The air in the ruined clock tower, once thick with the smell of ozone and burnt offerings, began to shift. The scattered, burned fragments of the manuscript—which had dissolved into ash moments after Safaa's sacrifice—started to swirl, gathering in the silence like a flock of glowing moths. Kairen watched in stunned silence as the dust motes of ash and ink coalesced. They did not reform into a book but rather began to write themselves in the air, a luminous, golden script that pulsed with an otherworldly life. The words, once bound by leather and magic, now hung in the void, a final, radiant testament.
And then, a voice returned. It was Safaa's mother's, the one he had heard in his dreams, the one who had guided them from afar. It was fragile, a whisper carried on a breeze of fractured time, but it was as resolute as the stone upon which they stood.
"The Watchmaker sought not a crown but a clock—one that resets when broken. He meant to shatter endings themselves."
The revelation hit Kairen with a physical force, more crushing than any blow. His mind, so good at solving puzzles, scrambled to process the truth. The Crown of Gears, the object of a hundred generations of obsession and ritual, was not a symbol of rule. It was not a tool for wielding power in the way a king might hold a scepter. It was a failsafe. A reset mechanism. The final solution to the greatest problem. It could unmake failures, erase tragedies, rewrite the outcomes of wars, and restore the world to a past free of sorrow. But the voice had been clear: it reset when broken. It wasn't about using the Crown. It was about destroying it. And the cost was the stability of reality itself.
Outside the tower, the truth echoed with a thunderous finality. The Ashen Guild, their faces grimed with ash and tears, had been chanting their final hymn, a prayer for a new world order. But as the disembodied voice spoke of a broken clock, their voices faltered. The rhythmic, guttural sound dissolved into a confused, murmuring silence. Their faith had been built on a foundation of ritual and sacrifice to appease a god. But what god needed to be appeased if the entire cycle of existence could be reset with the simple act of a grand destruction?
Across the square, the Glass Order's ritual was in its final, frantic stage. Their mirrored masks glinted in the fading twilight as they spun, creating a fractured, beautiful mosaic of the coming temporal shift. But as Safaa's mother's revelation bled into their ritual, the intricate patterns of light shattered. The perfect, polished masks cracked, and shards of crystal rained down upon the horrified faces beneath them. Their faith was one of reflection—a belief that by mirroring the world, they could control it. But now, the truth had exposed their mirrored beliefs for what they were: a fragile illusion. For the first time, even the cults wavered, their sacred rituals crumbling like sandcastles under the weight of a simple, undeniable truth. The power they had sought for so long was not one of control, but of ultimate, terrifying reset. And they had been praying to the very thing meant to unmake them all.