Reverse Pulse of the Pocket Watch

Lucas' golden blood droplets hit the yellowed pages as Ayla heard gears grinding in reverse—like a music box choking on its own melody. The metallic liquid crystallized into starbursts under moonlight, each spike pointing to the charred date on the diary's edge: August 24, 1999. The scar on her nape burned, a relic from her mother's funeral pyre.

(Crushing a blood crystal between fingertips, shards embedding into torn "Traitor" script)

"I'd advise against touching that." Eric's voice oozed from shadows, pocket watch chain coiled around gloved fingers. "The Young Master's wound...contains Lady Odile's proprietary formula."

Ayla clenched the diary page tighter. Lucas leaned against the stained-glass window, mechanical fingers tracing iris carvings he'd etched at fifteen—plaster dust still lodged in the grooves. Moonlight caught his bleeding cheek, suspended droplets projecting micro-gear shadows.

"Your heartbeat slowed by four beats." Her accusation hung sharp.

Lucas froze, ocular lenses contracting. Eric's chuckle intertwined with ticking: "When reverse protocols engage, even circadian rhythms betray their host."

(Brass tarnish and lavender burst forth as the watch snapped open)

The engraving glared inside the lid—"Truth emerges when gears still". Deeper lurked a miniature portrait: her mother in nurse trainee uniform beside a teenage Odile, wrists bound with matching blue ribbons. That same faded ribbon now dangled from Eric's chain, dyed ash-blue by time.

"Souvenirs from the Neumann selection trials." The butler lifted the ribbon with tweezers, its burnt tip flickering like a serpent's tongue. "Contestants had to brew perfume that could reverse time...Your mother created 'Cedar's Tear', while Lady Odile..."

Machinery roared from the attic. Lucas' wound split open, blood pearls stringing into constellations that mirrored the diary's starbursts. When Ayla grabbed his wrist, she saw micro-gears swimming under his skin—counterclockwise scalpels dissecting cells.

"Don't!" Eric lashed his watch chain around her wrist. "Odile's 'chrono-grains' accelerate neural calcification..."

The watch crystal exploded before he finished. The reversing minute hand gouged Roman numerals, mutilating VII into a crescent. In the shrapnel storm, Ayla saw reflections: fifteen-year-old Lucas carving iris scars in a ventilation shaft, blood dripping into Odile's "Regret III" memory serum vials below.

(She slapped the bloody diary page onto his wound)

Starbursts flared as attic rumble sharpened into sirens. Eric's watch seized between IV and V, oozing ferrous rust. The butler polished his spectacles, smile finally crumbling: "Seems someone triggered the 'corrosion protocol' early."

Moonlight died. Ayla smelled pine resin leaking from the watch—identical to her mother's coffin sealant. Lucas' last human fingers clawed the windowsill, sparks erupting from overloaded joints: "The attic...holds your mother's failed time-reversal perfume..."

A music box melody screeched from above. Looking up, Ayla watched vent grates dissolve, molten iron droplets spelling her mother's handwriting on the carpet: "True betrayal isn't choice, but altered options."