
Lin Ye frowned.
"What did I lose?"
There was no clear answer—only a vague, unsettling sensation: somewhere in the future, something that could have happened… would now never happen.
The eye remained closed.
Not as punishment.
As a warning.
Lin Ye drew a deep breath, accepting reality with forced calm. He had saved lives. He had drawn the Empire's attention. And he had paid a price he did not yet fully understand.
He stared at the white ceiling, feeling a deep exhaustion for the first time.
"So this is the real cost…" he whispered. "Very well."
Far away, in a region belonging neither to the Southern Front nor to Auralis, something ancient stirred.
An eye, hidden behind layers of seals, opened just a sliver.
"Interesting," murmured a voice unused for millennia. "The bearer has begun to bleed time."
And when time bleeds…
The gods listen.