Chapter 10: The Unwritten Hour
Neo-Pandora's rebirth was a quiet revolution. Skyscrapers gleamed under a smog-free sky, the air humming with the gentle pulse of stabilized time. The Temporal Institute had become a museum, its halls filled with schoolchildren marveling at relics labeled "Pre-Chrono Reformation. Dr. Lila Kane's office, however, was unchanged—a sanctuary of cluttered desks and fading holograms.
The cracked chrono-compass sat in its glass case, a silent monument to a war no one remembered.
Until it began to scream.
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The anomaly struck at midnight.*
Lila jolted awake, her chest burning as if the Key had reignited. The compass thrashed in its case, its needle spinning wildly before snapping toward the window. Outside, the city glowed serene, but the horizon…
The horizon rippled.
A wave of distortion rolled across the sky, peeling back layers of reality like wallpaper. For a heartbeat, Neo-Pandora flickered—glass towers became ash, laughter turned to screams, and a shadowed figure stood atop the Institute's ruins, Hourglass in hand.
Then it vanished.
Lila scrambled for her comm. "Elias. Now."
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Elias Voss arrived in rumpled pajamas, his trenchcoat thrown over them. The compass still shrieked, its needle fused to the glass, pointing north.
"Residual echo?" he guessed, though his eyes betrayed doubt.
"Echoes don't rewrite street signs," Lila said, pulling up security footage. The distortion had left scars: a park bench aged 200 years, a newborn with an old soul's eyes, and graffiti that read THE CORE LIVES in a language neither recognized but both understood.
Elias traced the graffiti on the screen. "This isn't residual. It's a message."
"From who?"
His hand drifted to his chest, where the Key had once pierced him. "From when."
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The Void Nexus was not gone.
They found it beneath the new city, buried like a tumor. The chamber was smaller now, its walls pulsing with bioluminescent code. At its center stood a terminal—a relic from the old world, its screen cracked but alive.
USER ID: VEYRA, K glowed on the display.
"Kael," Lila breathed.
Elias activated the terminal. A hologram sputtered to life—Kael's face, younger and unglitched, smirking.
"Hey, timewalkers. If you're seeing this, I'm either dead or finally free. Either way, congrats! You won. Sort of."
Lila's fists clenched. "What did you do?"
"The Core's a cockroach. You can't kill it; you just… relocate it. So I shoved what was left into a pocket dimension. A prison." Kael's grin faded. "Problem is, prisons need wardens. And guess who volunteered?"
The screen cut to a live feed: a cell of writhing shadows, and a figure chained at its center—Dr. Elara Veyra, her eyes hollow, her mouth sewn shut with glowing thread.
"Mom's been busy," Kael's recording said. "But the Core's getting stronger. It's whispering to her. To you. And if it escapes…"
The feed died. On the desk lay a syringe filled with black liquid—a temporal anchor, labeled LAZARUS PROTOCOL.
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Elias picked up the syringe. "We have to go back."
Lila stared at him. "Back where? The Lazarus District is gone!"
"Not the place. The moment." He pressed the syringe to his neck. "The Core's prison exists outside time. To reach it, we have to unravel ours."
"That'll kill you!"
"Only if I'm lucky." He injected the serum.
Reality screamed.
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They stood in the Lazarus District, but not the one they knew. This was a purgatory of half-formed memories—a lab fused with a chapel, paradox static raining from a green-black sky. At the center stood Elara, her chains broken, the Core's voice pouring from her lips.
"You shouldn't have come, little knot."
Elias raised the syringe. "End this, Mom. Please."
"It's too late," she whispered, even as the Core roared through her. "It's in the compass. In the city. In you."
Lila's eyes widened. "The new timeline… it's built on the Core's bones."
Elara smiled, blood dripping from her stitches. "No victory without sacrifice."
She lunged.
Lila clutching the compass, its needle now still. The warehouse is silent, Elias and Elara gone.
On the floor lies a note in Elias's handwriting:
IT'S IN THE CODE. FIND ME.
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