As encroaching darkness swallowed his peripheral vision, Hajin's left hand pressed into the inner pocket of his coat.
His numb, blood-slicked fingers curled around the smooth casing of the ancient chronomantic artifact recovered from the royal vault.
The ornate golden pocket watch rested within his palm, humming with latent celestial resonance as his life force ebbed away.
With the very last scrap of his fading consciousness, he depressed the small crown atop the ornate casing with a decisive click.
A sharp, mechanical chime echoed through his soul, cutting cleanly through the suffocating necrotic silence curse in an instant.
The miniature hands upon the enamel dial spun backward with violent, dizzying velocity as ancient chronomancy awakened.
A localized temporal eddy wrapped around his body, isolating his physical biology from the surrounding flow of mortal time.
