Night blanketed Meridian's Lower Gears in a dull copper glow as street lamps flickered like tired stars. Kalo slipped into the workshop through the back door, pulse hammering with every step. He hadn't set foot here since everything fell apart.
Tools remained perfectly arranged. Brass gears lay frozen mid-repair. As if time itself obeyed this room more than the world outside.
Kalo ran his fingers across the wooden counter. "I shouldn't be here…"
But he needed answers—answers only his father might've left behind.
He approached the locked cabinet beneath the master clock — the one he'd been told never to open. His cracked Hourglass flickered at his wrist, reacting to something inside.
Kalo hesitated."If there's a truth you hid from me… I'm ready."
He twisted the key still hanging above the bench.
The cabinet clicked open.
Inside was a metal box etched with constellations—The Astrarium's symbols. His heart lurched.
He opened it.
A pocketwatch rested inside, black as a starless void. No hands. No numbers. Instead, an hourglass symbol slowly rotated within the glass face.
The air tightened.A whisper bled into the room.
—You were made to replace what was lost.
Kalo staggered back. "Who are you?"
The watch pulsed with darkness.
—You are late, Kalo Renn.
And suddenly—
The hands of every clock in the workshop snapped to midnight.
The walls trembled.
A figure stepped out from the shadows between ticks of time. Cloaked in shifting darkness. A familiar shape… but wrong. A face Kalo recognized, yet sharper. Colder.
Nox.
Only—this Nox was different.Not a reflection.Not a clone.
Older. Wiser. Broken.
"You shouldn't be here," Kalo whispered.
The older Nox spoke, voice jagged like shattered hours:
"You're standing in the moment where everything begins to end."
The pocketwatch rose into the air, orbiting Kalo like an executioner's blade.
"Tell me," the elder Nox said, "will you save time… or break it further?"
And the clocks stopped ticking.