The fourth chime did not finish ringing. It fractured mid-sound, like a throat cut open before a scream could end. Kael felt the vibration deep in his teeth.
The inverted city above the Clocktower spasmed violently, its porcelain spires flickering between existence and absence. Windows blinked like broken eyes. Entire streets phased in and out of alignment. The Architect was halfway through the door, and something—Kael's sabotage—was holding it there.
Professor Veyne's expression changed for the first time. It wasn't fear, but a cold, clinical annoyance.
"Stability threshold has dropped," he muttered, glancing at the control array beneath his feet. "Energy draw insufficient."
Below them, the suspended pods in the tower's lower shaft glowed with a blinding, predatory light. The comatose citizens convulsed faintly inside their glass prisons as the system demanded more of them to stabilize the descent.
Jonas stared down at them, his shield arm trembling. "They're killing them."
"No," Veyne corrected calmly. "They are contributing."
The fifth chime struck. BONG—
It warped. The sound bent sideways, reverberating not just through the air but through memory itself. Kael staggered as a wave of foreign recollections slammed into him. He was standing in a cathedral that had never existed—white marble, perfect symmetry, and a voice echoing from nowhere and everywhere: "Iteration Failed."
He blinked, and the vision vanished. He was back inside the grinding metal of the tower. The fragment in his mind was no longer passive; it was resisting. The Architect did not want a partial descent; it wanted completion. And Kael had stolen a vital piece of its blueprint.
Veyne noticed the shift instantly. His gaze snapped toward Kael. "You are interfering."
"Yes," Kael replied quietly.
The Legionnaire stirred in the black box of his mind, urging him forward. The Desperate Father whispered of survival. Kael ignored both. He focused on the central console at the top of the shaft. A ring of crystalline pylons encircled it, each channeling blue energy upward through a conduit that fed directly into the clock face.
Break one, and the system destabilizes. Break all, and the entire network could implode.
"How much control do you actually have?" Kael asked Veyne.
"Enough," Veyne answered.
He raised his hand. The gears along the tower walls shifted. Iron teeth locked into new configurations. The platforms realigned like a giant mechanical ribcage closing inward. Jonas lifted his shield just as a section of rotating steel tore loose and hurled toward them. The impact threw him backward.
Kael barely avoided the second strike. Veyne stepped down from the console platform slowly, his boots clicking with terrifying precision against the metal.
"You misunderstand your position," he said calmly. "You are not the protagonist of this cycle."
Kael did not respond. He moved instead.
Blueprint Overlay: Activated.
The tower became transparent in his vision. He saw stress points in the rotating gears. He saw the weak anchor at Pylon Three—slightly misaligned from the earlier instability. He sprinted toward it.
Veyne flicked two fingers. A translucent barrier snapped into place in front of Kael. Kael slammed into it and rolled aside as a blade of compressed light carved through the air where he had been.
Veyne was not merely a professor. His synchronization flared faintly:
[Lineage: The Silent Archivist]
[Synchronization: 48%]
Forty-eight percent. Controlled. Calculated. Dangerous.
"You carry a foreign node," Veyne said, advancing slowly. "It does not belong to you."
"It chose me," Kael replied.
"Nothing chooses void."
Another gear detached from the wall. Jonas intercepted it with his shield, grunting as his percentage ticked upward: [Ironclad Vanguard – 13%].
"Jonas! Hold it steady!" Kael snapped.
"I'm trying!"
The tower trembled again. Above them, the inverted city flickered violently. A porcelain building tore free and plummeted downward through the cloud seam. It shattered against nothingness halfway to the ground. Reality rejected it. The Architect's descent was incomplete.
Veyne's jaw tightened. "Accelerate draw," he commanded into the console.
Below, the pods blazed with blinding light. The comatose citizens screamed silently inside their glass prisons. Kael felt the Desperate Father claw at the box in his mind.
Save them. You failed once. Don't fail again.
The lid cracked slightly. Pain sharpened into clarity.
Kael pivoted. Instead of attacking Veyne, he dove toward the nearest pylon. Veyne's eyes widened a fraction; he hadn't expected the F-Class "Broken" to ignore the direct threat.
Kael drove his knife into the pylon's exposed joint—exactly where the earlier glitch had misaligned it. The crystal shattered. Energy backflowed violently through the conduit.
The sixth chime distorted into a shriek. BONG—
The inverted city above flickered wildly. Its structures overlapped each other at impossible angles. Veyne stumbled half a step as the feedback wave rippled through the tower.
"Fool!" he snapped. "You destabilize the entire cycle!"
"That's the point," Kael said.
Jonas charged. He slammed his shield into Veyne's side with everything he had. For a brief second, Veyne's concentration broke. Kael saw it—the faint crack in the Archivist's composure.
He sprinted for Pylon Two.
Veyne recovered instantly. A thread of light lashed out, slicing across Kael's shoulder. Pain exploded through him. The Legionnaire roared within the box.
Use it. Convert pain.
He did. The wound burned—but his limbs steadied instead of faltering. He ripped Pylon Two free from its mounting.
The seventh chime collapsed entirely. The clock hands froze at 12:07.
Above the city, the sky did something unnatural. It folded. Not outward, but inward, like fabric pinched between invisible fingers. The descending city spasmed violently. Cracks ran along its porcelain streets.
"Synchronization dropping!" Veyne hissed. His calm was gone now.
The Architect's domain began retracting. Not fully, not cleanly. It tore away in fragments. Black shapes fell from it—incomplete constructs, screaming without sound as they disintegrated midair.
Jonas stared upward in horror. "We didn't stop it," he whispered.
"No," Kael said quietly. "We interrupted it."
Veyne lunged forward with sudden fury. His eyes burned with cold, blue light. "You have no idea what you have undone!"
Kael met him head-on. Not with strength, but with timing. The Blueprint showed the final pylon—the central one—pulsing erratically from the feedback surge. It was seconds from rupture.
Kael grabbed Jonas. "Down!"
He threw both of them behind the massive rotating gear assembly. The central pylon detonated.
A shockwave tore through the tower interior. Glass pods shattered. Blue energy erupted in chaotic arcs. The clock face above cracked straight through its center. Veyne vanished in the blast—not disintegrated, but displaced.
The energy discharge ripped a hole in the tower's upper structure. Cold night air flooded in. Silence followed. Not total, but stunned.
The inverted city above the clouds flickered one final time and vanished. The seam in the sky sealed itself with a dull, sickening finality. The pulse beneath Aethelgard did not disappear; it weakened, then stabilized. Incomplete.
Jonas coughed, pushing himself upright amid shattered glass and twisted metal. "We're alive," he rasped.
"For now," Kael said.
He stood slowly. His shoulder throbbed. His mind felt heavier. The fragment inside him was different now—less alien, more aware. He looked down at the broken pods around them. Many were empty. Some still flickered faintly with residual light. But most of the citizens had fallen free before the final blast. Whether they survived the drop... he didn't know.
Footsteps echoed from the lower entrance. Inquisitors. And something else. Slow. Measured.
Crimson light flickered faintly against the broken gears. Kael's breath slowed.
Lira stepped into view. Her gown was gone. She wore her academy uniform again, but the red glow around her eyes had deepened.
[Synchronization: 28%]
She surveyed the destruction silently. Then she looked at Kael.
"You interfered with a Sovereign's descent," she said quietly.
"Yes."
Her gaze shifted briefly upward to the cracked clock face. "Why?"
Kael held her eyes. "Because it wasn't yours."
For the first time since her awakening, something trembled in her expression. A crack beneath the Empress.
"You do not understand what you are disrupting," she said.
"Neither do you," Kael replied.
Silence stretched between them. Behind her, Inquisitors gathered cautiously, unsure whether to approach the anomaly. The tower groaned again as distant gears settled into a new, damaged alignment.
The city had survived. But not intact.
Lira stepped closer. Her crimson eyes searched his face carefully. "You are changing," she murmured.
"So are you," he answered.
For a heartbeat—just one—the red in her eyes dimmed. And Kael saw his sister again. Then it returned, stronger.
"The cycle will continue," she said softly. "With or without you."
She turned away. The Inquisitors parted for her without question. Kael watched her leave. Above them, the cracked clock face ticked once. Slow. Uneven.
The time read 12:08.
Midnight had passed. But the day had not reset. And somewhere deep beneath the foundations of Aethelgard, something that had nearly arrived was now awake enough to remember being denied.