The sounds of the battle were a dull, rhythmic concussion, a distant heartbeat felt through the soles of his boots. He knelt on the cold stone floor of the shielded chamber. The Heart of the Artisan was a heavy, solid weight in his hands. It was warm, a living warmth that pulsed against his palms. A slow, steady beat. One pulse per second. It was the only clock left in his world.
He had the cure. But the patient was dead. The rage that had carried him here had burned out, leaving only the cold, sterile void he had once mistaken for peace. It was not peace. It was a vacuum. An absence of everything. Lilya was gone. Morozov was gone. The watch was broken. These were facts. The Heart was a failure. That was a fact. He had won nothing.
The heavy steel door to the chamber groaned open. A silhouette stood there, framed by the smoke and flickering light of the turbine hall. Anja Kovac. Her clothes were scorched, her face was a mask of soot, and a dark, wet patch was spreading on her sleeve. But she was alive. She was here. Her presence was a shock of unwelcome reality.
She stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her. The distant thunder of the battle was muffled again. Her eyes went from his face to the glowing sphere in his hands.
— What now, nobleman? — she asked. Her voice was a raw rasp. — We have the damn thing.
He looked at the artifact. It was not a cure. It was not a weapon. It was a problem. A third way. The thought was not his own. It felt like it came from the quiet, competent memory of the artisan that now lived inside him, a silent guest in the ruins of his mind.
— I can't use it, and I can't let Wolff have it, — Sineus said. His own voice sounded distant. — I'm going to destroy it.
Anja stared at him. A flicker of disbelief, then something like grim satisfaction. She took a step closer.
— Good, — she said. — How? Throw it at the Germans? I saw what it did to the walls.
— No, — Sineus said. He looked from the Heart to her, his gaze steady. — Physical destruction won't work. It would be like breaking a dam. The energy, the memory, would be released all at once. It would unwrite the entire district in a second. Faster than the overload.
He explained it then. Not as a mystic, but as an engineer. He spoke of the Heart as a capacitor, charged with the total psychic energy of a man’s life and death. A charge that was now unstable, arcing, ready to burn out. You could not cut the wire. You had to ground it. You had to give the energy a safe path to discharge.
— The memory has to go somewhere, — he said. — It has to be contained. Grounded.
Anja’s eyes narrowed. She was a smuggler. She understood containment. She understood value and risk.
— Grounded where? — she asked. — We don't have a machine for that. You said so yourself. Your purifier made it worse.
— I am the machine, — Sineus said. The words were simple. A statement of fact. — My ability. I have only ever used it to cut. To erase. But that is not its only function. It can also absorb. It can contain. I will become the ground. I will absorb the artisan's memory. All of it. The energy will discharge through my consciousness.
She stared at him. The smuggler’s hard mask fell away, replaced by raw, human horror.
— You'll what? — she whispered. — You'll… eat it?
— I will absorb the memory, — he repeated, his voice flat. — The artifact will become inert. Just a stone.
— And what happens to you? — Anja’s voice was tight, sharp. — What happens to the ground when the lightning strikes?
He met her gaze. He did not look away. He owed her the truth. He owed her the price.
— It will either kill me or break my mind.
For a long moment, she was silent. The only sound was the soft, one-second pulse of the Heart and the distant, muffled drumbeat of the war. He could see the thoughts warring in her face. The pragmatist, the survivor, was screaming that this was madness. A waste.
— No, — she said, the word a sharp exhalation. — Absolutely not. There has to be another way.
— There is not, — Sineus said. His calm was a wall she could not breach. — If we leave it, Wolff will retake it. If the Unremembered get it, they will try to use it and fail. If we run, it detonates. This is the only solution that removes the piece from the board.
— This is suicide! — she spat. — For what? For this shithole district? For a pack of fanatics who tried to kill you?
— It is not for them, — he said. He thought of Lilya. He thought of Morozov. He thought of the promise he had made to himself in the dark, reflected in the Heart’s surface. He would not become the monster. He would carry the weight. — It is a problem of engineering. And I am the only available component.
As he spoke, he felt it. A faint, familiar echo in the silence of his mind. A sound he thought was gone forever. The dry, rhythmic ticking of a clockwork made of ice. The Ticker’s Rattle. It was not the frantic, screaming clatter of before. It was a slow, deep, and impossibly heavy sound. The turning of a single, massive gear. The sound of a great clock being wound for one final chime.
Anja stopped. The fight seemed to drain out of her, leaving a terrible stillness. She looked at his face, at the absolute certainty in his eyes. She looked at the pulsing artifact in his hands. She understood. This was not a choice made from despair. It was a calculation. It was the final, logical step in an equation of sacrifice.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. Her hand went to the hilt of the heavy knife sheathed at her belt. Her knuckles were white.
— How long? — she asked. Her voice was dead.
— I will need time, — Sineus said. — At least ten minutes. Uninterrupted.
She gave a single, sharp nod. The movement was as final as a judge’s gavel. She pulled the knife from its sheath. The worn steel caught the pulsing light from the Heart. She tested the edge with her thumb, her face a mask of grim, absolute purpose.
— I'll buy you the time.
She turned and walked out of the chamber without another word. The heavy steel door swung shut, sealing him in the quiet dark. He was alone with the pulsing Heart and the slow, heavy ticking in his head. The sound of a debt about to be paid.
