Meridian's Eternal Market was alive with every kind of time imaginable.
Lanterns floated overhead, glowing with captured minutes, while merchants hawked bottled yesterdays, borrowed tomorrows, and reruns of perfect moments. The crowd shimmered with temporal distortions — customers paused mid-step, reversed by a second, then continued as if nothing was wrong.
Nox pulled his hood low.Lucienne stayed close, scanning the chaos.
"This place is dangerous," she murmured. "Anyone here would sell your hour just to live a little longer."
Nox nodded, chest aching. The Echo's accusation still echoed in his skull.
You exist because I do not.
Lucienne noticed his trembling fist and stopped.
"Listen to me, Nox." Her tone was firm but gentle. "You are here. You breathe. You feel. That means you matter — regardless of what happened before."
His gaze stayed on the ground.But her words anchored him enough to keep moving.
They reached a central pavilion draped in shifting cloth — patterns cycling through centuries of fashion in seconds.
A sign above the entrance flickered:
THE TIMEKEEPER'S EMPORIUM
Lucienne leaned in. "If anyone knows about erased hours, it's the Timekeeper."
Inside, clocks covered every wall — none synchronized, all ticking in fractured harmony. Behind a counter made of mirrored memories stood a tall figure dressed in black and gold, face hidden by a mask shaped like an unsmiling sun.
The Timekeeper spoke before either could introduce themselves.
"You seek the one who should not be," he said, voice echoing like overlapping versions of itself. "And the one who should have been."
Nox stiffened. "You know about him."
"I know," the Timekeeper replied, folding his hands, "because I profited when his hour was erased."
Lucienne bristled. "Explain."
The Timekeeper motioned toward a glass case. Inside lay a blank Hourglass, smooth and flawless — no sand.
"This belonged to the erased," he murmured. "A future unclaimed. A life unwritten."
Nox stared at it — and his own Hourglass inside him throbbed painfully.
"What was his name?" he whispered.
"That," the Timekeeper said softly, "is the one thing I cannot sell you. A name binds existence. His was unbound."
Nox reached toward the glass — and the blank Hourglass pulsed, as if reacting to him.
Lucienne's eyes widened. "It's resonating—"
The lights went out.
Silence.
Then — a thousand shattered whispers filled the air.
The Timekeeper's head snapped toward the ceiling. "Something followed you."
The walls twisted. Clocks unraveled into spirals of sand.
Nox felt the temperature drop.
A voice slithered out of the darkness:
Found you…
The Echo's presence flooded the room — sand pouring through cracks in time, forming a vortex.
Lucienne grabbed Nox's arm, but the ground vanished beneath his feet — the world melted into an endless dark.
Nox fell—
and landed in a street of the Eternal Market.
Except…
It wasn't alive.
No merchants.No lanterns.No motion.
Everything frozen mid-second — a nightmare of silence.
Lucienne appeared beside him, breath quick and cold. "A time trap. We're caught in a second the Echo controls."
The sand rose ahead of them, forming the half-finished silhouette.
Its voice was smaller now — not furious, but void of hope.
"You stole my hour.""You walked in my world.""And you pretend you are the victim."
Nox's anger finally broke through the fear.
"I never asked for any of this!"
The Echo tilted its head — a movement filled with ancient exhaustion.
"No one asks to exist."
The sand figure stepped closer — grains slipping off its body like tears that couldn't fall.
"I want what was mine, Nox.""My breath. My heart. My hour.""Give it back—"
The second that held them shattered.
Reality snapped to motion — lanterns falling, clocks exploding into gears and sparks.
The Timekeeper's voice yelled through the chaos:
"RUN!"
Lucienne dragged Nox away from the vortex as the Echo dissolved into a storm of rage and longing.
They burst back onto the street, coughing, shaking.
Nox collapsed against a wall.His Hourglass throbbed like a wound.
Lucienne knelt beside him, voice barely a breath:
"That Echo… he doesn't just remember the hour.He remembers you."
Nox stared at his trembling hands — feeling the weight of a stolen lifetime.
If the erased one returned fully…
There would only be room for one of them.
And time already knew which one truly belonged.