The concept of "down" in Arcadia was endless.
Julian and Lyra had been descending for an hour. The service stairs were a rusting spiral that drilled into the earth like a corkscrew. With every flight they cleared, the air grew heavier, wetter, and thicker. The metallic tang of the upper levels was replaced by the smell of stagnant water, mold, and the unmistakable, sickly-sweet scent of unwashed humanity.
"Watch your step," Lyra whispered, her voice bouncing softly off the damp brickwork. "The third step here is missing."
Julian stepped over the gap, looking down into the abyss. There was no bottom, only a swallowing darkness punctuated by the occasional flicker of a dying gas lamp miles below.
"Where are we?" Julian asked. His throat felt like he'd swallowed sandpaper.
"Level 9," Lyra replied, not breaking her pace. "The Sump. It's where the water run-off goes. And where people go when the Empire forgets they exist."
Julian gripped the railing. His right hand—the crystal one—was wrapped in a greasy rag he'd found in a maintenance locker, but he could still feel the cold radiating through the cloth. It wasn't just numb anymore. It was humming. A low, persistent vibration that synced with the distant thumping of the city's heart.
They reached the bottom of the spiral. A heavy iron door, groaning with rust, stood half-open.
Lyra pushed through, and they stepped into the Sump.
If the Upper City was a monument to order and brass, the Sump was a chaotic shrine to survival. The ceiling was a tangled mess of leaking pipes that dripped constantly, creating perpetual rain. The streets were narrow boardwalks built over sludge canals. The light here wasn't golden or white; it was a bruised purple, coming from scavenged neon tubes and jars of low-grade, flickering Aether.
People huddled in the shadows—shrouded figures warming their hands over vents releasing steam from the levels above. They didn't look up as Julian and Lyra passed. In the Sump, eye contact was a currency no one could afford.
"We need a place to hide," Julian muttered, pulling his collar up. "Elias will have the lower exits watched."
"I have a safe house in Sector 12," Lyra said, scanning the shadows.
"No," Julian stopped. He looked at a street sign hanging by a single screw: Gear-Tooth Alley. "That's too far. And I need... I need to get something."
Lyra turned, eyes narrowing. "This isn't a shopping trip, Grease-monkey. We are fugitives."
"My father's workshop," Julian said, pointing toward a leaning, narrow building squeezed between two massive drainage pumps. "It's right there. It's been boarded up for two years. No one goes in. It has supplies. Bandages. Tools."
Lyra looked at the building, then at Julian's wrapped hand. She saw the blue light bleeding faintly through the fabric.
"Five minutes," she hissed. "If I hear a single bootstep, I'm gone. With or without you."
The door to the workshop was locked, but Julian didn't need a key. He knew the trick—lift the handle, kick the bottom panel, twist left.
Click.
The door groaned open, exhaling a breath of stale, dust-filled air.
Julian stepped inside. The silence was absolute. Shafts of purple light from the street filtered through the boarded windows, illuminating a graveyard of clocks.
Hundreds of them. Grandfather clocks, pocket watches, cuckoo clocks, metronomes. They covered every shelf and table. They were all stopped. The silence of a thousand stopped seconds pressed against Julian's ears.
"Creepy," Lyra muttered, closing the door behind them and plunging the room into near darkness.
Julian fumbled for the oil lamp on the workbench. He struck a match—the flare blinding him for a second—and lit the wick.
The warm yellow glow revealed the chaos of his father's mind. Silas Vane hadn't just been a watchmaker. He was an obsessive. Diagrams covered the walls—drawings of human anatomy overlaid with mechanical schematics. Sketches of lungs that looked like bellows. Hearts that looked like engines.
Julian moved to the back of the room, pushing aside a stack of dusty gears. He found the first-aid kit under a pile of blueprints. He sat heavily on a stool, unwrapping the rag from his hand.
Lyra gasped.
In the dim light, the corruption was terrifyingly beautiful. The crystal had consumed his fingers and was now branching across his knuckles like frost on a windowpane. Where the crystal met the flesh, the skin was angry and red.
"It's spreading," Lyra whispered, stepping closer, her curiosity warring with repulsion. "I've seen Tuners with crystal patches, but... never this fast. You've only used Resonance twice."
"It feels like it's eating me," Julian said, his voice trembling. He poured antiseptic over the red skin. It stung, grounding him. "My father... he used to talk about the 'Price of Motion'. He said every time a gear turns, something wears down."
"Your father was Silas Vane?" Lyra asked, looking at a framed certificate on the wall. Her eyes widened. "The Imperial Architect?"
Julian froze. "He was a clockmaker."
"No," Lyra said, walking over to a massive drafting table covered in a tarp. She pulled the tarp away. "Silas Vane designed the Ventricular Valves for the Central City. He was a hero of the Empire until he disappeared."
Under the tarp wasn't a clock. It was a model. A miniature replica of Arcadia, detailed down to the smallest street. But underneath the model city, in the base, there was a complex network of red glass tubes.
"He never told me," Julian whispered. He stood up, walking toward the model. "He told me he fixed watches."
He looked at the model. There was something odd about it. The "Central Station" on the model had a small keyhole in its roof.
Without thinking, Julian reached into his shirt. He pulled out the necklace he always wore—a silver chain with a strange, four-pronged key that his father had given him on his deathbed. For the lock that matters, he had said.
Julian's hand shook as he inserted the key into the miniature station.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The model came alive. Tiny gears beneath the table began to spin. The miniature city split open down the middle.
From the center of the table, a cylinder rose up. It wasn't paper. It was a phonograph cylinder, made of shimmering blue wax.
And a needle.
"A recording," Lyra breathed.
Julian cranked the handle on the side of the table. He lowered the needle onto the wax.
Scritch... scratch...
Then, a voice filled the dusty room. A voice Julian hadn't heard in two years. Tired, rough, and terrified.
"Julian. If you are listening to this, then I failed. And you have found the key."
Julian gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white.
"I lied to you, son. I didn't just fix clocks. I helped build the Cage. The Empire... they told us we were solving the energy crisis. They told us the Aether was synthetic. But I found the source. God help me, I found the source."
The recording crackled, the sound of a man weeping softly cutting through the static.
"It's not just below us, Julian. It IS us. The Resonance doesn't come from the earth. It comes from the soul. And the machine I built... the 'Sovereign'... it's designed to harvest the frequency of suffering."
Lyra looked at Julian, her face pale.
"I tried to stop it," Silas's voice continued, gaining a sudden, desperate strength. "I stole the Core Schematic. I hid it. Not in a vault. Not in a bank."
A pause.
"I hid it in you."
Julian stopped breathing.
"The Resonance you have... the way you hear the machine... it's not natural, Julian. You are the Tuning Fork. You are the only thing that can shatter their frequency. Run, my boy. Don't let them take you. If Thorne finds out what you are, he won't kill you. He will plug you into the center of the world, and you will never die."
Click.
The needle reached the end of the cylinder. The room fell back into silence, save for the ticking of the cooling gears.
Julian stared at the wax cylinder. He looked at his crystal hand. The blue light within it seemed to pulse in time with his racing heart.
You are the Tuning Fork.
"He didn't just leave me a wrench," Julian whispered, the horror dawning on him like a cold sunrise. "He turned me into a bomb."
Lyra took a step back, her hand instinctively going to the knife at her belt. She looked at him not as a boy, but as something dangerous.
"Julian," she said softly. "We have to go. Now."
BOOM.
The front door of the workshop was kicked in. Splinters of wood flew across the room.
Through the dust, a silhouette emerged. Tall. Broad. Wearing a mask with three glowing green lenses.
A Hunter.
"Target located," a distorted voice grated out. "Initiating retrieval."