The crack in the dome widened faster than Arkhan could track. Light spilled onto the Observatory floor in jagged shards, splintering across telescopes and holographic projectors. Every pulse of the hourglass at his chest throbbed with urgency.
"Lyra," Arkhan called, voice taut. "We need to move now!"
She reached for his hand, but her eyes lingered on the umbra of the sky torn open above them. "One moment," she whispered. "I need to secure..."
A tremor ran through the platform as if the Observatory itself convulsed. Dust rained from the broken dome. Kaito grabbed Arkhan's arm. "We don't have that moment." His tone brooked no argument. "We're sitting ducks up here."
Arkhan pressed his hand over the hourglass pendant, the crystal's glow shifting from silver to urgent amber. He felt the familiar pull of time unspooling around them danger blooming with every heartbeat. "She's right," he said to Kaito, pulling Lyra toward the exit hatch.
Elena was already at the door, finger on the override panel. Sparks flickered where glass shards had cut into exposed wiring. She tapped once. Twice. "Come on…" The panel beeped, then let out a mechanical sigh as the hatch slid open. A gust of wind rushed in, carrying the scent of ozone and distant rain.
They tumbled out onto the spiral stairs. Arkhan's legs burned from exertion, but he forced himself upward. Each step felt like climbing through layers of reality itself. Above, the crack in the dome resembled a yawning wound against the night sky, widening as if someone peeled back the fabric of the world.
"Hold on," Arkhan muttered beneath his breath, reaching into his mind for the steady hum of Chrono Pulse. He summoned it, weaving a protective shell of temporal energy around them. The crack's edges slowed their expansion as if trapped in amber. But the shell taxed him every pulse drew a sting behind his eyes.
They burst through the final hatch onto the roof terrace. Rain pelted them in cold, stinging beads. The city below lay silent, shimmering beneath streetlights and mist. A faint blue glow drifted across the skyline evidence of the primary rift's waning bleed.
Elena closed the hatch behind them. "We can't stay here," she shouted over the rain. "Chancellor Voss will have security drones swarming this sector in minutes." She pointed to a narrow maintenance catwalk leading along the building's flank. "This way."
They dashed across slick panels, Lyra's cloak billowing like a raven's wing. Arkhan kept his focus on the hourglass crystal's glow it pulsed faster with every second, mapping the chronon signature of her presence. He'd never seen the pendant respond to anyone but himself; now it pulsed for Lyra, as though recognizing her fractured soul.
They reached the catwalk's end and squeezed through a mesh barrier. Beyond, a service elevator waited, its call button neon-green. Arkhan hit it, and the doors slid open with a hiss.
Inside, the smell of oil and ozone was thick. Kaito pressed a finger to the panel. "To the archives," he said. "We need data on Voss's override protocols and maybe a way to jack Lyra's consciousness free."
No one moved. Seconds stretched until the elevator jolted downward, carrying them away from the Observatory's chaos.
The archives were a subterranean maze of stacked holo-crates and data conduits. Rows of crystalline servers glowed with stored timelines ghosts of events both real and theoretical. Elena guided them to a secure terminal, wiping moisture from its interface plate.
"Help me," she said, voice low. "I'll crack the security. Arkhan, keep watch." She tapped a sequence only a few researchers knew. Sparks danced across the panel. "Almost there..."
Arkhan stared at the rotating servers, thinking of the Chancellor's silver eyes and the hidden override she'd given him. If Voss truly feared what Arkhan and Lyra could do together, that meant betrayal ran deep deeper than any analysis they could run now.
He should have seen it coming. He'd known the Collapse wasn't natural. He'd drawn lines in the sand, wondering who might nudge events in one direction or another. But he'd never expected the world's supposed savior to manipulate the very bedrock of time.
The elevator dinged a warning that guards were converging. Kaito peered through the grated ceiling tiles. "They'll be here in less than two minutes. We need that data now."
Elena's fingers flew. "There…blocked nodes are falling. We're in." She exhaled sharply. "Override protocols." Lines of code scrolled across the holo-display: "ACCESS: CHANCELLOR_VOSS_SECURE" flashed in crimson.
Lyra's face ghosted onto the screen an echo within the archives. The server recognized her chronon signature and stuttered, then stabilized. A separate window popped open: "LYRA_XXX_CONSCIOUSNESS_TRAP – ACTIVE."
Elena's eyes widened. "They trapped her consciousness here…like a captive code." She scrolled. "It's anchored to the Chancellor's personal chronofield. She can disable it any time." Her hand trembled as she read. "And there's a failsafe: if Lyra ever breaches containment protocols, it wipes both her and the host vessel Marcus Reed permanently."
Kaito's breath caught. Arkhan's heart felt like it had been dragged through the rift itself. "So if we free her…we die." His voice was hollow.
Elena shook her head. "Not if we rewrite the protocol. If we can transplant the anchor from Voss's chronofield to another vessel Lyra's own temporal core she'd regain autonomy without fatal backlash."
"How?" Arkhan asked.
She rubbed her temples. "We need access to Chancellor Voss's chronofield generator and I know where it is." She tapped the panel again. "Deck twelve, sublevel omega. The private vault."
Arkhan exchanged looks with Kaito. "That's deep inside the Core Research Wing. Heavily guarded." He glanced at Lyra, waiting. Her pale eyes looked back resolute, patient. "But it's the only way."
Lyra stepped forward. "There's another path." Her voice was soft, but carried weight. "Beyond the archives, there's an old drain tunnel. I built it. Secret access to every major facility." Her eyes locked on Arkhan's. "We can use it to bypass security surveillance."
Elena exhaled. "Risky. It hasn't been maintained in decades." She hesitated, then nodded. "But if it's our best shot…"
Arkhan took a breath. "We do it." He squared his shoulders. "We free her first. Then we face Voss."
A distant rumble shook the archive racks. Lights flickered. Security drones' sirens wailed above hundreds of them converging on the vault doors.
Elena swore under her breath. "It's now or never."
They sprinted from the terminal, weaving through narrow aisles of humming servers. Arkhan's Chrono Pulse kept the world in compressed slow motion for them a private bubble where they moved with preternatural clarity. He saw Liara's cloak flutter against metal, Kaito's sneakers skidding on polished floor, Elena's hair brushing her lab coat collar.
They reached the back wall of the archives. A rusted grate blocked a rectangular opening about a meter tall. Lyra pressed her hand against it. The metal dissolved in a whisper of chrono-energy her power touching the world only now, frail but present.
Arkhan and Kaito slipped inside behind her. Elena paused at the grate, ambivalent. "I didn't think it'd still work." She took a step forward, then joined them, the grate reconstituting behind her.
Inside was darkness, reeking of damp and ancient metal. A ladder descended into blackness. Arkhan's heartbeat pulsed in his ears. He pressed closer to Lyra, offering his pack's flashlight. She clicked it on. The beam cut through layers of time-staled air, illuminating concentric rings carved into the tunnel walls first human, then arcane, then unknown.
Each step downward felt like peeling layers off reality. The further they went, the louder the distant alarms faded. Arkhan exhaled, letting the tunnel's hush calm him. The hourglass at his chest glowed continuously now, like a guiding star.
At the bottom, the tunnel opened into a vast chamber. A single, enormous cylinder stood at its center, pulsing with cobalt light the Core Chronofield Generator. Around it, a circular catwalk orbited like a halo. Only one access point existed: a narrow walkway guarded by two armed sentries.
Elena unhooked a small device from her belt. "Temporal cloaking shard," she whispered. "It'll hide us for thirty seconds."
"Better be enough," Arkhan muttered.
Lyra pressed the shard to the ground. Time around them blurred shimmering like heat haze then snapped into instant clarity. The sentries paused mid-step, their gazes unseeing.
They moved, three ghosts in the machine's heart. Arkhan's eyes fixed on the generator's control panel it pulsed with data locks and chain-defensive fields. Elena tapped into the external console, sweat glistening on her brow.
"Decrypting…" she said.
Arkhan looked back at Lyra. "Are you ready?"
She nodded. "I was never more ready."
Elena's fingers danced over the holographic keys, bypassing code after code. "One more layer…" The console pulsed red. "They want authentication from Voss himself."
"No time," Arkhan said. He placed his palm against the panel, channeling Chrono Pulse through his neural link. The generator shuddered, coils sparking. Blue light flared, then purple, then white.
"Arkhan" Elena began, alarmed.
He ignored her. His mind was a tunnel ignoring everything but the code he needed to break. Surge after surge of chrono-energy pushed through the console until it gave way with a chime of liberation.
The generator's protective shell collapsed. A low, resonant hum filled the chamber.
"This is it," Lyra whispered.
Elena grabbed a data rod. "This contains the rewritten anchor protocols. Plug it into the access port on your pendant."
Arkhan took it, hesitated, then slipped it into the hourglass's base. The crystal flared, streams of light spilling outward. A pulse thundered through the chamber a unity of two wills.
Lyra closed her eyes. A beam of pure light arced from the generator to her pendant. Arkhan's vision blurred, and he gripped the console edge for support.
Then a silence deeper than any before enveloped them.
And when he opened his eyes, Lyra stood fully human beside him heart beating, eyes alive, free at last.
Their journey had truly begun.