Jolvan’s lips stretched into a cruel smile, illuminated by the pulsing red lights. The vault door groaned, closing with agonizing slowness, a grinding symphony of our impending doom. “Well, well, well,” he purred, his voice slick with triumph, “the rat has led me straight to the cheese.” He gestured with the heavy steam-pistol. “Or should I say, the chronometric core.”
My stomach curdled. He must have recognized the unique energy signature, even from outside. He had been expecting Varek to try something, but not this. Not *me*.
“Drop it, tinkerer,” Jolvan commanded, his gaze flicking to Varek, whose grip still locked around the now-dark brass orb. “And you,” he added, his eyes narrowing on me, “should have stayed a docile little ornament. Now you’ve condemned yourself and your crippled pet.”
“He’s not a pet, you overgrown slug,” I snapped, stepping forward, my voice surprisingly steady despite the tremor in my knees. “And you won’t touch him.”
Jolvan merely chuckled, a dry, grating sound. “Oh, but I will. And then I’ll sell that little trinket to the highest bidder in the deep market. Imagine the prestige. The power. All thanks to your foolishness, Tazien.” He raised the weapon, aiming it squarely at Varek’s chest. “A pity. I almost thought you’d learned your lesson.”
The air thickened, heavy with the stench of oil and fear. I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself in front of Varek’s wheelchair, my arms spread wide, a human shield against the gleaming barrel. The dark iron bore lined up with my chest.
“No,” I said, my voice barely a whisper, yet firm. “You’ll have to go through me.”
Jolvan’s smile faltered, replaced by a flicker of annoyance. “Always the dramatics, aren’t you? Fine. A small detour.” His knuckle tightened on the trigger.
Then, a strange, profound silence descended. The blaring klaxon, the grinding vault door, Jolvan’s infuriating sneer—all of it froze. My vision blurred for a split second, the red lights around us stretching into elongated streaks of crimson. I felt a profound, aching pull in my chest, as if my very atoms were being stretched thin. Jolvan, his face contorted in a silent snarl, was frozen rigid, index joint millimeters from tripping the hammer.
I blinked. Varek was no longer behind me. He was *next* to me, his hand extended, the reliquary orb clutched in his palm. It wasn’t dark anymore. It hummed with a soft, ethereal azure light, casting Varek’s profile in an otherworldly glow. His brow was furrowed in intense concentration, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Every minute detail of his face was starkly clear, while the rest of the chamber seemed to shimmer, slightly out of phase.
He met my gaze, searching my face. He whispered, his voice resonating oddly in the distorted stillness, “Move. Now.”
I didn’t ask questions. The world was paused, a photograph of impending violence. I grabbed the back of Varek’s chair and pushed, propelling him towards the slowly closing gap of the vault door. Rolo, equally frozen mid-shriek, was directly in our path. Varek nudged his chair with his foot, sending the petrified grocer’s boy skidding on the polished floor. We squeezed through the narrowing aperture, the scraping brass threatening to crush the wheels of Varek’s chair.
The world snapped back into motion with a jarring *CRACK*. The sound of the klaxon roared, the vault door slammed shut with a final, echoing clang, and Jolvan’s sidearm discharged with a deafening report, the slug gouging the thick brass just inches from where I’d stood. The door hid whatever face he made, leaving him sealed with the evidence. He was locked inside, alone, with a fully active, illegal temporal core on display for the Wardens who would undoubtedly arrive any second.
“Take that, you utter slime,” I muttered, a breathless, shaky laugh escaping my lips. Rolo, having picked himself up, let out a delighted, albeit still anxious, giggle.
Varek, however, was not laughing. He gripped my forearm, his fingers brushing the skin over my internal chronometer. The azure light from the orb faded, replaced by a searing pain on my wrist. I cried out, pulling my arm back. The numbers on my forearm were no longer counting down in months, or weeks, or even days. They were a violent, flickering blur, settling on `00:03:00:00`. Three days. *Three days?*
My throat closed up. “Varek, what… what did you do?” The arcane backlash had hit hard, punishing my own connection to the timestream.
He looked at me, his face pale, his lips pressed into a grim line. “I… I pulled us out of the flow for a few heartbeats. It was the only way.” He swallowed hard. “But your anchor point… it’s been destabilized. Violently.”
We emerged from the manor’s service entrance into the downpour of Kravika’s lower districts. The rain was a cold, insistent slap, washing away the grime and the residual panic. We commandeered a waiting ember-cab, its driver grumbling about the fare before Rolo flashed a wad of Jolvan’s stolen coin. The ride back to the relative safety of Varek’s sanctuary was a blur of steam, rain-streaked windows, and the terrifying echo of `00:03:00:00` in my mind.
Once inside, Varek dismissed Rolo, who promised to spread the good word about Jolvan’s public humiliation. The grocer’s boy was practically vibrating with glee and terror. We were alone. The stolen temporal orb, now a dull, inert sphere of pitted brass, lay on a cleared space of the counter. Varek lit a sputtering gas lamp, its weak light illuminating the fine, spiderweb cracks that now marred the surface of the orb. He traced one along the seam, his expression darkening.
“It’s unstable,” he murmured, his voice tight. “The time-freeze… it stressed the core. Severely.” He turned the orb over, inspecting a particularly deep fissure near its base. “Without a massive external power source… it’s useless.”