The tower's apex convulsed like a living thing, its distorted light tendrils lashing out like starving wraiths. Lin Xiaoxia clutched her temples as temporal shards stabbed into her consciousness—each fragment a splintered reality, a possible future screaming for dominance.
Xu Yuan staggered, but his heightened senses pierced the chaos. He saw the fractures spreading through time's fabric, the spiderweb cracks threatening to—
"We have to stop him!" His voice was a frayed wire, sparking with pain.
Lin Xiaoxia fought to focus. Before them, the Keeper's face was alight with rapture as the orb pulsed like a dying star. Madness made manifest.
"Your power—can you—?"
Xu Yuan closed his eyes. His ring blazed, its sigils spinning into a silver blur. A resonance thrummed between the metal and the tower's corrupted core.
Then—understanding.
"The tower feeds on our bloodline," he gasped. "Which means... I can starve it."
He lunged for the orb.
The Keeper's snarl rent the air. "You dare?!" A whip-crack of temporal energy lashed toward Xu Yuan—
Lin Xiaoxia threw herself between them.
The pocket watch erupted in light.
A shield of shimmering gold deflected the attack, its surface rippling with strange equations.
The Keeper recoiled. "That relic... it shouldn't—"
Xu Yuan's hand met the orb.
Contact.
A detonation of paradoxes.
The tower's hands jolted still. The screech of frozen gears echoed like a dying beast.
The Keeper howled, his body convulsing as cracks split his skin—no blood, only searing white light pouring forth. "You fool! You're unraveling the—"
His voice guttered out as Xu Yuan pushed deeper, his ring's glow intensifying. The orb's surface fissured, leaking streams of liquid time.
Lin Xiaoxia saw it then—the truth in the Keeper's dying eyes.
This wasn't just about controlling time.
It was about erasing all other possibilities.
And Xu Yuan—
He was choosing chaos over tyranny.
The orb shattered.
The tower screamed.
And the world—
The world began to forget itself.
Lin Xiaoxia grabbed Xu Yuan's arm as the first bricks dissolved into stardust. "What did you do?!"
His eyes held galaxies. "What you taught me." A whisper, almost smiling. "I let go."
Then—
The floor vanished beneath them.
They fell.
Not downward.
Sideways.
Through the cracks.
Into the nowhere between seconds.
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