The archive room lights were still flickering red as Alven pulled Lica back, away from the stranger.
The ticking of the Chronolocket inside his bag grew faster, as if the object recognized the man before Alven fully understood the situation. The air in the room felt different—heavier, colder, as if an invisible pressure filled every corner.
The man stopped a few steps from them. His gaze never left Alven, but his posture was alert, as if calculating every possibility within seconds.
"I won't repeat this," he said, his voice low but firm. "Give me the object."
"I don't even know who you are," Alven replied, placing himself slightly in front of Lica.
"My name is Kael."
That was all.
No explanation. No campus identity. No institutional badge. No reason why he knew about the Chronolocket. Just a name—short, unfamiliar, and strangely carrying something too heavy to fully speak.
Lica looked at Kael warily. "If you want us to trust you, start explaining properly."
Kael glanced at her briefly. For a fraction of a second, something crossed his face—not anger, but a hesitation that quickly disappeared.
"I don't need you to trust me," he said. "I just need you to stay alive."
That sentence only made Alven's spine tense further.
"Then explain why you know the name Chronolocket. Explain why you know about Lica."
Kael seemed about to answer, but a small explosion outside cut him off. All three turned toward the archive window. From the building across, one of the campus advertisement screens flickered wildly before going completely dark. In the outer corridor, students screamed, followed by the sound of something crashing.
Lica paled. "What now…?"
Kael stared toward the window, his jaw tightening. "It's started."
"Started what?" Alven asked.
Kael looked back at him. "Temporal fractures. The early effects are always small—electrical disturbances, digital clocks glitching, flickering screens, sounds arriving too late or too early. If the Chronolocket has been activated more than once, this city will begin to respond."
Alven fell silent.
Everything Kael described—he had already seen it. Flickering screens. Static-filled announcements. Time behaving strangely. Even that unsettling moment when the world seemed to skip a beat.
"You're lying," Lica said, though her voice was weaker now. "How can one object mess up an entire city like this?"
"Not the object," Kael replied. "The user."
Alven's eyes sharpened. "You mean me?"
"I mean your consciousness has crossed timelines that were never meant to intersect." Kael stepped closer, enough for the Chronolocket in Alven's bag to start ticking again. "The more you shift, the weaker the boundaries between possibilities become."
Lica turned to Alven, her face slowly losing color. "Shift…?" she whispered.
Alven clenched his jaw. He knew this moment would come sooner or later—the moment he could no longer half-lie to Lica. But not like this. Not in a red-lit archive room with a stranger who knew too much.
"Alven," Lica's voice came again, softer now—and far more hurt. "What does he mean?"
Before Alven could answer, the campus emergency alarm sounded again. Not the evacuation alarm from before, but a long, sharper, unstable tone. All the terminal screens in the archive lit up simultaneously, displaying chaotic time stamps: 09:17, 12:04, 16:51, then back to 11:32, as if the system could no longer decide what time was correct.
The speaker crackled.
"—eastern district anomaly increasing—"
"—synchronization failed—"
"—all units on standby—"
Then another phrase followed—one that made Alven's blood feel like it stopped flowing.
"—Chrono subject detected—"
Kael moved faster than Alven could think. He glanced at the door, then back at Alven.
"They've found it."
"Who are they?" Lica asked.
But Kael didn't answer. "We need to leave. Now."
"I'm not going anywhere with you," Alven said.
Kael looked at him flatly. "If you stay here, in five minutes the entire west wing will be locked down. And if the time hunters arrive first, they won't care whether there are ordinary students around you or not."
The words hung in the air.
Time hunters.
The term sounded impossible—yet with everything that had happened, there was no part of Alven that could outright reject it.
From the corridor outside came heavy footsteps.
Not panicked students.
Too synchronized. Too controlled.
Kael glanced once more at the door, and this time his expression turned completely serious. "Too late."
The archive door burst open.
Three figures entered, wearing gray-black uniforms with no campus insignia. Their faces were partially covered by transparent visors, and on each of their wrists was a circular metal device emitting a faint blue glow. They moved without urgency—but carried a kind of threat that was far more terrifying because of how calm they were.
"Alven Raka Ardian," one of them said in a flat, electronic voice. "You are required to surrender the temporal artifact and come with us."
Lica stiffened instantly. "Who are you?"
No answer.
Alven stepped back, his instincts screaming that these people were far more dangerous than Kael. He could feel the Chronolocket heating up inside his bag, reacting to their presence.
"What if I refuse?" Alven asked.
"Force is authorized."
Kael muttered under his breath, then moved quickly to the side, kicking one of the terminal desks so it crashed between them. The impact echoed loudly. Two of the agents raised their arms immediately, and blue light burst from their wrist devices, forming energy lines that struck the desk and hurled it against the wall.
Lica flinched. "Oh my—"
"Down!" Kael shouted.
The room descended into chaos. Kael pulled Alven and Lica behind a data storage rack just as another energy blast shot through where they had been standing. Terminal screens exploded in sparks. The smell of ozone filled the air.
"I hate it when this happens in front of witnesses," Kael muttered.
"You still have time for sarcasm?" Alven snapped.
"Still do." Kael glanced at him briefly. "Because if I panic, we all die."
One of the agents leapt over the fallen desk. Kael moved faster, striking his wrist device with precision—the blue light immediately shut off. The agent collapsed, but the other two were already moving around the rack.
"Take him," one of them said.
Alven didn't even have time to process whether "him" meant himself or the Chronolocket before Kael shoved his shoulder toward the back exit.
"Run."
"What?"
"Get her out!" Kael pointed at Lica. "Service door to the left. Don't stop until you reach an open area."
Lica looked at Alven, panicked and confused. "I don't understand anything!"
"Me neither!" Alven shot back.
But another blast cut through the moment. One of the agents fired a blue shot at the floor near them, causing a small explosion that shook the data racks. Metal fragments scattered everywhere. There was no more time.
Alven grabbed Lica's hand and ran.
They pushed through the archive side door into a narrow, dim service corridor. Behind them, the sounds of impact, energy blasts, and rapid footsteps echoed together. Lica nearly tripped once, but Alven caught her before she fell.
"Alven!" she said breathlessly. "You have to explain now!"
They kept running past plain concrete walls, cooling pipes, and flickering emergency lights. At one turn, the entire corridor suddenly trembled. The digital clock on the wall changed on its own: 13:06 to 13:05, then 13:08, then went dark.
Lica saw it.
This time, she really saw it.
She stopped for a second, breath caught. "That… just went backward?"
Alven stopped for only a fraction of a second—long enough to realize that what Kael said was not an empty threat. The fractures were real. The city was starting to break from within.
"Lica, listen." He held her shoulders, looking into her shock-filled eyes. "I'll explain everything—but not here. Please trust me right now."
Lica looked at him for a long moment. Fear, confusion, and a quiet hurt from all the things he had hidden filled her expression. But in the end, she nodded.
They continued running until they reached the back service path of the building. The outside air felt colder. Nexara's sky looked normal at first glance, but if observed longer, something was wrong. In the distance, among the glass towers and neon lights, several holographic billboards flickered erratically. A floating vehicle hovered too long in one spot before suddenly shooting forward again. The large clock tower in the eastern district froze for two seconds, then spun rapidly to catch up with lost time.
The city was cracking.
And it seemed only a few people were aware enough to notice it.
They stopped beneath a skybridge connecting two buildings, both breathing heavily. A few seconds later, Kael emerged from the service exit, slightly unsteady but still intact. A thin cut bled along his jaw. He scanned the area quickly before confirming no one was chasing them—for now.
Lica looked at him as if she wanted to be angry, afraid, and demand answers all at once. "Who are you people, really?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. Instead, he looked up at Nexara's sky, faintly flickering with strange light, then back at Alven.
"This is just the beginning," he said.
"The beginning of what?" Alven asked.
Kael exhaled, then finally said, "If the Chronolocket isn't destroyed, all of Nexara will enter the first phase of the Collapse Hour."
Alven felt the ground beneath him turn cold.
"What is Collapse Hour?"
Kael looked at him with eyes far too tired for someone his age. "The moment when the past, present, and future stop taking turns—and fall into the same world at once."
The silence that followed felt more terrifying than any alarm or explosion.
Lica slowly held onto Alven's arm, perhaps without realizing it. The touch was small, but enough to make his chest ache. Because in the middle of a city breaking apart, time hunters, and a threat he didn't fully understand, only one thing still felt real: Lica's hand, still warm against his arm.
But if Nexara was truly going to collapse because of the Chronolocket—and the only reason Alven kept holding onto it was the hope of saving the person who meant the most to him—could love still be called salvation if, in the end, it became the very beginning of destruction?