The hand wearing a black glove slowly withdrew from the deep pocket.
There was no cold metallic reflection of a pistol, no chilling aura of a dagger.
Lying between his slender fingers was a pocket watch—an extremely ordinary, perhaps even somewhat old-fashioned, brass pocket watch.
The smooth casing bore subtle scratches from years of use, and the chain was ordinary steel, reflecting a dull light under the gas lamp.
It lay quietly in Nefren Ka's palm, so mundane that it seemed completely out of place with everything else about this mysterious visitor.
Holmes and Watson were both slightly taken aback; the tense atmosphere loosened subtly, but was immediately followed by deeper confusion.
Watson's clenched fists relaxed slightly, but the vigilance in his eyes did not diminish in the slightest.
Holmes's gaze, however, instantly focused on the pocket watch; its style, the degree of wear, the oxidation marks on the chain... every detail was rapidly analyzed and compared within his high-speed brain.
This watch itself seemed to have nothing special about it; what was the purpose of its appearance?
"A mundane little trinket."
Nefren Ka's voice broke the brief silence, carrying a strange, almost doting tone, as if evaluating a child's toy.
He slightly raised his palm, letting the pocket watch be fully revealed in his hand.
"A prisoner of time, a servant tamed by gears and springs. Your world treasures it so much, using it to measure life and death, to define the past and the future."
His gaze fell on the watch face; his deep eyes reflected no image of the watch hands, only pure darkness.
"However." Before he could finish, the anomaly occurred!
Without any warning, without any preamble of light, shadow, or sound, the ordinary, unremarkable brass pocket watch lying in Nefren Ka's palm, under the focused gaze of Holmes and Watson, disintegrated silently.
It did not shatter, it did not melt, it did not burn.
It seemed to instantly lose the very foundation of its existence as "matter."
The hard brass casing, the transparent glass crystal, the intricate gears, the tightly wound springs... everything that constituted the pocket watch decomposed in a billionth of a second into countless, extremely tiny dust particles shimmering with faint starlight!
It was a scene impossible to describe precisely in words.
In the space where the pocket watch had existed, matter itself was reduced to its most primitive, most chaotic form.
Countless tiny dust particles shimmering with cold starlight floated a few inches above Nefren Ka's palm, slowly and silently rotating and flowing, forming a small, miniature nebula vortex.
They no longer possessed any shape or meaning of a "watch," but were merely a mass of shimmering dust following some unknown law of motion.
"Hiss—!" Dr. Watson gasped, the sound stuck in his throat, turning into a short, terrified wheeze.
He stood up abruptly from the sofa, his body swaying slightly from extreme horror, subconsciously taking a step back until his heels hit the sofa legs.
His brown eyes widened, his pupils contracted sharply from shock, staring fixedly at the stardust slowly rotating in Nefren Ka's palm, the color drained from his face, leaving it pale as paper.
The scene before him completely overturned all his understanding of the physical world! This was definitely no trick! No sleight of hand could achieve such a soul-shuddering effect of material annihilation!
Holmes did not move; he remained in his leaning-forward posture, his fingertips still pressed together against his chin.
However, Watson caught a terrifying glimpse: his partner's fingers, usually steady as a rock, were now trembling uncontrollably! The amplitude was tiny, but the frequency was extremely high.
The color also drained instantly from Holmes's sharp-angled face; his skin tightened until it was almost translucent, and one could clearly see the veins near his temples throbbing.
His gray eyes were currently swept by an unprecedented storm of emotion—extreme shock, the bewilderment of having his cognition completely overturned, and an almost greedy, frantic urge to tear apart and devour this impossible phenomenon!
"Matter."
Nefren Ka's voice sounded again, as calm as before, seemingly eternal, forming a chilling contrast with the eerily rotating stardust in his palm.
"In the dimensions you understand, matter is the carrier of everything, the solid cornerstone. It is the starting point of your logic, but also the prison of your cognition."
His gaze moved away from the stardust vortex in his palm, slowly sweeping over Watson's terrified face, and finally, landed on Holmes's eyes, whose pupils had slightly shrunk from the massive impact. His gaze was deep, carrying a power that pierced the soul.
"Time."
"You use intricate machinery to capture its shadow, attempting to divide, mark, and tame it. How adorable, this futility."
"To you, time is the manifestation of the eternal motion of matter, it is 'forever forward,' but..."
His hand holding the miniature stardust closed elegantly and slowly.
Following his finger movement, the floating, rotating, starlight-shimmering dust vortex instantly changed its trajectory!
They were no longer flowing in disorder, but rather, as if summoned by an absolute will, converged and compressed toward the center point with incredible speed and precision!
There was no explosion of light, no violent energy fluctuation.
In total silence, the stardust that had been scattering and rotating a second ago, the moment Nefren Ka completed the motion of closing his five fingers, re-condensed and materialized!
The brass pocket watch lay intact once more in his open palm.
The subtle scratches on the casing remained, the glass crystal was as clean as before, and the second hand was even faithfully jumping forward, tick by tick, emitting an almost inaudible "tick-tock" sound, as if that annihilation and reorganization beyond physical laws had never happened.
It lay there quietly, breathtakingly mundane.
"Look."
Nefren Ka gently raised the pocket watch to show his two shaken spectators, that knowing smile appearing at the corners of his mouth once again.
"It has returned. Time is still passing, matter remains solid; in your world, everything is as usual."
"The 'time' marked by this watch has not changed in the slightest for you."
His gaze pierced through the frozen air of the living room, locking firmly onto Sherlock Holmes.
"However, Mr. Holmes."
His voice lowered, carrying a bewitching magnetism.
"You have seen it with your own eyes, experienced it yourself. Your deductive method, which you pride yourself on, the logical cornerstone you rely on to understand the world—in that moment just now, did you feel a trace of... a crack?"
He tilted his head slightly.
"The 'truth' you pursue has a territory far vaster than you imagine, and... far more dangerous, and much more interesting."
"In the deep shadows where the light of human reason cannot shine, in the crevices between dimensions and laws, exist countless puzzles that would make even the greatest minds tremble."
"The threads and cores of those forgotten, feared, and dismissed events—as myths and nightmares—are far beyond the reach of your customary 'deduction'."
He took half a step forward, and the fireplace flames suddenly dipped, struggling, almost extinguishing, plunging the living room into deeper darkness.
Only the faint light and the pocket watch that had just experienced annihilation and rebirth cast swaying, eerie shadows on Nefren Ka.
"Sherlock Holmes." He spoke the name, his voice full of irresistible temptation, "Your intellect is one of the sharpest and most potential-filled tools I have encountered on my long journey."
"Your hunger for the unknown, your obsession with puzzle-solving, is a rare gem among the human species. It should not be confined to the fog of London, the case files of Scotland Yard, or those... relatively 'mundane' crimes."
He spread his hands—a small gesture, yet one containing infinite possibilities.
"I invite you to step out of the logical fortress you have painstakingly constructed, and step into that world you have never set foot in, and have even refused to believe exists."
"There, there is no shelter of the physical laws you are familiar with, no social norms to serve as the boundaries of your reasoning. There is only pure unknown, twisted reality, and... the ultimate puzzle waiting to be revealed, enough to drive a mortal insane."
His gaze was like tangible fire, burning Holmes's soul.
"Are you... willing?"
"Sherlock! No!" Watson exclaimed, taking a sudden step forward, as if wanting to grab Holmes's arm to stop him, but his body was pinned to the spot by a formless, immense fear stemming from biological instinct. He could only stretch out his hand futilely, his fingertips trembling in the cold air.
His brown eyes were filled with pleading, worry, and bottomless panic: "Think! Think about what he just did! That... that is simply not something humans can understand! It's a devil's trick! You will be completely destroyed! Sherlock!"
The flames in the fireplace struggled, emitting a dying hiss, the light flickering, casting a distorted, twisted shadow of Holmes on the wall.
Holmes still did not move; he stared fixedly at Nefren Ka, his eyes filled with a primitive, wild urge for inquiry that erupted from the deepest part of his soul when facing the absolute unknown.
"Watson," he did not look at his friend, his gaze still locked onto Nefren Ka, "my dear friend, I have heard your warning, your fear... it is normal, it is human nature."
He spoke slowly, each word seemingly squeezed out from between his teeth after careful consideration.
"You saw the collapse of order, the shattering of common sense. This is good; it proves your sanity is still intact."
The corners of his mouth twitched upward ever so slightly, forming an enigmatic arc.
"However, my reason tells me that what he just showed me is not an abyss, but a door—a door leading to 'more'."
"Order collapsed? Good! That means there is a vaster, more complex order waiting to be discovered!"
"Common sense shattered? Even better! That means the 'common sense' we have embraced all along is nothing more than an insignificant footnote in the great book of the universe!"
His voice rose sharply, and that suppressed fanaticism finally revealed its scorching aura from beneath the ice.
"He showed me a possibility! A possibility beyond human experience, beyond existing science, beyond all logical frameworks! This possibility itself, Watson, is the ultimate puzzle! It is the ultimate calling! Refuse it?"
He shook his head violently, the movement carrying a sense of resolute power.
"That would be equivalent to choosing to turn away outside the door of truth! Equivalent to declaring that the destination of my lifelong pursuit is nothing more than a self-comforting dream!"
Holmes finally turned his gaze to Watson, the fire in his eyes almost scorching his best friend. There was no madness in them, only a soul-shuddering clarity and resolve.
"I must know, Watson."
His voice lowered a few notches.
"I must know the essence of that annihilation and reorganization! I must know the laws represented behind that pocket watch! I must know what kind of 'logic' weaves the world he comes from!"
"Even if that 'logic' burns everything I know to ashes... within those ashes, there must surely contain a brand new, greater truth!"
"This is my destiny, my only path."
Having finished, he no longer looked at Watson's face, which had turned paper-white, filled with despair and heartache. He turned his head back sharply, his gaze piercing once again at the elegant and terrifying figure in the center of the room.
"Mr. Nefren Ka."
Holmes's voice was clear and steady, his expression carrying a sacrificial solemnity and unquestionable determination.
"I accept your invitation."