Ping.
The sound of the first balance-spring snapping between Chrono-Scribe Ren’s brass tweezers was like a drop of icy water falling onto an open burn.
Loophole One: Zero to Two Seconds.
The amber thickness that choked the air shattered in a five-foot envelope around Ren Vale’s shoulders.
He launched himself from the boundary of Mira’s violet bubble, his heavy cobbler’s boots kicking hard off the edge of the iron dais. The sudden restoration of subjective speed struck his nervous system like a sledgehammer. His thirty-one-year-old knees buckled slightly on the leap, but the driving force was true.
He flew across twenty feet of open void, hurtling toward the lowest floating bronze gear-wheel that hung suspended beside the screaming black gold-silver metal column.
Below him, the black glass floor was a deep pit of violet fractures. Above him, thirty feet of frozen starlight and reaching nightmare talons loomed in terrifying silence.
One point one seconds.
