Riven's Dorm, an hour before the conflict.
The faint hum of AIRA's hologram projectors painted the strategy room in flickering blue light.
Riven's beanbag chair had sagged halfway to the floor under his weight, while Kenji sat cross-legged on the carpet, chewing on what was either a toothpick or the broken end of a kendo stick.
Lyra leaned against the wall near the porthole window, arms folded, gaze fixed on Asvara like she was trying to read a sealed book.
On the holographic map above the low table, a massive gear-shaped structure rotated slowly.
The image distorted every few seconds, as though the map itself was resisting the idea of being looked at.
Each gear tooth pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.
"Eldrose's domain," Asvara said calmly, his tone almost bored. "Frozen Clocktower. Time runs on his rules inside. Not fast. Not slow. Just… wrong."
Kenji raised his hand. "Question. Why does it look like a steampunk wedding cake?"
AIRA's voice chimed from the corner, sharp and sardonic.
"Because, Kenji-chan, that is the taste of your imminent death, layered in brass and gears."
Kenji scowled. "You really have a gift for morale boosting."
Asvara ignored them and tapped the map. "Eldrose Dreyvich. Former archivist of Isorropia. Obsession: time. He stole seconds from historical disasters like earthquakes, fires, or battles and built a tower out of them. Each brick screams in a different language."
Lyra shivered. "Screams?"
Riven nodded grimly. "You hear it when you get close. Doesn't matter if you cover your ears. It's not sound. It's… the memory of screaming."
Kenji's toothpick stilled. "Okay, that's creepy. What's the plan?"
Asvara smiled faintly, the kind of smile that made even AIRA's hologram flicker nervously. "We bait Roseley into opening a path to Eldrose. Then, while Isorropia thinks we're there to destroy the gate, we walk straight into the heart of the tower."
Lyra's brows furrowed. "You're skipping a lot of details."
"Exactly," Asvara said. "Because the details are mine. All you need to know is your part on the board."
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, the violet light from the map cutting shadows across his face.
"This isn't just an infiltration. It's shōgi with the board on fire. Eldrose is the rook, Roseley's the knight, and we're the king everyone wants to topple. The Immortal Game starts this morning."
Kenji raised a finger again. "Why are we playing chess metaphors when you literally just said shōgi?"
"Because 'The Eternal Shōgi' sounds like a bad light novel," AIRA deadpanned.
Riven shifted in his beanbag, frowning at the tiny sand-glow pulsing inside his hourglass embedded in his chest. "Asvara… if we enter that gate, I'm down to seventeen seconds of lifespan."
Kenji blinked. "Seventeen minutes?"
"Seventeen seconds," Riven corrected.
"Holy—" Kenji started.
Lyra cut in, voice sharp. "Then we don't go."
"We do," Asvara said. "Because Eldrose's hourglass works in reverse. The closer we get, the more time he can steal. We either stop him now, or Riven's lifespan becomes a negative number."
Kenji leaned back, sighing. "I don't like math, but that sounds bad."
[FLASH TO PRESENT – Inside Eldrose's Frozen Realm]
The gate's light died behind them, and silence swallowed the world.
No wind. No breath.
No sound but the soft crunch of frost under their boots.
The air shimmered like glass, refracting the violet glow of the massive clocktower rising into an impossible sky.
Every building around them was frozen mid-motion even leaves suspended in midair.
A falling snowflake hovering inches from Kenji's face.
Time wasn't just stopped here.
It had been… pinned down, nailed to a single instant.
Kenji waved a hand in front of the snowflake, grinning. "Okay, I'm not gonna lie, this is sick."
Asvara's eyes swept the frozen street. "Don't touch anything."
Naturally, Kenji immediately pushed open the door to a small café. Inside, a barista stood mid-pour, espresso arcing in a perfect stream that never landed in the cup. Kenji stepped up to the counter.
"I'll have a cappuccino," he said to the unmoving statue of a man. "Extra foam."
AIRA's voice echoed from Asvara's earpiece.
"Technically, it's already extra foam. It's been foaming since the moment was stolen."
Asvara stepped in, studying the espresso stream. "I asked for an extra shot. This… is an eternal shot."
Lyra smirked despite herself. "Focus, strategist."
They moved deeper into the frozen city, the clocktower looming larger with each step.
The air grew heavier, each breath tasting faintly metallic.
Every so often, they passed a brick wall, and if you leaned close, you could hear the whispers — Italian, Japanese, Latin, Greek — all pleading, all trapped.
Riven lagged slightly behind, one hand pressed to the hourglass embedded in his chest.
The sand inside had thinned dangerously.
With every step toward the tower, a faint trickle vanished upward into nothing.
Kenji glanced back. "Hey… seventeen seconds, right? How many now?"
Riven's jaw tightened. "Eleven."
They quickened their pace.
Halfway up the frozen plaza stairs, a shadow moved.
Not moved but more like it rearranged itself in the frozen air.
From between two frozen townsfolk, a tall, thin figure stepped into view.
Eldrose Dreyvich.
His coat was long, stitched with clock hands and hour markers that spun without moving.
His eyes glowed faintly gold, like a clock face catching the sun.
"Welcome, interlopers," Eldrose said, his voice warping in pitch, as if spoken at two speeds at once.
Asvara stopped two steps below him. "Your hospitality is underwhelming."
Eldrose smiled. "Time is mine to give. And take."
The moment hung suspended, the frozen city groaning faintly under the weight of stolen seconds.
And somewhere high above, deep in the gears of the clocktower, something shifted, a heartbeat, echoing through the frost.
Eldrose's boots clicked softly on the frost, though the sound felt… wrong.
Each step seemed to arrive a split second before his foot actually touched the ground.
"I know why you're here," Eldrose said, his voice echoing in warped intervals. "But you are late. The game started long before you stepped onto the board."
Asvara's smirk was faint but sharp. "Funny. I was going to say the same to you."
Kenji, bless his inability to read tension, muttered under his breath, "Yeah, well, I hope the board has snacks."
Eldrose ignored him. "Your hourglass, Time Reaper… it bleeds. You are a wound in my clock. I will close it."
Riven straightened, his eyes narrowing. "You're not touching my hourglass."
Eldrose tilted his head. "Oh, I won't touch it. She will."
And as if on cue, a sound cut through the frozen air with a single tick.
Just one. Yet it echoed like a gunshot.
From the frost behind Eldrose, a figure emerged.
Roseley.
Her crimson hair floated as if underwater, her hands resting gently on the rim of a smaller, jet-black hourglass that hung from a chain around her neck.
The sand inside moved upwards, defying gravity.
"Roseley," Asvara greeted evenly. "I see you've brought the knock-off."
Her lips curved into a smile. "The Hourglass of Time Robber is improved, Eternal Tactician. Why steal seconds from the dying… when you can steal them from immortals?"
Without warning, Kenji moved.
"Link: Kensei no Yari!" (Spear of the Sword Saint)
The spirit of a tall warrior wielding a naginata flickered into existence, merging into Kenji's stance.
He lunged for Eldrose, but his spear froze mid-swing, the blade just inches from Eldrose's coat.
Kenji blinked. "Uh… did I just miss, or—"
"No," Eldrose said mildly. "Your attack has not yet happened."
With a flick of his fingers, the spear resumed and shattered harmlessly against an invisible barrier.
Lyra stepped forward, drawing a breath and something in her shifted.
Her eyes brightened into the deep, knowing gaze of Yù Lán Huā.
The air around her rippled as the Core Memory Link awakened.
She spoke in perfect Mandarin, voice low but steady:
"You play the wrong game, clockmaker."
Then she moved, faster, sharper, every step carrying the rhythm of an ancient tactician's war dance.
She struck not at Eldrose, but at the frozen air around him, her blade tapping invisible threads that bound the plaza's moment in place.
Tiny cracks of motion appeared, fluttering snowflakes where none had moved for centuries.
Asvara watched, a small, almost proud smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Good. She's learning."
The skirmish didn't last.
Eldrose raised one hand, and the space behind him peeled open like paper revealing a staircase spiraling into the heart of the clocktower.
Inside, gears the size of houses turned at impossible angles, their teeth meshing with rivers of suspended sand.
"Come then," Eldrose invited. "If you can."
He and Roseley stepped inside.
Asvara turned to his team. "Time for the infiltration. Keep your moves sharp, your humor sharper."
Kenji cracked his knuckles. "Finally."
Riven… didn't move.
His breathing was shallow, his hourglass nearly drained. "Asvara," he said quietly, "ten seconds."
The strategist's eyes flickered with not a fear, but calculation. "Then we play faster."
The inside of the Frozen Clocktower was worse than the outside.
The walls screamed.
Not loud but in deep way, like hearing voices through your ribs.
Every brick was carved from a second stolen during some disaster: a final heartbeat before a shipwreck, a gasp before the avalanche, a prayer before the sword.
Hundreds of languages, all pleading, all unanswered.
Kenji's face paled. "I… don't like this."
AIRA's voice, from the comm-link, was maddeningly calm.
"Statistical note: 83% of these voices are from people who died without finishing their last meal."
Kenji actually whimpered. "That's worse!"
Halfway up the first spiral, they passed another frozen café.
This one inside the tower itself.
A waiter stood mid-pour, tea suspended in midair.
Kenji, because of course he did, tried again.
"Oi, Asvara, I'm just saying uhmm... if we survive this, I'm opening a coffee shop like this. Eternal drinks. No refills."
Asvara didn't break stride. "If you live, I'll buy the first cup. But you'll be the one frozen mid-pour."
As they reached the mid-tier gears, the air thickened.
Riven stumbled, clutching his chest with only a thin stream of sand remained in his hourglass.
"Nine seconds!" Lyra barked, glancing at Asvara.
But Asvara's gaze was locked upward.
Past the massive pendulums, past the crisscrossing gears… to a central chamber that pulsed with violet light.
At its core, Eldrose's heart-clock.
And then Asvara moved.
He reached into the Subspace, pulling free Sensō no Uta.
The blade's violet aura flared, reflecting in the frozen sands.
Without a word, he pressed the tip to his own chest.
Kenji's eyes went wide. "What the hell are you doing?!"
Asvara's voice was steady. "Resetting the board."
With a swift, precise motion, he cut.
Not flesh, but something deeper, the faint, impossible beat of his immortal heart.
The violet energy surged into the air, racing along the frozen gears like fire.
Time shuddered.
The sands in Riven's hourglass froze and then trickled upward, gaining precious seconds.
The screaming bricks dimmed, their voices momentarily silenced.
But the violet spark didn't vanish into the gears.
It shot across the chamber and landed squarely in Roseley's chest.
She gasped, clutching at her ribs.
Then she smiled, slow, dangerous.
"Check," she whispered.
And the chamber doors slammed shut between them.
The tower groaned, every gear grinding in reverse.
Outside, the violet glow of the gate flared into a storm.
Riven staggered, alive but pale.
Lyra's eyes burned with the shared will of her past life.
Kenji tightened his grip on his weapon.
And Asvara… just smiled.
"Good," he murmured. "Now the real game begins."