The world before Louise now was not a world—it was a wound.
The Bleeding Plains stretched endlessly, a sea of rust-red soil broken by shattered weapons, bone-cracked monuments, and the half-mummified remains of those who had once dared to master time. He stood on a ridge above it all, wind buffeting his cloak, the sigil of the Ashen Clock glowing faintly at his back. Every breath tasted like iron. Every heartbeat echoed as though the very ground remembered violence.
Below, the soldiers of a forgotten war were locked in deathless motion.
Some swung rusted axes at phantom enemies. Others staggered in eternal agony, whispering names that had long turned to ash. Statues cried blood. Trees grew upside down. The very laws of reality were fractured, distorted, like reflections trapped in broken mirrors.
This was the first test.
Louise descended.
---
The ground rejected him with every step. His boots crunched on bones that were too old to recognize, and yet too recent to fully decay. Strange laughter echoed through invisible speakers buried beneath the dust. There were time fractures—pockets where seconds looped infinitely or minutes stretched like hours.
In one such pocket, he saw a soldier impaled through the chest—but never dying. The moment repeated endlessly. A scream. A thrust. A collapse. Then again. And again. Louise stepped wide around it, heart tightening.
He was no stranger to horror.
But this was different.
This was sorrow given form.
And then he heard it.
A voice. Familiar. Gentle.
"Lou...?"
He froze.
The wind carried it again. "Louise... is it really you?"
He turned.
There she stood.
Eira.
His sister.
Clad in white. Alive. Smiling. Arms outstretched.
But he knew the truth.
Eira had died twelve years ago.
He had buried her himself.
Louise narrowed his eyes. "You're not her."
She tilted her head. "But don't you want to believe it? Just for a moment?"
"No."
And with that, she changed. Her face split down the center, revealing gears and ghostlight, her skin unraveling like thread from a puppet. The illusion collapsed into ash.
"Good," a voice murmured from behind him. "The Plains test your longing. Not many pass."
Louise turned sharply.
A new figure now stood before him. Clad in pitch-black armor streaked with gold veins, helm shaped like a lion's skull. In one hand, a great curved glaive hummed with locked time.
"I am the Warden of the Bleeding Plains," the figure said. "I've waited centuries for your arrival."
Louise didn't draw his weapon yet. "You knew I was coming?"
"The moment you shattered the stilled seconds beneath the cave, the citadel stirred. And the citadel and I... are bound."
"Who were you before all this?"
"I was nothing. A man who killed his future. So I was given purpose—guard this threshold until the next Founder walks through blood and silence."
Louise's heart skipped. "Founder?"
"Yes. The Ashen Clock accepts only one bearer in a generation. And it seems it has chosen you."
The Warden raised his weapon. "So show me why."
---
The duel began with thunder.
The Warden moved like a falling star, glaive sweeping arcs that carved time itself. Where the blade passed, seconds slowed, then accelerated unpredictably. Louise leapt back, drew his fractured blade, and countered with a slash that echoed in reverse.
Metal sang.
The Ashen Clock flared at his back, shielding him for a moment with golden spirals. But even it was strained. The Warden was strong—unreal strong—his very presence disrupting cause and effect.
Louise blinked, and the Warden was behind him.
A strike came—Louise parried, barely.
Another—his shoulder burned.
The Clock twisted time forward. He healed.
But the toll increased.
He would not survive long trading blows.
So he changed the rhythm.
"Reverse Vector: Memory Coil."
Louise leapt into the air, his blade spiraling, triggering a loop where his last three moves replayed at once. Time fractured—he was in three places, attacking from three angles.
The Warden faltered.
And Louise struck. Blade to helm.
The Warden staggered. Gold blood leaked from beneath his mask.
"You've learned well," he said, lowering his weapon. "Enough."
He fell to one knee.
Louise, panting, lowered his own blade.
The Warden removed his helm. Beneath was a man—no older than thirty—eyes like molten suns, weary and filled with reverence.
"You pass. I am no longer Warden. I am simply Cael."
He offered Louise a sealed crystal.
"This is your next shard. Of the Citadel."
Louise took it.
Cael continued. "There are seven. This is the second. When they reunite, the truth shall awaken. But beware—the Citadel is not what you think. And neither is the Clock."
Louise frowned. "What do you mean?"
But Cael shook his head. "The answer isn't mine to give. Only to guide."
And then, like a dream fading, he vanished.
---
Louise wandered deeper.
The landscape changed.
No longer war-scarred. But hollow. Ruins of cities folded into themselves. Temples half-consumed by sandstorms that moved backwards. Here, memories were carved into the very rocks. He touched a wall—and saw visions.
A child playing with a spinning top.
A king falling to betrayal.
A mother holding a dying son.
Each vision lasted a second—and burned like fire.
The Clock on his back drank it in.
And then—another anomaly.
A field of hourglasses.
Thousands of them, arranged in spirals, floating inches above the ground.
Each hourglass contained a person's life. From birth to death, frozen in sand.
And in the center stood a woman in dark crimson robes.
"Louise," she said, smiling.
"I don't know you."
"You will. I am Lady Syn. Keeper of Ends. And thief of beginnings."
She gestured, and one hourglass floated forward.
"This is yours."
Louise stared.
Inside the glass—his own image. As a baby. Then as a boy. Then a man.
But something was wrong.
The glass was cracked. Sand leaked from both ends. Fast.
"You are unraveling," she said. "Too many temporal shifts. Too many fragments absorbed. You weren't supposed to live this long."
He stepped back. "What do you want?"
"To help."
She touched the glass, and time paused.
"You need an anchor. Something to hold you to the present. Or you will vanish into the stream."
"Why would you help me?"
"Because I don't want you to die before we finish our story."
Louise clenched his fists. "What story?"
Syn smiled. "The one where you end eternity."
She handed him a token—a gear wrapped in black flame.
"Use this only when you've lost everything."
And then she vanished.
The hourglasses collapsed into dust.
---
Alone now, Louise stood amidst the ruins.
The Clock no longer glowed. It pulsed.
The second shard hummed with it.
The journey was just beginning.
Far to the east, mountains rose like shattered ribs from the world's spine. Somewhere beyond them waited the third shard.
And beyond that, the Citadel.
He walked.
One step.
Then another.
Time, for now, obeyed...