The strike split the world.
Elara's key cut through the Hour's heart, and the chain cracked open like bone. Light poured out, rivers of molten brilliance, so bright it scorched the chamber walls to ash. The faces carved into the links screamed as one—no longer commands, no longer pleas, but raw, unending agony.
Aldric staggered, his body convulsing as the chain's light tore through him. "NO! It was mine! Mine to keep! Mine to rule!" His skull-crown cracked, fire gushing from his eyes. Chains snapped from his body, whipping wildly across the chamber.
The Hour's voice filled everything. BROKEN. BROKEN. YOU DARE.
The chamber shook apart. Stone peeled away like paper, and beyond it lay not void, but sky—if sky could writhe. The chains above uncoiled, falling like serpents of molten iron, each link the size of a mountain. They writhed across the horizon, their weight crushing the glass plain into splinters.
And from the wound in the chain, something vast began to rise.
Tomas staggered to his feet, dragging Elara with him. Blood soaked his side, his vision blurred, but he refused to let her fall. His arm was iron around her waist.
"Elara—what did you do?" he rasped.
Her eyes blazed, one sun, one human, her face streaked with tears and light. "I broke it."
The fissure widened. The sky tore.
Something emerged—an eye without form, a mouth without teeth, a shape too vast to name. It was not creature, not god. It was the Hour itself, bleeding into the world, its silence folding reality like cloth.
Every shadow collapsed. Every face on the chain went still.
And then the Hour looked at her.
Her knees buckled. Vision after vision split her mind. She saw:
The first chain forged in a forgotten age, to hold back a silence deeper than death.
Keepers bound into links, each generation feeding the chain with their souls.
Aldric kneeling, begging to be more than man, offering himself to the silence.
Herself—already there, already screaming, already chained.
Her body convulsed. She clutched her head, sobbing. "It wants me."
Tomas dropped beside her, his shaking hands gripping her arms. "Then it'll have to take me first."
The Hour's voice pressed into them both, vast and suffocating: ONE MUST BIND. ONE MUST BREAK. CHOOSE.
Chains erupted from the ground, lashing toward Tomas. He barely deflected with the jagged shard of his blade, but one chain wrapped his arm, burning his flesh. He screamed, dragged to his knees.
Elara reached for him, but another chain coiled around her waist, yanking her back.
The Hour's silence thundered: GIRL OR BOY. HOUR OR DUST.
Aldric rose again, though his body was in ruins, chains pouring from his mouth and chest. His laughter was broken, desperate. "Do you see? It was always you! You were always meant to keep it!"
He lurched toward her, arms of chain outstretched. "Give in, Elara! Take your place!"
Tomas roared, tearing free of one chain with bloodied hands. He hurled himself between them, though his body could barely move. "You'll touch her over my corpse!"
His voice cracked. His blade shattered. He dropped to his knees, yet his eyes still burned with defiance.
And Elara broke.
Not into silence—into fire.
The key blazed in her hand, fusing into her flesh. Her scream split the chamber, and light erupted from her veins. The chains around her vaporized. Aldric staggered back, his body unraveling in the brilliance.
The Hour shrieked. CHILD OF DUST. TRAITOR.
Elara rose, fire burning in her skin, her sun-eye brighter than the sky. She gripped Tomas's hand, lifting him to his feet though his body shook like glass.
"We break it," she whispered, her voice trembling, hers and not hers. "Together."
The Hour's form swelled above them, silence roaring like a storm.
And the key turned once more.
The ground dissolved.
Stone, glass, even air itself folded inward, collapsing into the widening wound of the Hour. Elara clutched Tomas as the floor beneath them melted away, leaving only strands of chain stretched across a horizon of emptiness.
The silence deepened until even her own heartbeat faltered.
She looked up—and froze.
The Hour's true shape unfurled above them, vast and grotesque. Not a creature, not a god, but a wound in reality: an eye with no lid, spilling light that devoured thought; a mouth that yawned without teeth, swallowing sound itself; tendrils of broken chain wrapped like veins around a form too large to comprehend.
Everywhere it moved, time fractured. One moment, Tomas was beside her, bloodied but alive. The next, she saw him as a child, reaching toward her. The next, a corpse, chains driven through his chest. Then the vision rewound, replayed, taunted.
"Elara…" His real voice cracked beside her. "Don't look at it. Don't—"
But she couldn't turn away.
The Hour spoke inside her bones.
YOU SEE NOW. ALL LIVES ARE THREADS. ALL THREADS ARE MINE. HE IS NOTHING. LET HIM GO.
Chains lashed out, wrapping Tomas's throat, his chest. His cry cut off, silent in the void. He clawed at them, but the links turned liquid, seeping into his skin.
For a heartbeat, his face was gone. Another man's face stared back at her—one of the old keepers, eyes hollow, mouth whispering: "We were all taken. He will be too."
"No!" she screamed, her voice the only sound in the silence. She lunged forward, slamming the key against the chain, light flaring.
The link recoiled, releasing Tomas. He collapsed into her arms, choking, blood seeping from fresh burns.
"Elara," he rasped, his lips brushing her ear. "Don't let it make me another chain."
Her chest heaved. Her heart broke against her ribs.
The Hour pulsed, fury boiling. CHILD OF DUST. YOU CANNOT BREAK WHAT YOU ARE. YOU ARE LINK. YOU ARE CHAIN.
Visions split her mind—her entire bloodline twisted into links of iron, their faces screaming in eternal silence. She saw herself at the end of the chain, crowned in fire, chained to eternity. She saw Tomas's hand slipping from hers, swallowed by the void.
Her knees buckled. The key nearly fell from her grip.
But then—his hand found hers again. Weak. Trembling. Refusing to let go.
"You're still Elara," Tomas whispered, even as his body shuddered with pain. "Not its keeper. Not its link. You."
Something within her steadied.
Her tears turned to fire.
She rose.
Chains lashed out again, but her skin burned with the same light as the key, vaporizing every link that touched her. Aldric screamed from across the void, his body half-unraveled, his face a mask of horror and hunger.
"You fool! You'll tear the world apart!" he shrieked. "The silence must be bound, or all ends!"
Elara's sun-eye blazed. Her voice split the silence, trembling yet unyielding:
"Then let it end."
The Hour shrieked, its wound-form convulsing, tendrils lashing across the horizon.
And she lifted Tomas to his feet, her arm around him, her key raised toward the vast, writhing heart.
Together, they stepped into the silence.