The thirty-minute lock on Hajin's sixth bronze ring pulsed with an angry violet countdown across his field of vision.
Inside the medical pavilion, Hajin sat on the edge of the cot, his breathing shallow and ragged as the phantom death memory burned his soul.
The severed socket felt unnaturally cold, like a missing tooth exposed to a freezing mountain gale.
"Lie back down on the cot, Master," Vella ordered firmly, pressing a cool linen cloth soaked in herbal tincture against his forehead.
"Your nervous system is processing the violent severance of a limb that never possessed mortal flesh!"
"I cannot lie here while the northern palisade is under fierce assault," he croaked, his shaking fingers reaching toward the silver pocket watch at his belt.
"The Stolen Moment relic... perhaps I can rewind the localized temporal flow and shatter the recovery lock—"
He pressed the winding crown of the pocket watch, attempting to force the ancient chronomantic mechanism into gear.
