The air in the Heritage Garden was, as always, thick with sweet humidity and the scent of refined soil.

  The wings of the Auris created a low harmony as they deflected microscopic dust motes floating in the air, and crystalline waterfalls poured between artificial islands, producing sounds that seemed to defy gravity.

  Adin moved through this transparent peace with heavy steps toward Rhea.

  The moment Adin stepped into the garden, the stillness splintered into the familiar sound of beating wings.

  A figure that had been lingering in the shadow of an ancient tree unfurled its wings and flew toward him like a trailing strand of white silk. Sori landed on Adin’s shoulder, rubbing a small face against the nape of his neck, letting out a low, whimpering groan of relief held back for far too long.

  Flutter—

  The delicate trembling transmitted through his shoulder spoke volumes to Adin of the weight of time the child had endured alone.

  Adin reached out a shaking hand, gently enveloping Sori’s soft fur.

  The horrific chill he had felt in that infernal sewer of gravity seemed to thaw slowly, melted by Sori’s small, warm body. Stroking Sori’s large ears softly, Adin whispered.

  “I’m sorry. I’m late, aren’t I?”

  As if in reply, Sori lightly draped a wing over Adin’s palm, fully absorbing his warmth.

  “So, you’re still alive, Adin.”

  Rhea set down the shears she had been using to prune leaves and turned around. Her voice carried a bitterness deeper than any welcome.

  Recently, Adin had vanished into the shadows of the Monolith like a ghost, meting out only silence to Rhea’s calls. Her gaze lingered briefly on his disheveled hair and haggard complexion as he tenderly caressed Sori.

  “Where on earth have you been pouring your soul into? Do you have any idea how anxious Sori has been while you were gone? The child spent the entire day with ears twitching, waiting for you.”

  Rhea’s reprimand stung a corner of Adin’s heart.

  Yet, instead of an apology, Adin chose to reveal the pitch-black truth he had brought back with him. What he needed now was not the tranquility of daily life, but a comrade who would endure the unbelievable reality he had witnessed.

  He slowly caught his breath, looking Rhea straight in the eyes with Sori still on his shoulder.

  “Rhea... please, promise me you’ll believe what I’m about to say.”

  Rhea slowly lowered the hand holding the shears and gazed into Adin’s wavering eyes. Perhaps sensing an extraordinary aura in his heavily sunken voice, her expression—unusually sharp for her—hardened into a serious mask.

  “Alright, I promise. Tell me what happened.”

  “I stepped into the Shadow of Mimos for a moment—into that pitch-black abyss. To be honest... the scenery was so grotesque that my language feels insufficient to describe it all.

  Rhea, It wasn’t a common shadow like the ones we know.

  It wasn’t an accidental mark created by blocked light, but a massive vertical anchor driven into the very bottom of hell to keep this flamboyant city from being swept away by the river of time.

  In the end, it is a core of agonizingly cold mass... Existing solely to sustain the peace of the entire city.”

  As Adin’s voice sank low and heavy, the sound of Rhea’s pruning stopped.

  Adin recounted every detail of the chronicle of incineration he had seen in the underground rotunda and that bizarre sewer opened beneath Mimos’s feet.

  It was not a flat trace made by obstructing light, but a colossal vertical void that pierced through the very floor of this world.

  “The ashes of someone’s incinerated moments were piled there. Ivory’s tranquility was achieved by fixing time with the heavy mass those ashes created.

  This eternal afternoon we enjoy is, in fact, dangling from an anchor forged by burning someone’s future.”

  Click, clack, click, clack.

  The rhythmic sound of unfamiliar heels began to approach from the garden entrance.

  It was a purely mechanical, cold metallic sound that sharply tore through the silence of the forest where transparent peace had dwelled. At the nearing sound, Rhea and Adin turned their gazes beyond the bushes simultaneously.

  “They call that the ‘Entropy Trash Can.’”

  Lou walked out from between the plants, her blonde hair tied back casually and a loose jacket draped over her. She had been listening to the entire story from the beginning.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Her expression made it clear she had no intention of being misunderstood as an eavesdropper; she simply disliked unnecessary complications.

  “Don’t be alarmed. I only stopped by because there was an issue with the humidity controller in this sector. I figured I’d listen to an interesting eyewitness account while I was at it.”

  Lou adjusted her silver-rimmed glasses with practiced ease and approached Adin. Bringing up a complex graph of biometric signals on her tablet, she added a scientific signature to Adin’s confession.

  “What you saw, Adin, is a core of mass where all the disorder Ivory paid to freeze time has condensed.

  According to my bio-data, every time the density of that anchor rises by 0.1%, the heart rates of the units and the nodes within the Monolith spike abnormally, and brain waves become fragmented.

  It means the people underground are dying as their bodies absorb the weight of entropy discarded by others.”

  Rhea’s face turned pale at Lou’s chilling analysis.

  With trembling hands, Rhea pulled out an internal document stamped with a security seal and placed it on the table. It was a blood-soaked administrative order that had leaked from the deepest reaches of the Monolith.

  “Nathan is making his move. Soon, there will be a large-scale ‘Unscheduled Incineration Event.’”

  Rhea’s voice trembled.

  “This will be incomparable to Somna’s periodic management, where residential sectors were physically distorted to instill claustrophobic fear.

  They will warp the units' living quarters by meters and manipulate the light spectrum to inject extreme spatio-temporal terror. Director Jin’s goal is simple: to squeeze the units to their limit and use the explosive stress energy generated to open a ‘New Curve’ for the anchor.”

  Adin looked back and forth between the document on the table and Lou’s expressionless face. Something hot surged up in his chest.

  He could not leave this massive anchor—sustained by devouring the screams of the few—as it was. He had to make a decision now.

  “I am going to dismantle this anchor.”

  At Adin’s declaration, all the noise in the garden receded like the tide.

  Lou’s eyes behind her glasses wavered narrowly, and Rhea took a step back, gasping for air.

  “Dismantle it? Adin, that means bringing down Ivory, Ebony, and the Monolith—the entire world.

  This city suspended in the air might plummet straight into the abyss of Ebony. And that’s not all. The moment this massive Monolith falls, the Ebony below, which barely survives in its shadow, will be crushed and annihilated without a trace.

  This isn’t liberation; it’s a catastrophe that swallows everyone!

  There are innocent people there too. People who live as parts of the system, but who are also someone’s family and neighbors. We should think about how to fix it, not destroy it. Not cutting the anchor, but perhaps sharing the weight so it can be endured.

  Please, don’t push everyone to the edge with such an extreme choice.”

  Rhea’s voice was a mixture of practical terror and desperation. To her, this city was a precious sanctuary, and breaking that peace was not salvation, but ruin.

  Yet, Adin did not back down.

  “Even if we fall, it is better than a fake peace maintained by burning someone alive.

  Rhea, and Lou. Make your choice now.”

  Adin stared directly at Lou. He could not be certain if she, who had calculated the system’s efficiency by Nathan’s side, could truly stand with him.

  A stern warning laced Adin’s voice.

  “Decide whether you will join me in breaking this system and become my ally, or stand with them as my enemy. Choose.”

  Lou bit her lip and remained silent. In her mind, the sophisticated order designed by Nathan clashed violently with the reckless liberation proposed by Adin.

  “Adin, you’re too hasty. Just because Lou is close to Mr. Nathan doesn’t mean you should doubt her blindly...”

  Rhea tried to mediate, but Adin raised his hand to stop her.

  “There is no neutral ground, Rhea. Not when this anchor is killing people...”

  Before Adin could finish, Lou avoided her own heavy tears falling from her eyes and dashed away through the thick bushes of the garden instead of answering.

  The sound of Lou’s heels grew distant on the garden’s stone path before vanishing into the silence.

  Adin blankly watched the darkness where Lou had disappeared.

  The realization that the words he had just spoken had become blades and wounded Lou paralyzed his senses belatedly. Behind the plausible excuse of upholding justice, was it perhaps an impulsive spite born from a desire to hurt her?

  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lou; he simply couldn’t stand the fact that she remained comfortably within Nathan’s cold order, turning a blind eye to the truth.

  The guilt from those harsh words, born of petty jealousy, began to rise from his toes.

  Adin immediately went to find Lou.

  He ran from the bio-lab, through the corridors, to the front of her room, but there was no sign of life behind the firmly closed door. He wandered the corridors of the Monolith like a madman but could not find her.

  Adin’s breathing grew ragged, and his heart rate fluctuated irregularly like uncontrolled entropy.

  At the same time, in front of a massive holographic screen in the Time Anchor Data Lab.

  Nathan lightly pushed up his glasses, staring with interest at the red curve appearing on the monitor. Adin’s bio-stats, which usually never wavered, were exploding exponentially, racing toward the state of ‘optimal incineration ash’ that the system preferred most.

  “Hmm... Do you see it, Lou?”

  Nathan pointed at the red waves on the monitor with his characteristic smile. Following Nathan’s gaze, Lou reluctantly turned her head to look at the monitor.

  The moment she faced the red graph soaring vertically like a sharp needle, Lou’s heart sank.

  It was not a simple fluctuation of biometric signals; it was a silent scream poured out as data, representing the terrible sense of betrayal and sorrow Adin must be feeling.

  “I wonder what made Adin such an unstable child? Doesn’t he look like a child lost and holding back tears?”

  Instead of answering, Lou inhaled sharply.

  On the monitor, she could see Adin desperately traversing the corridors. Her tears, and Adin’s incomprehensible jealousy, were becoming the sweetest scent to whet the appetite of a predator named Nathan.

  “I don’t know. He’s just an uncontrolled variable. Contamination of experimental data is common.”

  Lou spat out the words, averting her gaze as if indifferent.

  To hide her agitation regarding Adin, she hid behind jargon that was drier and harder than usual. As if Adin’s existence was nothing more than a mere numerical value of no significance to her, she kept her head down, focusing on correcting meaningless figures on her tablet.

  Instead of replying, Nathan turned his head and quietly observed the profile of Lou’s face.

  Her voice, feigning indifference, seemed perfect, but Nathan did not miss the fact that the hem of her gown was trembling minutely. She, who would usually point out a data error instantly, was now repeatedly rubbing the same spot on the screen.

  “Is that so? Contamination...”

  Nathan murmured softly, shifting his gaze back to the monitor.

  However, the smile playing on his lips took on a slightly deeper, more unpleasant form than before. As Lou’s indifference deepened, the light of suspicion reflecting behind Nathan’s glasses paradoxically became clearer.

  “By the way, Lou, those coordinates your finger is pointing at. You do realize they’ve been wrong for a while now?”

  Nathan’s voice dropped low, freezing the air.

  Lou fl?flitched and stopped her hand, but she could not bring herself to look up and meet his eyes.

  Amidst the mechanical noise filling the data lab, a subtle and unpleasant silence that only Nathan noticed began to cling stickily to the room.