The golden clock-face above the battlefield shone like a second moon, its radiant hands spinning defiantly against the Watchers' rhythm. For a breathless moment, the world bent to Orion's will. The Watchers faltered, their chorus unraveling into a confused, discordant hum.
Elias gaped, unable to comprehend the sight. "You've… you've rewritten their hour."
But Orion knew better. His body screamed under the strain—muscles tearing, veins bulging as if the dial itself drank from his life. The false hour he had crafted wasn't a gift. It was a theft.
The eighth toll resounded. Louder. Heavier. A chime that wasn't born of brass or steel, but of something deeper—the sound of inevitability cracking open. The Watchers stilled. Every hooded head turned toward the rift above the city.
The gears were no longer simply grinding—they were aligning. Their roar was no longer chaos, but a harmony. A design.
Elias staggered back. "Orion… someone's watching."
A shadow bloomed across the sky, not cast by any light but born of absence itself. The rift widened, revealing not just gears but a vast silhouette. A throne of iron teeth and revolving cogs, seated with a presence so immense that even the Watchers bowed.
The Watchmaker.
Orion's chest tightened. This was no echo, no remnant. This was the eye of the storm, the architect whose design had stretched across centuries. And now, drawn by Orion's defiance, the Watchmaker turned its gaze upon him.
The dial seared his palm, branding its pattern into his flesh. The golden threads unraveled, snapping one by one, unable to resist the true rhythm descending upon the city. His knees hit stone.
"Orion!" Elias shouted, catching his shoulder. But the boy's face twisted with fear. His blade trembled. Even he could feel it—the suffocating inevitability that no mortal hand could oppose.
The Watchmaker's voice was not a sound but a rhythm, each syllable a beat in the ticking of the world.
"You wind false hours… yet every spring must return to the coil."
The words pressed against Orion's skull, threatening to split it. Blood streamed from his ears, his nose, yet he clenched his jaw, refusing to bow.
Elias dropped to his knees, gasping. "We… can't fight this."
Orion's vision blurred. Through the haze, he saw the image of Safaa—not as she had been in flesh, but as a shadow of light, her essence bound to the gears. Her lips moved, whispering words he could not hear. But he felt them. Don't yield.
The dial, though dimming, pulsed once more. Orion forced his shaking hand to rise, holding the fragment high. "If your design is inevitability… then let mine be rebellion!"
The Watchmaker stirred. The eighth toll shook every stone of Aethelis, toppling spires and cracking streets. The Watchers' chorus swelled, no longer faltering but reverent.
And yet, beneath the crushing rhythm, Orion's own heartbeat thudded. Steady. Defiant.
The Watchmaker's presence did not vanish—it lingered, a warning, a promise. But it did not descend fully. Not yet. Instead, the shadow withdrew slightly, as though satisfied to let its pawns play until the final hour arrived.
The rift shuddered closed, gears folding back into shadow. The Watchers, silent now, melted into the streets below.
Only the dial remained glowing in Orion's palm, its edges cracked, its power unstable. Elias leaned against him, trembling. "You survived its gaze. No one… no one survives that."
Orion exhaled raggedly, eyes on the fading rift. "I didn't survive it. I was marked by it."
The ninth toll was coming. And when it struck, the Watchmaker would not simply watch.