Chapter 9: The Dusk of the Young God

The musty smell of the cellar mixed with the rust of blood seeped into my nostrils as I weighed the rusty gear piece in my hand.Ten-year-old Lila was curled up in the straw like a shrimp,the Godslayer mark on the back of her neck still a tender pink.The sound of Father's conversation with the Shadow Moon envoy drifted in from outside the window,three hours earlier than in my memory.

"Let's try something new this time,"I muttered,biting my fingertip and drawing an anti-time incantation on the wall.Dark elements climbed along my childish fingers.The moment the cellar's iron door creaked open,the ice crystals on Lila's eyelashes reflected the distorted image of the newcomers—Father holding a syringe,and the three Council executioners behind him.

"Good morning,Father,"I said,raising a child's sweet smile while the gear piece hidden behind my back was coated with freshly unsealed temporal dust.As the needle approached,dark elements snaked along the floor cracks,binding the executioners'Shadow Moon badges and detonating the self-destruct devices hidden in their ribs.

The explosion of flesh and blood splattered the brick walls as I lunged into Father's rigid embrace.The gear piece precisely severed the puppet strings at the seventh vertebrae of his spine,and the wisteria crest at his Adam's apple began to smoke:"You...how could you possibly..."

"I figured it out in the three hundredth cycle,"I said,pulling the controller from his pocket and pressing it into Lila's palm,"you always touch the pocket watch three times before transferring memories."

The sudden opening of Lila's golden eyes drove the ravens outside the window away.Her childish fingers plugged into the controller's interface,and the entire Black Manor echoed with a harsh mechanical buzz.The floor tiles beneath us flipped,revealing the vertical passage to Mother's laboratory—unlocked fifteen years earlier than in my previous life.

The sight of the floating embryos in the fluorescent green nutrient fluid made me nauseous.I kicked the glass jar,yanked out the cables connected to the brain tissue,and inserted them into Father's neck.The slime he spat out as he screamed coalesced into a star map in mid-air,pointing to the Council's hidden Tomb of Time beneath the glacier.

"Brother..."Little Lila tugged at my scorched sleeve,a puppet string-woven wisteria flower lying in her palm,"Mom's singing is in the pipes."

From the ventilation duct came a distorted version of"The Starlit Ode."As I squeezed into the duct with her,Father's exploding mechanical heart collapsed the laboratory.The dilapidated ducts spat us out into the chapel's hidden chamber,where the stained glass reflected the Council members conducting a dark ritual—their faces beneath the masks were terrifyingly young.

"The current Council Speaker is from my own grandchildren's generation,"I said,crushing the stolen sands of time.The powder in the air formed the boundary-breaking diagram I had captured in my previous life.Lila suddenly pressed the controller against the bottom of the baptismal font,and the activated hidden door spewed out dozens of my clone remains.

"A little gift,"I snapped my fingers,and the miniature hourglasses in the clone's eye sockets burst simultaneously.As the temporal chaos knocked over twelve council members,Lila had already climbed onto the altar,where the pulse generator she assembled from the chalice was buzzing.

Oil seeped from the cracks in the youngest councilor's mask:"The Godslayer should not interfere with his own causality..."

"But he can create new branches,"I said,raising the embryo culture chamber I had"borrowed"from Mother's lab—the beating heart inside had been replaced with a gear mechanism.As the council members'pupils contracted,Lila's pulse generator shattered the astrolabe on the chapel's dome.

The falling bronze celestial bodies smashed into the underground river,and I leaped into the rapids with Lila.She pointed out the glowing patterns on the riverbed to me through the water curtain—it was the reflection of the secret passage in the auction house twenty years later.When we surfaced,the moonlight shone on young Roger's terrified face.

"Brother?"He retreated,clutching a tattered doll,his ankles shackled with the embryonic badge of the Shadow Moon Council.As I touched the interface at the back of his head,Lila had already dismantled the doll,and the control chip that fell out matched Father's perfectly.

The alarm of mechanical ravens came from across the river,and I crushed the chip with a smile:"Now,let's send the Council a birthday gift."Lila sprinkled sands of time into Roger's pupils,and the gear-shaped light spots gradually brightening in his eyes synchronized with the activation signal of the Eternal Night Uprising twenty years later.