Deep beneath the cathedral ruins, in the heart of the twenty-eighth tower—buried under centuries of stone, sealed by time, prayer, and fear—the first tremor stirred.

It was faint at first. A whisper. A twitch of metal remembered only by the earth itself.

Gears groaned, ancient and brittle. Their rust-choked teeth scraped together with a sound that felt wrong—like bone dragged across stone, like a scream from something that shouldn’t still be breathing. Chains jerked in their pulleys, links cracking free of centuries-old corrosion. They didn’t move easily. They didn’t want to move at all.

But something deeper forced them.

The tremor became a pulse.

A rhythm.

Steady. Growing.

A central gear—massive, towering, older than the nations above it—lurched into motion. Rust broke off its edges in flakes the size of coins, raining down in a cloud of orange dust. The sound it made was deafening. Not a grind. Not a clank.

A roar.

Smaller gears locked into place beside it, clicking with violent precision as they fell into alignment. The chamber filled with noise—groaning metal, shrieking tension, pulleys screaming as they were yanked awake. Chains, thick as tree trunks, flexed through the walls like veins coming back to life.

A single lever—black with oil, forgotten by history—trembled… then buckled under an invisible force.

Its counterweight dropped.

Hard.

And the tower responded.

Cables snapped taut. Rods twisted. Iron arms that hadn’t moved in a quarter of a million years shook themselves free from sleep. Dust turned to ash. The entire system lurched forward with a mechanical fury that felt far too deliberate for something “accidental.”

One by one, the gears caught each other.

Turning.

Spinning.

Faster.

The chains rose and fell, over and over, their burden unseen, their destination unknown. A second pulley system activated—jagged and uneven at first, but gaining momentum. Something massive moved in the deep.

Then… the bell.

It hadn’t rung in over 250,000 years.

It wasn’t supposed to.

Its surface, etched with forbidden sigils long since erased from public record, shifted in its cradle with a groan that shook the tower’s ribs. The gears screamed louder, chains pulling tighter, straining as though lifting the weight of the dead themselves.

Then—snap.

A lock broke.

The final one.

The one that wasn’t supposed to.

And everything moved.

The bell dropped.

The striker—an enormous pendulum of reinforced steel—swung with brutal purpose, slicing the air in a blur of power and inevitability.

Time seemed to hesitate.

And then—

BOOM.

The bell tolled once.

Just once.

But it wasn’t a sound.

It was a tear in the world.

A pulse that shattered air, cracked stone, and sent a shockwave through the cathedral ruins above. Dust exploded upward. Cracks spread like veins into the city’s bones.

The tower did not stop.

The gears did not stop.

They only moved faster.