Saoirse the Forgotten's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Three chambers north. The engineer's directions echoed in her mind as she moved through passages thick with dust and fallen stone. The temporal meter's flame stretched forward, pulling her toward something it recognized. She found the portal first—a swirl of light and ash carved into the ground where bronze fragments had melted into the temple floor. The metal around it had corroded faster than anywhere else in the temple, eaten away by whatever force leaked from the wound in time. She stepped around it carefully, holding the meter high. Beyond the portal, tucked in an alcove she would have missed in normal light, sat a wooden case. The binoculars inside were intact. She lifted them with trembling hands—the first time her fingers had shaken in a thousand years. Through the lenses, the world transformed. Shadows layered over shadows, ripples spreading through the air like stones dropped in still water. She could see the temporal disturbances the engineer had tracked, invisible threads connecting every bronze fragment to the portal's swirling center. But she also saw something he hadn't known, something the Sunspear Empire never discovered: the hourglass she'd been seeking for centuries appeared as a bright point three days' walk from here, pulsing in rhythm with her own heartbeat. She lowered the binoculars and smiled—the expression felt strange on her face after so long. The engineer's knowledge hadn't just shown her how the Sunspear Empire measured time. It had revealed where her hourglass waited, hidden in a temporal shadow that only these specific lenses could pierce. She placed the binoculars in her satchel next to the purple gems and turned away from the corroding portal. The temple had given her what she needed. Now she had to decide whether finding the hourglass meant she was ready to stop being broken.