The Silent Second
For ten years, Eclipsa flourished under the rhythm of Liora’s sacrifice. Every clock in the city still paused for a single heartbeat on the Day of the Stop, a fleeting silence in honor of the girl who became time itself.
But this year… the silence lasted longer.
And in that extra second, something impossible happened.
A whisper.
"Kael."
1: The Boy Who Remembered
Kael Arventis was no longer the scrappy thief who had once slipped through frozen streets. Now a guarded man, he served as the Last Warden, patrolling the Clocktower to ensure no one tampered with its gears. But he never stopped searching for a way to free Liora.
Then, on the tenth anniversary of the Stop, he heard her voice.
It came from the Shattered Hourglass—a relic hidden beneath the tower, filled with grains of lost time. When Kael touched it, visions erupted:
- Liora, trapped in the tower’s core, her clockwork body flickering.
- The Shadow-Winder, alive but fractured, his form woven into the Veil like a scar.
- A second Clocktower, inverted and buried somewhere beyond Eclipsa, its gears turning backward.
And worst of all—a slow, creeping crack in time itself.
2: The Reverse Tower
Guided by the Hourglass, Kael journeyed beyond Eclipsa to the Wastes of Misaligned Time, a desert where moments bled together. There, half-buried in the sand, stood the Inverted Clocktower, its hands spinning counterclockwise.
Inside, he found Elias Vey—Liora’s father.
But not as he once was.
Elias was now the Pendulum Ghost, a man split between existence and erasure, forced to maintain the reverse tower to balance Liora’s power. He warned Kael:
"The Shadow-Winder is still alive. He’s been siphoning time from the Veil, preparing to unmake Liora’s sacrifice. If he succeeds, every second she ever bought for Eclipsa will collapse."
To stop him, Kael would have to enter the Ticking Void, the space between moments where the Shadow-Winder hid.
But the cost?
"You must give up the time you have left," Elias said. "All of it."
3: The Ticking Void
The Void was a realm of unraveling timelines. Here, Kael saw fragments of lives that could have been:
- A version of himself who had never met Liora.
- A Liora who had never sacrificed herself, leaving Eclipsa to crumble.
- A world where the Shadow-Winder had won, bending all of history to his will.
At the Void’s heart stood the Shadow-Winder, now more machine than man, his body fused with stolen clockwork. He sneered at Kael.
"You cannot rewind what she has done. Time only moves forward… unless you break it."
Then came the choice:
- Destroy the Inverted Tower—erasing Liora’s existence to restore natural time.
- Merge with the Void—becoming a timeless guardian like Elias, but losing himself forever.
- Do the impossible—shatter the Hourglass and rewrite the rules of time itself.
4: The Broken Rule
Kael chose the third path.
He smashed the Shattered Hourglass, releasing all the lost time trapped inside. The surge of energy blasted through the Veil, the Void, and both towers.
For one blinding instant, time stopped.
Then—
It reset.
Kael awoke in Eclipsa’s streets, but something was different. The Clocktower stood whole, its gears turning smoothly. People moved freely, laughing.
And there, standing beside him, was Liora—alive, human, with no memory of her sacrifice.
But when Kael reached for her, his hands began to fade.
The price of rewriting time was simple: he had taken her place.
Now, he was the one bound to the tower, his heartbeat the pendulum. The last thing he saw was Liora’s horrified realization as she reached for him—
Then the world moved on without him.