Chapter 5 – The Shattered Silence
The night had grown unbearably still. Not the kind of stillness that comforted weary souls, but a silence that pressed on the bones, making even breathing feel like an intrusion. The city of Vaelmir, once filled with restless voices and ceaseless wheels, was frozen under a moon that hung crooked and dim.
Elias stood at the edge of a broken tower, his cloak dragging dust along the cracked stone. His chest rose and fell sharply, as though even the air had turned too heavy to inhale. Below him, the square that had once held the beating heart of the marketplace was fractured in a dozen places, glowing faintly with veins of pale blue light. The earth seemed alive, whispering in vibrations only the brave—or the foolish—might listen to.
And amidst that fractured ground lay the object that had changed everything: the Hourglass of Cindral, shards scattered like dying stars across the cobblestones. Once whole, once holding the flow of reality itself, now ruined. Time, no longer a steady stream, bled like water through broken hands.
Marin knelt near the ruins, her palms hovering just above the shards, afraid to touch them but unable to look away. Her voice trembled when it finally broke through the silence.
"Elias… it isn't just broken." Her words faltered as a wind that wasn't a wind stirred around them, lifting her hair as though the shards breathed. "It's… calling."
Elias gritted his teeth. He'd felt it too—the faint tug, a pull deep within his chest, not toward the pieces but through them, beyond them. As if the very marrow of time screamed in search of someone bold enough to answer.
The silence deepened.
Then came the sound.
A crackling, faint at first, like glass grinding underfoot, then louder, sharper. The light in the cracks of the earth flared until the whole square was drenched in eerie blue. From the fractured cobblestones rose shapes—distorted, trembling forms of people who weren't really there. They were echoes: men, women, children of Vaelmir, captured in the very last second before time's collapse. Frozen, yet restless. Their mouths opened in screams that carried no sound, their arms outstretched toward lives they would never finish.
Marin staggered back. "They're… trapped?"
Elias did not move, though his fists clenched. His mind reeled as he watched faces he half-remembered—faces of shopkeepers, guards, children who had smiled at the square—now suspended in eternal silence. Not alive. Not gone. Stolen by the Hourglass's shattering.
The air pulsed once, heavy and alive, as though the shards themselves had a heartbeat. Elias bent low, narrowing his eyes.
"Not trapped," he whispered, voice rough. "They're being rewritten."
At that, one of the echoes—an old man with his cane half-raised—snapped its head toward him. The faceless blur sharpened, eyes hollow yet aware. The figure staggered forward, breaking the rule of silence. Its jaw cracked unnaturally as words tore free.
"Return… what… was… stolen…"
The voice was jagged glass, filled with a hundred tones at once. And behind it, dozens more echoes turned their hollow gazes on Elias and Marin.
The silence shattered.
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Chapter 6 – The Unknown Walks
The echoes lunged.
At first they moved like stuttering images—jerking in broken frames, flickering between moments. But within a breath, they found speed, rushing in waves, their half-formed limbs cutting the air. Their bodies flickered between shadow and substance, sometimes striking stone with weight, sometimes phasing through it. They were wrong, broken—yet unstoppable.
"Run!" Marin's voice ripped through the chaos. She darted across the fractured square, pulling Elias with her, their boots slamming stone that glowed with every step. Behind them, the echoes shrieked soundlessly, their jaws opening wide enough to unhinge.
Elias reached into his cloak, fingers brushing the weapon he had hoped he wouldn't need: a blade forged from Chronium, metal said to bend in tune with time itself. When he drew it, the echoes faltered for a heartbeat, their bodies blurring as if recoiling from recognition.
"Go!" Elias roared, spinning to slash. His blade cut through the first echo, tearing it into streams of pale dust that spiraled into the shards on the ground. But as quickly as one fell, another pressed forward.
Marin ducked under a swipe, rolling and skidding near the Hourglass's remains. Her hand, against all instinct, landed on a shard. For a moment, the world stilled. Her vision burned white. She saw a thousand timelines fracture: the Hourglass whole again, the Hourglass devoured in flames, Elias dead, herself lost in shadow. A flood of futures that could not co-exist.
She screamed and tore her hand back, collapsing.
That scream, though, drew something else.
From the edges of the square, where shadow pressed thickest, a figure emerged. Not an echo, not one of Vaelmir's dead. Taller, cloaked in black, its presence bent the silence around it. Even the echoes hesitated, their howls dimming, their bodies twitching as if they too feared it.
Marin's breath caught in her throat. "Who—?"
The figure spoke, its voice steady, calm, and wrongfully patient in the chaos:
"Time is not yours to wield. It is mine."
Elias froze, his blade dripping silver dust from slain echoes. His jaw tightened. "And who are you supposed to be?"
The figure stepped closer, its face hidden beneath a hood stitched with symbols that shimmered like liquid. Its hand rose, not in threat, but in command. At its gesture, the echoes halted entirely, collapsing into mist that fled back into the shards.
The square was silent again.
Only three beings remained: Elias, Marin, and the Unknown.
The hood tilted, and for a heartbeat, Elias thought he saw eyes—cold, silver, endless clocks ticking within them.
The Unknown spoke again:
"You shattered what should never have been touched. You stand on the corpse of an age that will never breathe again. And yet…" The figure's voice deepened, vibrating against their bones. "…you are still alive. That makes you either chosen… or cursed."
The silence stretched. Marin's heart pounded so loud she feared the figure could hear it.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the Unknown turned, stepping into the fissure of glowing light. Its form dissolved, drawn into the veins of the earth as though swallowed by time itself.
The silence returned.
But Elias knew—this was no end. The Unknown had not left. It had simply gone ahead, waiting in whatever pieces of tomorrow still remained.
And the game of broken hours had only begun.