Off the thick glass, he pushed, each motion a battle fought deep inside. Fifteen lost years - traded for Axiom's reshaping - settled hard into his right foot. Without living marrow, the bones in his foot scraped, sound like broken shards mixed with old metal dragged across stone. Weight moved left, then - a sudden pull at the makeshift wiring laced through his ripped arm muscle. Those black threads bit into exposed tissue, mimicking pain sharp and searing, as if heated edges chewed slowly through meat.
A weight pressed hard behind his eyes, deep inside the bone. That mark burned colder than anything alive should touch. Each pulse matched the thing out there, still as stone in the blackened field. Not fire, but freezing ran through him, timed to its presence. Twenty paces off, it waited - six wings folded tight, silent under smoke-heavy air.
A slow breath escaped Julian Thorne as he shifted his round, black-rimmed glasses. Not a speck touched the tailored navy fabric of his suit, though the valley around him breathed rust-colored leaves and wild air. Resting on a cane topped with a silver bird's skull, he stood still - flanked by chains holding something older than clocks, beside a beast reshaped by fire and bone, yet calm like dusk before silence. Places like this didn't fit men like him… except how easily he seemed made for them.
"I tracked your erratic little heartbeat the moment you left the Weeping Canyons, Mr. Kensington," Julian stated, his smooth voice amplified across the perimeter by the command crawler's exterior speakers. "I knew the Vanguard had found the complete machine. What I lacked was the ignition key to turn it on. Imagine my delight when my algorithms deduced that you were carrying a live, bleeding fragment of the Aethelgard Watcher directly toward my airspace."
Vance stayed on his knees atop the huge stasis pod. Below heavy glass, untouched and whole, the divine owl drifted in still liquid - made only of sharp beams of light and silent gold cogs locked in rest. Power poured out from that full-grown godlike form, crushing the small piece hiding inside Vance's ribs. That sliver of star-fire engine within him froze, hollow with fear, cut off, unable to move at all.
A shape hunched close to the glass above, pressed flat. From nearby came a sharp hiss, dark as void, fur alive with jagged sparks pulled straight from the warship's core. Fighting tugged at it hard, yet something deeper held back - the weight below, ancient and bound, plus the still figure standing in dust, glowing faint purple. A boy sat frozen just yards away, sixteen maybe, name Elian, tossed here like cargo. He shook without sound, knees drawn tight, face buried in fabric blackened by grime.
Not once did Elena Rostova glance toward the Cartel heir. Locked onto the glass chamber - and the boy crouched above - it stayed, those violet eyes bright like flame behind glass. Forward she moved, just one step, drawn out and quiet. Then - jerk - the world reset around her, stiff as broken machinery catching again.
"You hoard broken clocks, little spider," Elena whispered. Her melodic voice bypassed the heavy acoustic dampeners of the Cartel vehicles, echoing directly into the minds of everyone in the valley. "This machinery belongs to the dark. I am taking it back, and I am taking the thief's heart to complete the set."
Stillness held him. The red earth met his cane's point with a soft tap.
Without warning, the rooftop emitters aboard the nearby Cartel vehicles rose into a piercing scream. Across the open space, an unseen web of kinetic barriers clamped down hard, dragging air and motion alike under thickened gravity. Every step forward became impossible - Elena froze, her six dark-filigree wings flaring wide against the press of machinery-born weight.
"I am afraid that is unacceptable," Julian replied, his tone remaining perfectly polite. "You are an undocumented anomaly, and this operation has already exceeded its allocated budget. Enforcers, secure the fragment from the boy. Liquidate the beast and the extra civilian. Maintain the kinetic net on the winged hostile until we can extract the primary payload."
From the side of the command crawler stepped two massive figures, rebuilt by the Cartel. Not your usual Syndicate foot soldiers - these carried more machine than flesh. Metal arms and legs powered forward on hydraulic thrust, each step driven by cold precision. Green-tinged fluid throbbed through tubes feeding straight into their necks. Racing ahead, they moved like something not quite human. Toward the stasis pod they surged, fast enough to blur. In hand, jagged batons alive with snapping energy, ready to strike.
Vance clenched the handle of his carbon-steel blade tighter. Facing enhanced Cartel fighters while stuck in a basic human form? That wasn't just risky - it was suicide on paper. Every breath scraped like sand inside his chest. Bones creaked under pressure he used to ignore. Meanwhile, deep within him, the System stayed frozen solid - silenced entirely by the nearby full-strength Watcher.
Fate had run its course. Time slipped away like sand through fingers. The clock stopped ticking for good.
Down through the glass under his feet, Vance saw the still golden gears of the trapped god. A wild thought rose - something he should not have known. Not gravity. Not plasma. That machine twisted echoes of time itself. While others used heavy restraints, built for matter, not moments. Pure duration does not bend like metal.
Down went Vance's knife. The blade hit the glass ceiling, loud but pointless.
A jolt ripped through the link, raw and fierce, as Vance forced his will into Axiom's core. Not a request - never that - but a crushing order sent along the tether. Instead of turning on the closing enforcers, he made the creature flood its hoarded power straight into him. Every bolt, every surge, driven inward, tearing through flesh and bone.
A sudden resistance flickered in Axiom's mind, yet the unyielding grip of programming crushed it fast. From the dim outline of its crouch, the shadow-lynx lunged - its massive paws cracking down like live wires onto Vance's already battered chest.
A jolt - raw, black energy - ripped into him, shredding nerve paths like paper. His left arm split open at the seams; blood curled slowly down his forearm. From his neck, the ice-mark burned now, fighting the surge, yet too weak - the power surged past skin and bone, slamming straight into the silent gold gear locked around his heart.
A sudden flood of raw energy slammed into the machine. It screamed - not like metal, but something alive. Power ripped through its core, too much, far beyond limits. The engine bucked, then roared awake.
Fingers slick with red, Vance pressed hard into the untouched glass wall. Not once did he attempt to shatter it through strength alone. From deep within, a whirling mechanism - overheated, erratic - began matching rhythm. Slowly, its frantic pulse aligned. The ancient machinery below, vast and still, answered. A god's silent engine stirred under his touch.
Thundering through him, the machines roared like a storm under skin. Their noise bent to his breath, shaping chaos into rhythm.
One moment it was there. Then nothing remained at all.
A flash of gold tore through the air, born from twisted time inside the hyper-chamber. Outward it surged, wiping away the Cartel's hidden web in a breath. Rover-mounted emitters blackened, crumbled into ancient wreckage under sudden age. Those two enhanced guards charging the cage - temporal waves hit hard. Metal arms turned brittle, joints locked tight with fake rust, lifetimes of wear packed into less than a blink.
Backpedaling fast, Julian Thorne raised both arms against the harsh glare. Light hit like a slap, forcing him off balance mid-step.
Out of nowhere, Elena Rostova screamed - sharp, wrong - as the blast from the time rupture shoved back against her purple pull, hurling her through blackened ground.
Light split behind Vance's eyes, sharp shards of gold cutting through his sight as he slumped by the edge of the glowing liquid. The container lay shattered - freedom won, power seized. Yet silence returned, thick and heavy, until warmth pulsed from within the core. Then came movement. Two great orbs ignited beneath him, slow, molten, aware. They lifted toward where he crouched, battered, leaking life onto cold metal. A gaze
locked on. Not anger. Not gratitude. Just presence.