Click.
The gem glowed with a brilliant blue light.
Soon after, the door's inscriptions settled from dangerous red to an ocean blue.
The massive wooden door began to swing open on its own.
"See?"
Max grinned triumphantly.
"Problem solved."
"It really was the key… But why would they place such an important key there? How did you… No! I mustn't fall for his tricks again."
Audrey's expression kept changing so much between horror, grievance, and confusion it almost looked like she wanted to tear-off her hair in frustration. It was fortunate she still held her reservations pertaining to her position.
But it was questionable how long that would last...
Max simply hummed.
High-tier inscriptions, huh? It's the oldest trick in the book. Make the door look impossible to crack without the method so no one notices the key is literally stuck to the molding. Another way to hide the spare under the doormat.
"The Mother preserve us from fools who rush in where angels fear to tread," she muttered, but still followed Max as he stepped through the doorway.
Beyond lay another section of the spiral staircase, this one wider and more ornate. The walls here displayed intricate mechanisms that tracked celestial movements and magical currents throughout the Academy. Their climb to the top was in silence. Max led with confident steps despite having no real idea where they were going while Audrey continued to question her life choices.
Eventually, they reached what they guessed was the main control room.
It was a vast circular chamber dominated by an enormous clockwork mechanism at its center. Countless gears turned grandly, surrounding a column of pure magical energy that stretched upward through an opening in the ceiling.
"Yep definitely the control room," Max mumbled.
"We have gone too far…"
Her voice lacked strength, yet the change of tone to awe in her voice couldn't be concealed when faced with the magnificence of the room.
Max circled the mechanism, examining the intricate arrangement of gears, crystals, and energy conduits. Near what appeared to be the main access point stood something resembling a control panel. Levers, dials, and crystal interfaces arranged around a central pedestal.
"Yep definitely the control room," Max repeated, reaching toward the panel.
"Don't!"
But it was too late.
The atmosphere of the chamber changed. The ticking slowed, becoming deeper and more resonant, while the light appeared to shift and align to one spot.
Audrey gave Max a deadly glare.
"Hold up Audrey. I'm still just standing here. Give a guy a chance to actually start before you start the witch hunt."
All he did was move a little close to the mechanism and hovered his hands above the various controls. He was still deciding on what to fiddle with.
But because of their positions, the angle from her view declared Max guilty.
So she didn't believe his words and kept glaring.
But this moment only lasted for a short moment before the changes in the room turned them to where the lights converged.
Above there, the clockwork began to shimmer and distort.
The fabric of reality rippled like disturbed water.
From within this distortion emerged a serpentine form unlike anything the two of them had ever seen. Its body seemed composed of crystalline scales that shifted between transparency and solidity as it moved, creating an effect that was both beautiful and deeply unsettling.
"The Chronovryn," Audrey whispered, instinctively making the sign of the Mother with trembling hands.
The creature hovered above the mechanism. Its strange body twisted in strange curves seeming to defy logic. As it flickered in that uncanny way, the two of them felt the weight of a gaze like that of an ancient higher life-form looking down upon the lower.
They didn't move.
But neither did the creature.
For a long moment, the two parties stared at each other.
Max swallowed hard, clenching through the sweat from his hands. His mind went into overdrive to find a solution. He raced through the memories of the original novel. In the novel, Cyrus had managed to calm the creature somehow, demonstrating that he meant no harm to the tower's mechanisms.
Outwardly, Max maintained a facade of calm.
The heart hammering against his ribs?
That's just the adrenaline.
He let out a unvoiced laugh that would have sounded like a snicker.
Then slowly, he deliberately raised his empty hands, palms outward.
"Easy there," he said softly.
"We're just looking around. No harm intended to your... clockwork stuff."
The crystalline serpent tilted its vaguely spirit-like head, the movement creating a disorienting ripple through its semi-transparent body. It remained fixated on Max, seemingly indifferent to Audrey's presence.
The attentive pressure made him more nervous.
"So, uh... any reason the tower guardian seems dead set on me and not, y'know, both of us?"
Audrey didn't share his attempt at humor.
She stepped forward, placing herself partially between Max and the creature.
"Holy Guardian of Time. As a servant of the Mother Goddess, I ask your mercy. We seek no disruption to the sacred order you protect."
Her voice carried the practiced cadence of prayer, but Max could see her hands trembling at her sides.
Despite her fear, she managed to hold her ground.
She was determined to protect him.
However, her courage was not witnessed by her foe. Rather, she was completely not acknowledged at all. It drifted closer to Max, its body moving like a specter, unhurried yet unstoppable.
"I don't think it cares about divine credentials," Max muttered, backing toward the door they'd entered through.
Faced with the approach of the predator, the legs out of instinct to survive regained their strength.
"It's our cue to get out."
As he approached the exit, the heavy wooden door swung shut with a decisive boom that echoed throughout the chamber.
BOOM!
"Yeah… just like the novel."
Max kept his wits. His eyes never stopped glancing to seek another way out.
The Chronovryn continued its ghostly approach, its movements deceptively slow yet covering distance in a way that defied normal perception. Each time Max blinked, it seemed closer.
Though he never actually saw it properly move...
"Stand back!"
Audrey suddenly shouted, her voice ringing with authority that went against her fear. Light began to gather around her hands. Divine magic summoned to defend against the encroaching entity.
"No!!"
Max lunged toward her, throwing his arms around her shoulders and pushing her aside just as golden light burst from her fingertips. The spell discharged harmlessly against the far wall, sending shimmering motes of divine energy cascading through the air.
"Are you insane?"
Max kept himself between her and the creature.
"You can't just recklessly attack a temporal guardian like that!"
"I was trying to create a barrier between you and it!" Audrey shot back, her eyes blazing. "It's coming for you, not me!"
"Well, that makes me feel so much better."
Max put a hand on the emerald wind cloak at his shoulders.
As long as he could find an exit, he was ready to unleash it any time.
But before he could find a way, the Chronovryn's slow movements suddenly transformed. One crystalline limb shot forward with terrifying speed, moving so fast it seemed to blur through the intervening space.
WHOOSH!
"GARGH!"
"Max!!"
Cold fingers—extremely cold—grasped his face, their touch both solid and not, like being seized by frozen mist.
He felt the agony of being pulled apart thread by thread, each strand of his being unspooling like yarn from a sweater.
His thoughts scattered, memories fragmenting.
He was simultaneously drowning and burning, falling and flying, stretched across a thousand moments.
!!!
A scream tore from his throat.
Though whether it made any sound at all, he couldn't tell.
His vision fractured into shards of shattered glass, each reflecting a different moment of his existence—his life on Earth, his arrival in this world, his desperate run through the Academy grounds, all swirling together then spinning apart.
Then, there was darkness.
DONG!
DING!!
[EMERGENCY QUEST: ?????]
- Description: "The Chronovryn has iden███ you as a temp███ ████. Each l██p e███s a fr███ion of your exis███ce in th██ wor██."
- Objective: Survive as YOU
- Status: Timeline Integration: 95%
- Reward: ???
- Failure: YOU will cease to exist.
***
"Hukkk—haaah!"
Max gasped as consciousness slammed into him like a tsunami. His lungs heaved, fighting for air as if he'd been drowning. His eyes snapped open, darting frantically as he tried to find his bearings.
No agonizing cold.
No sensation of being pulled apart.
No fractured visions.
He was welcomed with the grand entrance hall of the Chronokos's Tower.
"Are you out of your mind?!"
Audrey's voice echoed through the entrance hall, her amber-gold eyes flashing with righteous indignation.
"Do you have any idea what you've just done?"
Max blinked, confused.
He'd just been in the control room with the Chronovryn's cold fingers gripping his face, tearing him into a thousand pieces.
But now, he was standing back in the entrance hall with Audrey scolding him as if…
As if they'd just entered the tower for the first time.
"What the hell?"
Illusion? Foresight? Some bizarre magical defense system?
One possibility stood out in his mind.
"It reset," he whispered.
The words escaped before he could fully process their implications.
As absurd as it seemed, time resetting appeared to be the most logical explanation given the circumstances.
"What are you muttering about? This place is dangerous and forbidden for a reason. We should leave immediately before—"
"No,"
Max interrupted, certain of what had transpired.
"We didn't just enter. We've been here already. We climbed the stairs, found research notes, continued higher..."
He locked eyes with her.
"You don't remember any of it?"
The confusion in her eyes was genuine.
Whatever had happened, Audrey had no recollection of their previous exploration.
"You're not making any sense. Are you feeling ill? Perhaps the tower's defenses affected you somehow or could the cause be by your injuries?" she said, her voice softening with concern.
Max took a slow, steadying breath and gazed toward the massive doors they'd entered through. Still open, spilling afternoon light across the marble floor.
That didn't make sense.
Time should have passed. The welcoming ceremony would be underway by now, yet the light suggested it was the same time as when they'd first entered.
He stepped toward the entrance, extending his hand toward the opening.
The moment his fingers breached the threshold, the world shattered.
Colors became murky like mud, sounds distorted, and that horrifying sensation of being unraveled thread by thread returned. Much less intense than when the Chronovryn had touched him.
Yet.
The great power was more than enough to make Max's consciousness fragment and scatter.