The battlefield around the Aethelian Clocktower was no longer a place of war—it was a graveyard of fire and silence. What had been clashing cults only hours ago now lay scattered: broken glass swords embedded in the earth, molten lances cooling in blackened stone, and cloaks of shadow dissolving into nothingness.
The Veiled Ones' storm had dispersed. The Ashen Guild's flames were snuffed out. The Mirror Masks had vanished like reflections slipping back into cracked mirrors. Only the tower stood, humming with its relentless ticking, an iron reminder that the war hadn't ended—it had only moved higher, deeper, into the machine's heart.
Kairen staggered through the smoldering remains, his boots crunching over shards of glass and bone. His sword was chipped, his arm bloodied from where a lance had grazed him, but his mind was sharper than ever. He searched the horizon, scanning through smoke and ruin, but Safaa was nowhere.
She had been taken.
The memory of her final words cut through him like a second wound: "If you stop me, you'll stop the only truth we have."
And then she was gone, swallowed by the throne of gears.
Now, the battlefield was his answer. She wasn't the only one caught in the Watchmaker's snare. The cults had fought for dominance, but none of them had won. Every faction had left bodies behind. Some burned. Some turned to shattered glass. Some—those claimed by the Veiled Ones—were nothing but outlines burned into stone, as though the shadows themselves had devoured their flesh.
Kairen knelt beside a fallen soldier of the Ashen Guild. The man's molten lance lay cracked beside him, his armor fused to his body. But in his hand was a scrap of parchment, blood-soaked but legible.
"The fifth toll… spreads at dawn. Cities will fracture. Only the heir can anchor the time."
Kairen's jaw tightened. The "heir." They had always whispered it. Now it had a face. Safaa.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the faint sound of bells. Not the clocktower's toll this time, but the bells of the capital far away, ringing with a different kind of alarm. Messengers on horseback thundered down the ruined roads, banners of royal blue torn and ash-streaked. The crown had noticed. The collapse of time was no longer a cult secret.
From the shadows of a toppled arch, a voice called out.
"You survived."
Kairen raised his sword instinctively. A figure limped forward—her armor scorched, her face streaked with ash and blood. An Ashen Guild captain, one of their leaders, clutching her side. She did not raise her weapon. Instead, she dropped it in the dirt.
"The war here is lost," she rasped. "But the tolls are not finished. If you want answers, you'll need allies… even enemies."
Kairen didn't lower his blade. His eyes narrowed, calculating.
"Then speak carefully," he said coldly. "Because every word you say decides whether I cut you down here… or walk with you into whatever storm is coming."
The captain's shadow stretched long behind her in the dim, unnatural twilight. The clocktower ticked louder, and the faint vibration of gears deep within echoed like a heartbeat.
The war for Safaa was only beginning.