The veins rose like a forest of screaming brass, ribs snapping open to reveal rows of teeth made from shattered clock hands. Reg clutched the pulsing heart warm, alive, heavier than guilt with both hands. London's screams echoed through the Cathedral walls: buildings collapsing forward in time, people wrinkling to dust mid-step, reversed bells tolling the end of everything. The eye above the altar had closed, but its presence lingered in the air like a held breath.
Little Thread stood between them, tiny hand outstretched. "Feed me the heart. I become the God. Eternal collector no more. You both live. The century breathes again. That is the merciful choice."
Isabella stepped forward, silver-streaked hair wild, body aged but spine still steel. Blood dripped from the wound where her half-gear had torn free. "Do it, Reg. Save the children who haven't been born yet. Save Eleanor's echo from being erased. I'm already half-dead. Let me finish it."
Reg's fused gear burned like molten gold and crimson braided together. He felt every future inside the heart every laugh, every kiss, every ordinary second that would never happen if he chose wrong. "No," he said, voice cracking. "Not you. Not the child. There has to be another way."
The veins struck.
One lashed at Isabella's throat. She dodged, older reflexes still sharp, and drove her fist into the brass rib. It shattered, but three more took its place, coiling around her waist and lifting her off the marble. She gasped as they aged her another five years in a single heartbeat lines deepening around her eyes, breath coming shorter.
Reg roared and shoved power from the heart into his palms. The fused gear exploded outward. Veins exploded into rust clouds. Isabella dropped, coughing, but the largest vein wrapped the Bishop instead, dragging Ambrose upright like a puppet. His father's eyes widened in sudden terror. "Son help me! I built this for us!"
"You built a cage," Reg snarled. He turned to Little Thread. "If I feed you the heart, you become the monster that ate you in 1789. You'll never be free. You'll just keep collecting forever."
The child's ancient eyes filled with something almost like tears. "Better me than the children outside these walls. Better one timeless girl than every future soul."
Isabella broke free again, staggering to Reg's side. She placed her bleeding hand over his on the heart. Their fused gear sang louder, threads reaching for her missing half. "Then let it be both of us," she whispered. "Together. Like the first fusion. We die as anchors. The heart carries our seconds out into the world. Time keeps ticking without a God to bleed anyone again."
Reg stared at her beautiful even aged, fierce even dying and felt the terrible truth crystallize. The heart pulsed in agreement. A new vision slammed through the fusion: the only way to carry the heart safely out of the Cathedral was for both original anchors to die together. Their combined life force would seal the heart, making it a neutral battery instead of a God. One death would unbalance it. Two deaths would free it. And the century would survive on their stolen seconds alone.
The Bishop screamed from his vein-prison. "No! That wasn't in the design! I was supposed to rule!"
Little Thread's broken watch ticked slower. "They're right. The God hid that choice from you both. It wanted one survivor to become its new vessel. But if you both die… it dies with you. And I go free."
The veins sensed the decision. They surged as one dozens now aiming straight for Reg and Isabella. The Cathedral floor split open, black blood flooding the nave. Outside, the screaming grew louder. Time itself was fraying faster.
Reg pulled Isabella close. Their foreheads touched. The fused gear between them flared like a dying star. "One extra lifetime," he said softly. "That was always the question. Mine… or every child after us."
Isabella smiled through blood and silver hair. "Ours. Together. The only honest second we ever really stole."
She kissed him fierce, final, tasting of blood and clock oil and the love they had never had time to name. The heart in their joined hands began to glow white-hot, pulling their remaining years toward it.
The veins struck.
Reg felt the first rib pierce his chest, right beside the fused gear. Isabella cried out as another took her side. Pain became light. Their stolen seconds poured into the heart every second from Clara, from Eleanor's echo, from the poor of London, from the Bishop's centuries all of it balancing at last.
The eye above the altar shattered like glass.
Little Thread's watch chimed once, clear and free.
And the Cathedral began to collapse around them, marble turning to dust, veins screaming their last.
Reg held Isabella tighter as darkness rushed in.
One final thought burned in his blood: Was it worth it?
The heart answered with a single, honest tick.