Chapter 15 - Episode 15:The King of the Rubble

INT. NEW HIDEOUT - DAY

The team has two of the three components for the Chronovisor. The final piece is a small, intricate device called a "reality anchor," designed to prevent the machine from creating its own paradoxes.

ARIS > This is a problem. According to the journal, this piece doesn't exist. My grandfather designed it, but he never built it. It's purely theoretical.

KAELEN > (using her Temporal Sight on the journal's schematics) > No. It exists. I can see a faint echo... a possibility that it was built, in a timeline that was erased.

Kenji tracks the faint temporal signature to its source: a "dead zone" in Detroit, an area so ravaged by the Paradox Plague that reality itself has become a chaotic soup of overlapping eras.

EXT. "DEAD ZONE," DETROIT - DAY

The scene is surreal. A crumbling 1970s apartment building stands next to a pristine Victorian-era house. A horse-drawn carriage is parked beside a rusted-out muscle car. The air shimmers, and the laws of physics are unreliable.

At the center of this chaos, they find a man sitting on a throne made of old televisions, wearing a tattered detective's trench coat and holding a rubber chicken like a scepter. This is GLITCH, the Paradox Survivor.

GLITCH > (cheerfully) > Welcome to the season's weirdest episode! I'm the King of the Rubble. You must be the protagonists. Took you long enough to get here.

The team is stunned. Glitch speaks with a manic, fourth-wall-breaking awareness. He knows things he shouldn't. Kaelen's Temporal Sight is useless on him; looking at him gives her a headache of pure, nonsensical static.

They realize the reality anchor they need is hanging around his neck as a piece of jewelry.

KAELEN > We need that device. It's important.

GLITCH > Oh, this old thing? Yeah, it's great. Keeps my little kingdom from completely falling apart. I'll trade you for it.

The negotiation is absurd. He doesn't want money or technology. He wants them to complete a "side quest" for him.

GLITCH > My favorite rubber chicken, Sir Reginald, was stolen by a particularly nasty Echo that lives in that abandoned hotel. The one that thinks it's a film noir villain. Get me my chicken back, and the shiny necklace is yours. It'll be great for your character development.

Forced into an impossible situation, the team must enter the hotel, a place where reality is even more unstable. The Echo inside is a Humphrey Bogart-esque detective who speaks in hardboiled monologues and can manipulate shadows.

The fight is a dark, comedic nightmare. Julian tries to fight the shadow-man, but his punches go through him. Kaelen's magic gun has bizarre effects, momentarily turning the Echo's shadows into harmless cartoon bunnies.

The scene culminates with Glitch himself intervening, defeating the Echo by "rewriting the scene." He pulls a giant novelty magnet from his coat, declares, "Your shadowy powers are no match for my magnetic personality!" and the Echo is comically pulled apart.

He retrieves his rubber chicken. True to his word, he gives them the reality anchor.

GLITCH > Pleasure doing business with you! Try not to get cancelled before the finale!

He waves cheerfully as he disappears back into the chaotic landscape. The team is left exhausted, confused, and holding the final piece of their machine. They are one step closer to their goal, but they are beginning to understand that the rules of their world are far stranger and more broken than they ever imagined.

FADE TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE 15