The city hadn't seen dawn in three days.
The sky hung pale and motionless — frozen in the same shade of ash-blue.
People whispered that the clocks were sick, that time itself had caught a fever.
Eryndor Valein knew it was his fault.
He sat on the edge of an abandoned bridge overlooking the slums, staring at the still river below. His reflection didn't blink. Even the ripples were caught halfway through a wave.
The ∞ mark on his wrist pulsed faintly, keeping a rhythm the world had lost.
---
Kael's voice still lingered inside him — faint, almost like memory.
Sometimes he heard it when the wind blew through the pipes.
"You've got a mark that doesn't end."
He had tried to speak to it once.
The air had cracked open like glass.
So he stopped.
Now he just sat quietly, breathing slow, listening to the broken heartbeat of Ecliptica.
---
Below, the slum streets crawled with panic. The Ecliptic Order had sent squads of Sentinels into every district. Bells rang at random hours — signals of containment.
Rumors spread fast.
Someone had broken the Law of Chrono Equivalence.
Someone had stolen infinite time.
And the Order would tear the city apart to find him.
---
Eryndor pulled his hood lower and started walking.
He needed to keep moving — the Order's Flow Sensors could track anomalies in seconds.
He passed markets where people were trading hours for bread.
A mother held her son's wrist to a vendor's scanner — transferring ten minutes for a stale loaf. The boy's mark dimmed; she smiled anyway.
Eryndor looked away.
Everywhere he went, the ticking of ChronoMarks followed him — faint, desperate.
Each one a countdown to someone's end.
And then there was him — the boy whose clock no longer counted.
---
He reached the old sector walls by dusk. The sky still hadn't changed.
From here, the Core Spire was visible — a tower of silver and light that reached the clouds.
That was where the Archons lived. The ones who ruled time. The ones who had stolen his mother's last breath.
He clenched his fists.
Something stirred beneath his skin — a low hum that made the world flicker.
The ∞ on his wrist glowed brighter.
He remembered Kael's last look — that grin before the tunnel exploded.
Something in him broke open.
The air bent.
---
The first wave hit the slums like a storm of light.
Clocks shattered.
Bells rang out of rhythm.
Buildings stretched and snapped back like breathing stone.
Eryndor fell to his knees, clutching his wrist. The mark burned white-hot.
He could feel every second in the city — millions of ticking marks, screaming at once.
It was too much.
He gasped, pressing his hand to the ground — and time listened.
The world stopped.
---
Silence fell like a blanket.
The river froze mid-ripple.
A falling bell hung in the air, its echo trapped inside itself.
People stood still in midstep, eyes wide but unmoving.
Eryndor rose slowly, trembling.
He could walk through frozen time.
He stepped past a hovering droplet, through a curtain of dust caught midair.
Everywhere he went, the air rippled around him like the surface of water.
He reached out toward a nearby stall, touching a hanging clock.
The second hand twitched — forward, backward — then shattered into sand.
He pulled his hand back, horrified.
"What am I becoming?"
The only answer was the hum of the Flow itself — soft, endless.
---
Then a voice whispered behind him.
> "You're becoming what they feared most."
He turned sharply.
A woman stood in the still air, draped in robes of white and black — her face half-covered by a silver mask shaped like a crescent moon.
Her ChronoMark burned gold.
"I know that voice," Eryndor said. "You were there… in the Life Bank. You took my mother."
The woman tilted her head. "Then you remember her final donation."
He glared. "You drained her."
"She offered her remaining Flow," the woman replied calmly. "It was her choice. Survival requires balance."
Eryndor's voice rose. "Balance? She died for minutes that bought someone else dinner!"
The masked woman sighed. "Emotion blinds you, child. Time is law. And you…"
Her gaze flicked to his wrist. "You are a wound in that law."
The air crackled.
Blue rings of light formed around her — Chrono Seals, glowing with Ecliptic runes.
"By command of the Archon," she said, "your existence is to be reclaimed."
---
Eryndor took a step back. "I don't want to fight."
"Then surrender your Flow."
He hesitated. "I don't have any."
Her eyes narrowed. "Lies."
She raised her hand. The seals around her spun faster, releasing a storm of golden threads.
Time twisted — a surge that could slice through hours, decades, lives.
Eryndor's instincts screamed.
His mark flared — and the world shattered again.
The threads froze midair.
He stood in a silent world of broken seconds. His body moved on instinct, guided by something older than fear.
He stepped through the stillness, past the motionless woman, and whispered:
> "You shouldn't have touched her."
Then he released the Flow.
---
The explosion of light rippled through the sector.
When sound returned, the woman was gone — only a silver mask remained, cracked and smoking.
The buildings around him had aged decades in seconds.
Eryndor stood alone among the ruins, his breath shaking.
He stared at his hands. They were glowing faintly — time bleeding from his skin.
He sank to his knees. "I didn't mean to…"
But deep inside, something in him had.
The city's clocks began ticking again — but not in unison.
Some ran forward, some backward, some not at all.
The Flow was broken.
---
From the highest spire of Ecliptica, the Archon of Hours opened his eyes.
"An infinite pulse," he murmured. "The first in centuries."
He turned to his council.
"Find the boy. Before the Flow forgets how to move."
---
And far below, on the ruined bridge,
Eryndor Valein looked up at the frozen sky —
and for the first time, the world looked back.
To be continued...