Rust Street's nights always carried a damp, metallic reek.
Qi Luo stood at the mouth of a narrow side alley, staring at the silhouette of the mid-tier's skyline in the distance—
At the clocktower that jabbed up from it like a rusty nail rammed into the city's heart.
The clockface hung high overhead. Its hands had stopped at some unreadable point in time, frozen in a knot.
"...You sure that's the place?" Garth asked under his breath.
Qi Luo nodded.
He was pinching a thumb-sized copper token, its edges worn rough. Faint old words were carved into it: "Clocktower Transcription Room · Temporary Pass."
Ruan Ji had sent it.
More precisely, she had pried it loose from a "mis-deletion log"—a leftover access marker the system hadn't fully erased.
—The clocktower's secret archives.
—One of the storage sites for early world-level clauses in their original form.
—Any draft with the words "rollback" on it had probably been hauled out of there at some point.
Qi Luo flipped the token over. On the back, a line of nearly-faded small print read:
[Copyist may enter and exit within half a chime after the Night Bell.]
He glanced up at the sky.
Far away, the temple bells had just finished their third toll. The trailing note lingered in the city air like a Chain, trembling without dispersing.
"Half a chime left," Qi Luo said, tucking the token into his shirt. "Let's go."
Garth didn't argue. He only hitched his tattered cloak higher and melted into the dark.
The two of them followed a disused freight rail skirting the edge of the mid-tier, slipping quietly toward the clocktower.
Normally, patrol Chains would be hanging around here. But after the plague, upper-tier security had been pulled to guard the Healer-God and the granaries. A "nonessential building" like the clocktower had been left to sit.
Nonessential… Qi Luo thought of Ruan Ji's line—"In their eyes, you're nonessential too"—and gave a bitter little smile.
The tower's outer wall was mottled, moss pushing up between stone blocks in thin green streaks.
The main entrance had long been sealed. A layer of dust lay thick across its threshold. Only a maintenance iron ladder on the side still barely held weight.
Qi Luo tilted his head, studying the frozen clockface.
The hands were tangled in a strange position—not on any full mark, not on a half mark, but three needles twisted together and pointing at a blurred patch of numerals.
"This thing was probably cobbled together for that Three-Chime Night Bell Protocol," Garth muttered.
"The bell's for the world," Qi Luo said, climbing the ladder. Every rung of rusted iron squealed under his foot. "People just get scared as a side effect."
The higher they climbed, the colder the air grew.
Inside, the clocktower was hollow. Enormous wheels and gears interlocked in the darkness like a jawful of metal teeth, each ready to close down on something.
Thin light leaked in through the cracks around the clockface, layering the floating dust with pale sheets.
When Qi Luo reached the mid-tier platform, the Forbidden Sigil on his chest gave a light twitch.
Not the burning flare he knew as a warning—just a faint numb prickle, like his fingertips brushing the edge of an old, cold clause.
"We're here," he murmured.
At the far end of the platform stood a door that looked almost ordinary.
A wooden plaque hung on it, half its paint peeled away:
[Transcription Room · Authorized Personnel Only.]
A line of much smaller text lay almost invisible under it.
Qi Luo wiped away the dust with his thumb. A few blurred characters emerged:
[Unauthorized entrants will be treated as test subjects.]
"...That doesn't sound great," Garth said.
"Test clause," Qi Luo noted. "Old-school safety measure."
He lifted his hand and pressed the copper token against the door.
The token itself didn't light up, but something in the chains behind the wood shifted, like it had sniffed out a scent it vaguely recognized from its records.
[Pass detected: copyist · temporary?]
[Validity: obsolete.]
[Status: expired, but residual record remains in system.]
Qi Luo took advantage of the moment while "residual record remains" was still blinking and shoved in a tiny line in the Chain-world:
[Addendum: for the purpose of testing outdated files for decommission risk, copyist access is provisionally reopened.]
"You're pretending to be a test-run tech?" Garth rolled his eyes beside him.
"The world likes the word 'test,'" Qi Luo murmured. "Sounds better than 'intruder.'"
The little gatekeeping clause behind the door hesitated.
The "test module" was duly called up by that sentence.
"Testing old archives to assess obsolescence risk" sounded properly official, and copyists were the ones who handled old archives.
So the lockchains slowly loosened.
Click.
The wooden door creaked inward, opening just enough for a narrow gap.
Qi Luo glanced back at Garth. "The clause at the door plays by dead rules. Inside won't be so polite. You—"
"I'll stay out here," Garth understood. "If someone comes, I'll help by… closing the door."
"Thanks," Qi Luo said.
The thanks was for him—and for the life that might have to slam the door shut on his behalf.
He turned sideways and slipped through the gap. The door thudded shut behind him with barely a sound.
The transcription room was too quiet.
So quiet that even the occasional clicks of the tower's gears overhead sounded like they'd been muffled behind a thick wall.
The chamber wasn't large. All four walls were lined with stone cabinets. Each slot held a thin stone slab or a rolled strip of parchment, edges yellowed and brittle. The air smelled of ancient paper ash and old oil.
In the center stood a long table. Copying tools were arranged neatly on it—quills, an oil lamp, stone wafers shaved nearly translucent.
As soon as Qi Luo stepped in, the Forbidden Sigil on his chest jumped again.
This time it was real, clean pain.
The oil lamp was still dark, but somewhere inside the room, a patch of light came on first.
It was a bronze plate mounted over the innermost cabinet.
Big characters were carved above it:
[Base-Covenant Initial Draft · Restricted.]
A line of smaller text sat beneath:
[Only world-level adjudicators and designated copyists may briefly consult in test mode.]
"Test mode…" Qi Luo smirked silently. "Busy night."
He moved toward that row of cabinets. With each step, the heat in his chest turned up a notch.
Most of the slabs lay quiet in their slots. Only one fragment on the top-most shelf glowed faintly.
The fragment was made of some extremely old material, half paper and half refined hide. Its edges had been scorched black, but it remained barely whole.
The script on it wasn't the current covenant script, but an older hand—strokes dense and complicated.
Qi Luo reached out. Just as his fingertips neared the fragment, a line of tiny text on the bronze plate lit up:
[Warning: unauthorized access to 'World Rollback Covenant' fragment may trigger contingency self-audit.]
"...So even the world's scared to look at it," Qi Luo muttered. "All the more reason I have to."
He drew the fragment gently from the cabinet and laid it in the center of the table.
The moment it unfurled, the air in the room pressed down, just slightly.
Some invisible weight settled over everything.
The lines were meticulously aligned from top to bottom.
Qi Luo's gaze caught the title at once:
[World Rollback Covenant (Draft) · Fragment]
[Excerpted from: Order-Maintenance Section.]
He took a slow breath and began at the first line.
[When the world deviates from its established order, when gods war among themselves, when the divine authority system loses its capacity for self-check, and the mortals' Basic Covenant is reduced to a one-way tool of "absolute obedience"—]
[—then, to prevent complete structural collapse, the World Base-Covenant may initiate a 'Rollback' contingency, using a certain 'key' as medium to push the world's structure back to its Initial Version.]
"Initial Version..." Qi Luo's fingertips tightened slightly.
He read on.
[Said 'key' is neither god nor mortal. It is one 'sentence' plucked from the world's first draft.]
[This sentence originally formed the first line of the master covenant. Its text was: "All names under Heaven may be rewritten."]
[Later, the gods, fearing mortals might abuse it, convened and removed the sentence from the visible text, burying it in the deep structure instead, and set it upon a 'human-shaped vessel,' engraving it into their flesh as a key.]
The next few lines slanted slightly, as if the scribe's hand had wavered.
[Form of the key: a newborn used as vessel. At the moment of birth, a spiral Forbidden Sigil is carved upon its chest. Its Basic Covenant record in the roster is partially veiled from the gods and is preserved only in full within the World Base-Covenant's depths.]
[When the world's structure exceeds its deviation threshold and the gods cannot—or will not—self-correct, the 'key' may be activated. The Rollback Covenant will then run, returning the world to the Initial Version, wiping away the layers of divine power and restraints added thereafter.]
[Execution cost: the key's name will be consumed in the process. All traces of its existence shall be removed from all records.]
Qi Luo stared at that line, his throat closing up.
He'd imagined these words before.
"'Wiping away the layers of divine power and restraints'..." he echoed under his breath. "Sounds heroic, doesn't it."
"And the fuel is a single person's name."
He read on.
The fragment's lower half began describing this so-called "Initial Version."
[Initial Version:]
[The world already possessed the abyssal mist-sea and the nascent form of Skycast City. No chief gods' consortium had yet been established. There were no base clauses of 'eternal obedience.' Covenants between mortals and gods were largely equal exchanges.]
[In this version, "All names under Heaven may be rewritten" was a public clause. Mortals could propose revisions to covenants concerning themselves and the territories under their charge.]
[Later, the gods and the council, fearing unstable order, initiated a sealing, shifting this sentence from the surface to the deep structure, leading to the current arrangement.]
"So at the very beginning," Qi Luo said quietly, "we really did have the right to rewrite our own names."
His fingertip brushed that one line lightly: "All names under Heaven may be rewritten."
The Forbidden Sigil on his chest flared hot.
The heat wasn't just pain. It felt like someone, somewhere far away, was pressing the same brand into him again through time.
The fragment went on to describe the "key" in more detail.
[Mark of the key: a spiral Forbidden Sigil carved upon the chest, leaving a blank space at the center so its name may be inscribed.]
[Its roster record is partially obscured by black fog. The gods cannot see its full form. Only the World Base-Covenant holds its full name.]
[Throughout its life, the 'key' will instinctively gravitate toward clauses and Chains, and in dreams will repeatedly glimpse remnants of the Initial Version, so that it may confirm the target structure before rollback.]
Qi Luo's breathing hitched on that line.
"Dreaming the remnants of the Initial Version…"
He'd had those dreams as a kid.
Back when he lived in a shack on Rust Street's outer fringe, corrugated iron screaming in the night wind, rain dripping down in all four corners at once.
Every time it poured, he'd dream of bells.
Not the broken scrap-iron clang of Rust Street—but the true chimes of the high clocktower.
Every time the bell rang in the dream, the world ticked backward by one notch.
Back to a time with no temple.
Back to a time with no noble towers.
Even back to when Skycast City hadn't yet been cast, just a rough steel plate floating over the mist-sea, crowded with faceless figures.
Those people wore no priestly robes, no divine sigils.
They simply held pens and hammers and chiseled words into a stone slab as big as the sky.
The first line on that slab was always blurred.
He could only ever make out the rough shape of it—
"All names under Heaven may be—"
Every time he tried to see the last two characters, the bell would strike a third time and the dream would shatter.
He'd wake up soaked in sweat, chest burning like something had seared him.
He used to think it was just a nightmare, scared into him by temple lectures.
Now, the fragment told him: this was "standard key configuration."
"They even wrote dreams into the clause," Qi Luo's throat felt dry. "Thoughtful."
He read on.
Near the edge of the fragment, a crude sketch had been added.
The ancient artist had drawn a very small figure penned in by rings of Chains, a spiral mark on its chest with an empty center.
Above the little figure hung a massive ring, carved full of text.
A hand of indeterminate shape reached down from beyond the ring and pinched the spiral on the tiny chest.
—The instant the key was "turned."
The lines were rough but accurate. The spiral was almost identical to the one on Qi Luo's chest.
He lowered his gaze to the paper, to the drawn spiral.
Then looked down at himself.
Under his collar, the Forbidden Sigil burned faintly.
He loosened his neckline a little.
In the dim light, he couldn't see the details clearly, but he could see the patch of skin, darker than its surroundings, rising and falling with his breath.
In his Chain-sight, that pattern overlapped the spiral on the fragment—
Not one loop more, not one less.
A perfect match.
He almost heard his childhood dream again.
Bell chimes booming out of the deep fog, shaking his teeth in his skull.
After the bells, the abyssal mist-sea roiled, like a giant eye slowly opening.
He dreamt of standing beneath the clocktower, staring up at that eye.
There was no pupil inside it. Only rings and rings of spiral lines, empty at the center, as if waiting for a name to be written in.
Every time he reached that point, the pain at his chest would wrench him awake.
He'd always thought he'd just rolled over onto some piece of scrap iron in his shirt.
Now he knew—it was the pattern reminding him:
You are the sentence they cut out.
Qi Luo flipped the fragment over.
The ink on the backside was lighter, like someone had added these notes later in a rush.
[Addendum:]
[Some hold that the Rollback contingency is too extreme, erasing mortals' long efforts and memories. They propose adding a 'New Covenant Council' before rollback is enacted, to be jointly convened by mortals and gods to write a new order.]
[This proposal was not approved and is recorded only in this margin.]
[—Should the key, before triggering rollback, proactively convene such a council, the World Base-Covenant may not entirely reject its proposals.]
The last line was carved in miniature, strokes clearly trembling, as if the writer had wrestled with it for a long time.
"...New Covenant Council," Qi Luo whispered.
This was the piece he'd always kept buried in his outline—yet never found the "theoretical proof" for.
He'd lost count of how many times he'd imagined it.
Before the world slammed the reset, drag every soul mangled by bad clauses—and the gods behind them—to the same table, and rewrite.
Now the fragment told him:
Someone had thought of it already.
They'd just lost the vote and got themselves relegated to the corner of a page scheduled for burning.
"That person…" Qi Luo wondered silently, "did the world chew them completely clean—or did they leave something behind?"
The very bottom corner of the fragment held a few more characters, nearly vanished.
Qi Luo had to lean in close to make them out:
[—The key may be deleted.]
[—The name may self-delete.]
[—Yet before deletion, it has one right: to write a 'new order' draft.]
He stared at those words, suddenly wanting to laugh.
The laugh caught something sour and cold on the way up.
"Nice bargaining," he told that tiny line under his breath. "Turn someone into a key first, then generously say, 'You still get one chance to speak.'"
"That's what you call 'order.'"
The spiral on his chest, however, calmed slightly at that moment.
As if it, too, was listening. As if it was answering the tiny "one right" on the page.
"Then I'll use it," Qi Luo thought. "You carved the line. Don't blame me for taking the clause seriously."
He pulled out the pen he used for his own work.
The tip was a little splayed from overuse, but in the realm of clauses, it was still sharp enough.
He didn't scribble on the fragment—that would've been ramming his life straight into the face of the initial draft.
Instead, he wrote in the air—on the edge of his own Chains, beside the key-mark.
[Qi Luo · internal note:]
[One: confirmed as the carrier of the 'key' to the World Rollback Covenant; chest-mark matches fragment.]
[Two: confirmed that before rollback is triggered, the 'key' holds one right to draft a 'new order.']
[Three: objective adjustment—before the rollback process formally starts, proactively convene a 'New Covenant Council.']
[Four: core of the draft: write mortals' basic rights into the master covenant; redefine gods from 'sovereigns' to 'contracted guardians'; the world acknowledges 'names may be rewritten' but no longer depends on a single person's erasure.]
He wrote slowly, pressing every stroke down hard.
Each stroke felt like carving into bone.
When he finished, he hesitated, then added another line—so tiny that even he had to squint to read it:
[If the council cannot be convened by then, priority shifts to executing the 'self-delete' clause to block rollback.]
That was his bottom line—for himself, and as an answer to the fragment.
The key could be deleted.
The rollback could die with him.
"...You're not afraid?" The spiral at his chest seemed to pulse the question between beats.
Qi Luo lowered his head and smiled faintly.
"I am," he said. "Which is exactly why I have to push the first option as far as it'll go."
"Before the world hits reset, I want it to see a version that's better than 'back to the Initial Version.'"
"So that when it flips this contingency open again, it'll think—"
This thing is outdated.
Too outdated for what it believes itself to be.
Outside, the city had sunk fully into night.
The oil lamp flame flickered, making the letters on the fragment flash light and dark.
Qi Luo carefully slid the fragment back into its slot in the stone cabinet.
He didn't take it with him—
The second it left the clocktower, it'd drag a swarm of Chains down on him.
He simply copied it his own way—into the mark on his chest, into the World Rollback Covenant diagram slowly coming together on the iron sheet under the old pipes.
Before leaving the transcription room, he glanced back at the line on the door.
[Unauthorized entrants will be treated as test subjects.]
In his head, he flipped it off.
I'm done testing, he thought. My conclusion? Your contingency is garbage.
Outside, Garth leaned against the wall, chewing on an imaginary cigarette. When he saw Qi Luo emerge, he jerked his chin up.
"Alive?"
"For now," Qi Luo said.
"Find anything?" Garth asked.
The tower's gears clacked once overhead. Somewhere in the city, a distant bell answered softly.
Qi Luo looked up at the clockface frozen on that crooked mark.
"Found a fragment," he said slowly. "Says when the world drifts off its rails, it cranks everything back to the first version."
"Using me as the wrench."
"And what are you planning?" Garth asked.
Qi Luo's smile came out cold at the edges.
"I'm planning," he said, "to scribble a few new lines on that first draft before they actually pick me up and swing me like a wrench."
"Make rollback the option they're least willing to choose."
He pressed his palm over his chest, fingers soothing the heat still pulsing there.
The pattern under his touch shivered lightly.
As if it were saying:
—Noted.
—You have one right.
—So write.
And when you're done—
Even if your name gets erased, at least you didn't die as a key for nothing.