The descent from the Athanor was not a walk, but a fall into a machine.
As Caspian and the child-system, Clarity, stepped into the "Primary Shaft," gravity inverted. They drifted downward through a vertical tunnel lined with spinning brass rings, each the size of a city block. These were the Latitude-Gears, the massive mechanisms that regulated the planet's rotation and stabilized the floating islands above.
"The Weaver is sensitive to rhythm," Clarity said, her small feet kicking the empty air as she floated beside him. "Every step you take on his gears must match the 'Grand Ticking.' If your heartbeat falls out of sync, the Labyrinth will perceive you as a 'Faulty Part' and grind you into lubricant."
Caspian looked at his hands. Through his Grave-Sight, the Labyrinth wasn't just metal; it was a physical manifestation of time. The air was thick with the scent of hot oil and ancient gold.
[SEQUENCE 7: VOID-VOICE — New Skill Triggered: 'Chronos-Resonance'.] [Task: Synchronize your soul with the planetary gear. Failure result: Temporal Erasure.]
Caspian closed his eyes. He didn't listen to the gears with his ears; he listened with the Tongue of the Silent King.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
It was a heartbeat made of iron. Caspian forced his own heart to slow, then accelerate, matching the jagged, mathematical rhythm of the Weaver. His indigo shroud began to pulse in time with the machine.
The Chamber of Lost Seconds
They landed in a vast hall where the "floor" was a series of interlocking cogs, all spinning at different speeds. In the gaps between the gears, Caspian could see a golden, glowing sea of liquid time.
Standing in their path was a sentinel unlike any Clockwork Knight. It was a Time-Wraith—a creature made of shattered glass and silver sand, wearing the face of a younger Caspian Thorne.
"To pass," the Wraith spoke, its voice a perfect replica of Caspian's before the fall, "you must pay the Toll of the Weaver. Give me ten years of your future, or ten years of your past."
"Don't do it, Curator," Clarity whispered. "If you give the past, you forget why you are here. If you give the future, you die before you reach the Sun."
Caspian looked at the Wraith. He saw his own eyes—eyes that hadn't yet seen the indigo blood or the falling islands.
"I have a third option," Caspian said.
He stepped onto a spinning gear, his movements perfectly synchronized with the 'Grand Ticking.' He opened his mouth, and the Void-Voice erupted.
"PAUSE."
The Word hit the hall like a physical freeze. The gears stopped mid-spin. The liquid time in the pits below turned to solid crystal. The Time-Wraith froze, its glass body cracking as the "Seconds" it was made of were forced into a state of non-existence.
Caspian didn't take a year from his life. He stole a second from the Weaver.
He walked across the frozen Cog-Work Labyrinth, his boots clicking on the stilled metal. As he passed the Wraith, he reached out and plucked a silver thread from its chest—a Chronos-Filament.
[ACTING PROGRESS: 75% — You have dominated time rather than mourning it.]
The Weaver's Presence
At the far end of the hall, the gears began to shift and reform. They rose upward, building a staircase that led to a platform of solid light.
Sitting there, hunched over a loom made of starlight and human nerves, was the Clockwork Weaver.
He was a giant, his body a transparent shell filled with millions of tiny, turning gears. His fingers were long, golden needles that moved with a speed that blurred the eyes. He was weaving a massive shroud—a shroud that stretched upward, connected to the "God-Chains" of every floating island in the sky.
"The Mourner has become the Voice," the Weaver said. He didn't turn around. His voice sounded like a million clocks striking midnight at once. "You have stolen a second from my engine. Do you know what that second cost the world above?"
"I know what your 'Grand Ticking' costs them every day," Caspian replied, his indigo eyes fixed on the Weaver's core. "They live in fear of the air running out while you use their lives as grease for your gears."
"The Sun is dying, little Voice," the Weaver said, finally turning. His face was a clock with thirteen hours, the hands spinning backward. "The Core is cold. Without the 'Unravelling,' the planet will drift into the Void and freeze. I am not a monster. I am a Maintainer."
The Weaver stood up, his height dwarfing Caspian. He raised his golden-needle fingers.
"You want to save them? Then show me you can carry the weight of the Sun. Show me that your 'Void' is stronger than my 'Time'."
The Weaver lashed out. He didn't attack Caspian's body; he attacked the Silent Gallery itself. Caspian felt the obsidian halls of his mental sanctuary begin to crack. The Weaver was trying to "unweave" the very place where Caspian stored his soul.
"Clarity!" Caspian roared.
"I'm trying!" the girl shouted, her eyes turning into streams of binary code. "I'm locking the sectors, but he's the Root User! You have to hit his Mainspring!"
Caspian realized there was only one way to win. He couldn't out-time the Weaver. He had to introduce something the machine couldn't calculate.
He reached into his soul and pulled out the Grief of Oakhaven—the raw, chaotic sorrow he had harvested as a Grave-Walker. He didn't turn it into a word. He turned it into a Virus of Emotion.
Caspian lunged, not with a scythe, but with a touch. He grabbed the Weaver's golden hand and forced the memory of Kael's death into the gears.
The machine screamed.