The voice from above sliced through the thick, coppery air like a scalpel through wet meat—clean, precise, and unsettlingly cold. "So you really did it all by yourself, didn't you? So impressive. Do you two heroes need help crawling out of this grave, or do you plan on making it your permanent residence?"
White Turner blinked up through a stinging haze of pain and adrenaline. His ribs didn't just hurt; they screamed, a jagged chorus of agony with every shallow breath. The figure descending through the shattered ceiling looked like he had been plucked from a propaganda poster and then aged in a room full of ghosts. His green military uniform was crisp, his red beret tilted with practiced precision, and his platinum-white hair caught the flickering emergency lights like a halo of frost.
Nort Burningstar landed without a sound. His boots, polished to a mirror sheen, barely disturbed the lake of blood pooling around the center of the lab. He stood there for a moment, shoulders slightly slumped as if carrying an invisible weight, his posture radiating a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. He didn't look like a hero arriving to save the day; he looked like a janitor arriving to clean up a mess he had seen a thousand times before.
Rust's grip on the ice sword tightened until his knuckles popped. The blade was still warm from Zecker's throat, the frost beginning to melt into a pinkish slush that dripped onto the floor. "Who the hell are you?" he growled, his voice a jagged rasp of survival instinct.
Nort's blue eyes—pale and clouded like a winter sky—flicked over the carnage. He didn't look shocked. He looked bored, yet there was a flicker of something sharper beneath the surface, a clinical curiosity that made Rust's skin crawl. He took in the chimeras pinned to the walls like grotesque butterflies and Zecker's lizard body splayed across the glass.
"Captain Nort Burningstar. Silver Shooting Star Squad," he said, his voice quiet, almost a whisper. He didn't offer a hand. He didn't even move closer. "I was sent to retrieve Jim Zecker. Dead or alive, the paperwork is roughly the same. Though, dead is usually quieter." He nudged a severed, scaly arm with his boot. "Looks like you two beat me to the punch. Or the slaughter."
White laughed, a wet, rattling sound that turned into a hacking cough. Blood flecked his chin. "See, Rust? I told you. We're legends now. The Savior and his hound. They'll... they'll build us a palace in the Dumps. We'll eat steak for breakfast."
Rust shot him a look of pure exhaustion. "Shut up, White. You're bleeding out." He turned back to the Captain, his eyes narrowed. "We didn't do this for you. We did it because he wouldn't let us leave."
Nort crouched beside Zecker's corpse, two fingers checking for a pulse that wasn't there. He lingered there, staring at the doctor's dead eyes as if searching for a lost memory. "I heard the echoes from above," Nort murmured, more to himself than to them. "The monologues. The talk of infinite karma and mirrored authorities. You two are... loud. Your existences make a lot of noise in the dark."
He stood up slowly, a hand going to his lower back as if it ached. He brushed a speck of glass from his sleeve with a flick of his wrist. "The North doesn't like noise, but it values things that don't break easily. You two seem remarkably durable. Follow me. Or stay here and rot. The air filtration is failing, and the smell won't get any better."
White tried to push himself up, but his strength gave out. His ribs ground together like broken porcelain. "And if we say no? If we don't like your tone, Captain?"
Nort didn't even look at him. He was already turning toward the exit, his shadow long and thin against the gore. "Then you stay. The elevator is a pile of scrap. The stairs are blocked. You have about twenty minutes of oxygen left in this sub-level. Your choice, Savior. I'm too tired to argue with a dying boy."
Rust looked at White—bruised, bleeding, yet still wearing that manic, delusional grin. Rust knew they were trapped. He made the only choice a survivor ever makes. "We're coming."
Nort didn't wait for them to stand. He simply snapped his fingers—a dull, muffled sound. A silver ring of light bloomed around them, not bright and blinding, but soft and heavy, like the glow of a dying moon. The world didn't just move; it folded. One moment they were drowning in the stench of Zecker's failures; the next, they stood in a wide, cobblestone courtyard under the eerie, perfect glow of artificial sunlight.
The sudden silence was deafening. No screams, no grinding metal, no dripping blood.
White stared at the clean stone, his eyes wide. "Holy shit. We died. We're in the afterlife, Rust. It's... it's actually clean."
Nort walked toward a waiting carriage, his steps heavy. He didn't look back to see if they were following. He knew they were. Hunger and pain are the best leashes.
Inside the carriage, the seats were leather, soft and cool. Nort sat across from them, leaning his head against the window frame. He looked older in the light—lines etched deep around his eyes, his skin the color of old parchment. He poured water from a crystal flask into two cups and set them on the small table between them.
"Drink. Slowly," he said, closing his eyes. "If you vomit in this carriage, I'll throw you out while we're moving."
White gulped the water, the coldness of it hitting his system like an electric shock. "So… what are you? Some kind of wizard? They call you the Clock of Life, right?"
Nort's eyes didn't open. A faint, tired smile twitched at the corner of his mouth—a shadow of a gesture. "I'm a living clock, I suppose. Or a broken one. I just keep track of the seconds so they don't get lost. Don't worry about my power. It's just a way to make the days feel shorter."
Rust watched him, his internal alarms blaring. He tried to "see" Nort's power, to find the edges of it so he could mirror it, but there was nothing. It was like staring into a deep well with no bottom. There was no "signature" to grab onto, just a profound sense of stillness. It unnerved him. Nort wasn't just a hero; he was a void.
"You're watching me," Nort said, his eyes still closed. "Stop. You'll only give yourself a headache, kid. You're a mirror, but you can't reflect what isn't there."
The carriage rolled through streets that were impossibly clean. White pressed his face to the glass, his breath fogging the tinted pane. He saw people in colorful clothes, shops with glass windows, trees that didn't look like twisted skeletons. It was a world of order, a world that shouldn't exist in the same universe as the Dumps.
But Nort wasn't looking at the scenery. He was watching White and Rust through the reflection in the glass. His expression was unreadable, but inside, a cold knot of anxiety was tightening. He had seen "Saviors" before—madmen with delusions of grandeur. But White Turner was different. His karma didn't just feel high; it felt wrong. It felt like a glitch in the fabric of the world. And Rust... a boy who could copy the essence of others but had no soul of his own to fill the gaps.
They were anomalies. Unnatural. A threat to the very "order" Nort spent his life maintaining. Yet, there was a part of him—the part that was tired of the endless, ticking seconds—that felt a spark of grim satisfaction. Maybe these two were the wrench in the gears that the world finally deserved.
"Order has a cost," Nort said quietly, breaking the silence as they passed a massive marble statue of a forgotten hero. "In the North, we pay it in silence. In the Dumps, you pay it in noise. I think I prefer the noise sometimes. It's more honest."
They arrived at a fortified mansion, a structure of grey stone and silver trim. Within an hour, they were processed—scrubbed clean by silent, expressionless servants who handled them like dangerous animals. The hot water was a revelation to White, a physical pleasure so intense it was almost painful. The soap smelled of pine and nothingness.
When they emerged, dressed in clean linen, the change was striking. Rust looked sharp, dangerous, his eyes darting around the room, mapping every exit. White looked like a ghost in a new suit—his white hair now shimmering with a clean, pearlescent light, his eyes still reflecting the madness of the basement.
Nort was waiting for them in a small dining hall. A table was set with simple food—bread, a thick stew, and a bowl of apples. He sat at the head of the table, not eating, just watching a small pocket watch he held in his palm. The ticking was the only sound in the room.
"Eat," Nort said, gesturing vaguely toward the food. "You've earned a meal. Tomorrow, we'll see if you can handle the truth of why you're here."
White didn't hesitate. He grabbed an apple, biting into it with a crunch that sounded like a bone snapping. "Because the world needs me," he said, his voice muffled by the fruit. "You know it, Captain. You saw what I did. I'm the one."
Nort looked at him then. Truly looked at him. For a second, the exhaustion vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating dread. He looked at White's hands—clean now, but still trembling with the phantom weight of a sword. Then he looked at Rust, who was eating slowly, eyes never leaving Nort's throat.
"Maybe," Nort whispered, the word hanging in the air like a threat. "Or maybe you're just the final tick of a clock that's about to explode."
He stood up, his joints popping with a dry sound. He looked satisfied, yet his hand gripped the back of his chair so hard his knuckles turned white. "Get some sleep. The North is a beautiful place, but the sun here never really sets. It just waits for you to blink."
As Nort walked out, he didn't look like a hero. He looked like a man who had just invited a pair of wolves into his home and was wondering which one would bite him first