The morning after Voss's arrest should have been a victory. Instead, it was fire.
Clock Tower's trading floor was chaos incarnate. Screens that normally glowed steady with charts now bled red across their graphs, jagged lines plunging lower with every tick. Phones rang in unison, voices shouting into headsets, words like short sell, margin call, liquidation ricocheting through the air.
The air stank of cold coffee and nervous sweat. A printer whirred and jammed in the corner, paper spilling uselessly onto the floor. Every few seconds, a clerk hurried past, papers clutched tight, as if faster legs could keep the numbers from falling further.
"Ten percent in an hour—"
"Council funds are hammering us—"
"We're bleeding billions—"
The voices blended into one frantic chorus.
Mira stood at the center of it all, framed by glass walls and the storm-light pouring through the high windows. Her navy suit was immaculate, but the rigid line of her jaw betrayed the strain. She scrolled through her tablet at breakneck speed, emails flashing across the screen faster than she could answer them.
Her phone buzzed with call after call: journalists, investors, government regulators. She silenced each one, thumb moving sharp, her free hand pressing against her temple.
"Hold the line!" she barked at one analyst who looked ready to crumble. "We do not panic-sell, we do not leak, and we do not feed the press. Get that through every department before lunch."
The young man nodded frantically, stumbling back into the swarm.
But the tide didn't slow. Numbers plunged, confidence evaporated, and outside, the media smelled blood.
From the trading floor's tall windows, the street below was a sea of umbrellas and flashing cameras. Reporters shouted questions into microphones, their words muffled through the glass. Headlines already crawled across news tickers mounted on the buildings across the street:
"CLOCK CRASHES AFTER VOSS ARREST"
"SHAREHOLDERS DEMAND ANSWERS"
"HEIRESS LOSING CONTROL?"
The last one made Mira's teeth clench.
She straightened, pushing the tablet down onto the nearest console, and drew a steady breath. The storm outside wasn't going to relent. And neither could she.
But in the flicker of the monitors, in the scent of burning wires from an overworked server rack, the truth pressed against her ribs: this wasn't panic. It was orchestrated.
And someone wanted Clock Corp to burn.
The noise of the trading floor swelled like a storm tide—frantic shouts, phones slammed, the relentless scream of numbers falling. Then the double doors at the far end opened, and the storm bent.
Arkellin walked in.
His suit was black, sharp, untouched by the chaos around him. The streak of white in his hair caught the ceiling lights as he moved through the floor with unhurried steps. Traders parted instinctively, their arguments stuttering to silence as if gravity itself had shifted.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
Arkellin crossed to the central console, scanning the monitors. His eyes traced the red plunges, the percentages collapsing, the patterns behind the panic. Fingers drummed once on the polished surface before he reached for the nearest terminal.
"Clear this," he said simply, and the analyst at the desk scrambled aside.
Lines of code, transaction logs, and market feeds flashed across the screen. Arkellin's hands moved over the keyboard—steady, surgical, keystrokes like measured gunfire. In seconds, the chaos flattened into clarity: data streams layered, cross-referenced, patterns highlighted.
He studied the graph, the angle of the plunge, the timing of each wave.
"Not random," he muttered.
Mira stepped closer, her heels clicking sharp against the marble. Her voice was tight. "We're being hit on every exchange. The press is circling like sharks. If this keeps up—"
"It won't." Arkellin's tone cut her words clean. His eyes stayed on the screen, unblinking. "Look at this."
He pointed, and Mira leaned in. Rows of trades scrolled, blocks of sells flooding at precise intervals, not organic panics but coordinated bursts. The volumes matched, almost identical down to the second.
"This isn't panic," Arkellin said, voice low but carrying. His gaze shifted from the screen to her, steady as steel. "This is war. Dressed up as volatility."
For a moment, Mira forgot the room full of staff, the cameras outside, even the storm pressing against the windows. His words, cold and absolute, landed heavier than any headline.
A young analyst nearby whispered, half to himself, "Council?"
Arkellin didn't answer him. He didn't have to.
The staff exchanged uneasy glances. Mira straightened, her jaw tightening, and nodded once. "Then we fight it like war."
Arkellin's faintest smile touched his lips—not warmth, but recognition. "Exactly."
He turned back to the console, his hands already moving, cutting through the noise to carve the battlefield into shape.
And for the first time since dawn, the chaos on the trading floor began to shift—not into calm, but into order.
By late afternoon, the storm outside had swelled into a mob.
The trading floor had steadied slightly under Arkellin's cold direction, but the real war was no longer only in numbers. It was on the streets, in the lenses waiting like loaded rifles.
Mira stood by the glass wall of her office, tablet in hand, shoulders stiff. Below, the sidewalks were flooded with reporters, umbrellas like black shields, cameras aimed high. Their voices rose in broken fragments, muffled by the rain-smeared glass.
"Is Clock collapsing?"
"Did Mira know about Voss?"
"Who is the man by her side?"
Arkellin stepped in from the adjoining finance hub, tie loosened slightly, but his calm unshaken. He glanced once at the scene below, then back to her.
"They'll never stop barking," he said.
"They're not barking." Mira's voice was thin, strained. "They're dictating the story before I can."
For a moment, silence. The storm drummed harder on the glass. Then she turned, gathering her notes and slipping them into a leather folder, movements sharp, practiced. "If we leave together, they'll swarm. But if I go alone, they'll say I'm weak. Damned either way."
Arkellin stepped closer, taking the folder from her hand with deliberate ease. "Then don't choose. Walk as you are. With me."
Her eyes flickered up to his, searching, uncertain. But before she could answer, the doors opened, and their escorts signaled the way down.
The lobby was already a cage. Security pushed a path through the crowd, but the moment Mira and Arkellin emerged, the storm broke.
Flashbulbs exploded. Microphones shoved forward.
"Miss Clock! Did you authorize Voss?"
"Are you losing control?"
"Who is this man?"
Arkellin's arm brushed hers as they stepped into the rain. He didn't shield her, didn't push—just walked beside her, his presence solid, immovable. Mira lifted her chin, every inch the heiress, but the questions lashed like knives.
And then came the line that cut deepest:
"Are you sleeping with him?"
A burst of shutters. Her composure faltered—not visibly, but in the smallest flick of her eyes toward Arkellin.
By nightfall, the headline burned across every screen, every feed, every paper stacked in Aurelia's cafes and train stations:
"SLEEPING WITH THE FIXER?"
Clock Heiress entangled with mysterious outsider as empire falls.
Mira stood in her office again, staring at the headline, her reflection faint in the glass. Behind her, Arkellin watched quietly, jacket draped over his chair, eyes unreadable.
The numbers were falling, the Council's hand was clear, and now—her name, her body, her reputation were under siege too.
The financial war had become personal.
And the real battle had only begun.. .