The Trial chamber dissolved around Aelric like smoke in the wind. One moment, the burning sands and the giant beast were there. The next, he was standing on cobblestone streets under a pale silver moon.
It looked… like a city. Old, quiet, and yet every building leaned at odd angles. Windows blinked open and shut, like eyelids. Doors breathed as if inhaling. The whole place was alive.
> A test of perception, Aelric thought, narrowing his eyes.
Not brute strength. Something trickier. Something made for me.
A faint ringing echoed across the crooked streets. A bell. No—it was a ticking sound.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The sound grew louder the further he walked, until he reached a plaza where a massive clock tower pierced the night sky. Its hands moved too fast, spinning like a wheel.
At the base of the tower stood a man. Or something shaped like one. He wore a black coat stitched with silver threads, his face hidden behind a mask made of shattered glass. Each shard reflected a different version of him—smiling, frowning, crying.
"The Clockmaker," the system whispered in Aelric's ear. "Trial Two begins."
---
Aelric didn't speak immediately. He studied. Observed.
The plaza stones had faint cracks forming a spiral, leading right to the Clockmaker's feet. Traps, maybe. The air shimmered in certain spots—distorted pockets of time. If he stepped there, seconds could stretch into hours or collapse into nothing.
The Clockmaker tilted his head. "You carry a broken timer." His voice echoed strangely, as if coming from multiple mouths at once. "That makes you dangerous. That makes you… interesting."
Aelric smirked lightly. "Broken things can't be fixed. They adapt."
The Clockmaker chuckled. "Adaptation is survival. But here, survival is a question." He raised a gloved hand, and suddenly hundreds of small, silver watches floated into the air, spinning around him like planets around a star.
Each one ticked at a different speed. Fast, slow, backward. Some cracked mid-air, others exploded like tiny bombs of shattered time.
Aelric's eyes narrowed. He didn't rush. Instead, he whispered to himself.
> "If every Trial is designed to test different strengths… then this one isn't about brute force. It's about time control. About calculation. The wrong move means aging a hundred years in a second… or losing an hour of my life."
He smiled faintly.
> "Good. Then this is my Trial."
---
The Clockmaker snapped his fingers. The spiral cracks in the plaza glowed white, and suddenly the ground shifted. Time fractured—one half of the plaza moved slower, the other faster.
It was like stepping into a broken mirror.
The Clockmaker spoke calmly. "To pass, you must reach the tower's top before your timer reaches zero."
Aelric glanced at his wrist. His timer, usually frozen and unreadable, flickered alive. It showed 00:59:59. One hour.
> "Interesting. The system itself forces me to play its game."
He began walking toward the tower. Slowly. Calculating every step. Where the air shimmered, he threw a stone before stepping—sometimes it aged to dust instantly, other times it froze mid-air for minutes.
"An ordinary challenger would panic," Aelric murmured. "But panic wastes time."
---
The Clockmaker watched with many mirrored eyes.
"Most rush. Most die. You… hesitate."
Aelric smiled. "I don't hesitate. I calculate."
He stepped deliberately into a slowed pocket of time. His body moved like syrup, but in that stretched moment, he studied the path ahead. He counted rotations of the floating watches. He mapped their rhythm.
When he stepped out of the slow pocket, he already knew where the next three traps were.
---
Minutes passed. The tower loomed taller. The watches began to dive like birds, slashing with razor-sharp hands.
Aelric dodged—not randomly, but with purpose. He noticed something others wouldn't: every watch's attack was based on its ticking rhythm. Predictable, if you listened closely.
He muttered numbers under his breath, like a mathematician reciting equations.
"Three… two… one—now."
He sidestepped, and two watches crashed into each other instead of him.
A grin tugged at his lips.
> "Patterns. Always patterns."
---
At last, he reached the base of the tower. The Clockmaker himself blocked the door.
"Impressive," the masked figure said. "But cleverness alone is not enough. Can you bend time without breaking yourself?"
He raised a hand, and the plaza spiraled. Time fractured violently—seconds stretched, collapsed, looped. Aelric saw three versions of himself at once: one standing still, one stepping forward, one already dead with blood spilling from his chest.
The world spun dizzyingly.
For a moment, he almost staggered. Almost.
Then he whispered, steady:
"Fear is the test. Illusions of outcomes. But I know one thing: as long as my time is broken, I'm not bound by your rules."
---
He focused.
His timer flickered—00:42:17… 00:41:59… 00:43:01… jumping randomly.
He grabbed the instability itself. He embraced the chaos. Instead of fighting the broken numbers, he let them guide his step. One second he was ahead, the next behind, until—without warning—he slipped outside the spiral.
The Clockmaker froze. "Impossible. You—"
Aelric was already at his side, blade of shadow drawn. He didn't swing. He simply pressed it against the Clockmaker's mask.
"I don't follow clocks," Aelric whispered coldly. "Clocks follow me."
The Clockmaker laughed, soft and broken, as the mask shattered into glittering shards. Time in the plaza froze. The spinning watches fell to the ground, lifeless.
"You… may pass," the figure said, dissolving into mist.
---
The door to the tower creaked open. Inside, winding stairs stretched upward endlessly. At the very top, Aelric glimpsed a faint glow—another relic of power, another key to survival.
His timer flickered again, then vanished back to its usual broken blank.
He exhaled slowly, eyes sharp.
> "Trial Two, cleared. But this isn't just survival anymore. The system is watching me. Testing me. And if it's testing… then it means there's a weakness. Every system has one."
His lips curved into a thin smile.
> "And I'll be the one to find it."