There was a time when the sky above Ecliss pulsed with life, and the rivers sang as they wound their silver threads through the city’s heart. Now, only echoes remained.

  The gears of the ancient clock tower groaned into motion, as they always did when night approached. Their creaks marked not time, but memory—the slow engraving of lives long passed, and those yet to come. Dust drifted through the air like faded petals. Below, streets shimmered with light that was neither day nor night, but something forgotten in between.

  At the center of this twilight world stood Elthia, the girl who dreamt of eternity.

  Her golden eyes watched the horizon where the moon rose, always out of reach. Cloaked in shadows that flickered like dying stars, she traced her fingers across the fractured surface of the city square. Beneath her hands, the stone hummed faintly, threads of life weaving through the cracks. They whispered names long extinguished and those not yet spoken.

  "Leozet," she murmured.

  The name drifted softly through Ecliss, stirring the slumbering air. He was her son, the one who would succeed her. The protector who would rise when she finally fell into silence. But for now, he slept beneath the ke, his heartbeat locked away in the cold deep.

  Elthia exhaled and stood. She turned toward the hollow cathedral where the holy bell hung, cracked and mute. Every night she climbed the tower. Every night she stood beneath its silent arc and looked to the moon.

  She walked slowly, her feet brushing over scattered blossoms—ashen white, born from no tree. They grew only where the ground had broken, where life once drained away. The clock gears churned louder as she climbed the steps, their turning both wild and solemn. Time, it seemed, obeyed no order here. It ran backwards and forwards, folding in on itself like wings too heavy to open.

  At the highest spire, Elthia found herself waiting again.

  She pressed her hand against the cold bronze of the bell. “Forgive me,” she whispered to no one, or perhaps everyone. Her voice was lost in the stillness.

  Beneath the tower, the city glimmered faintly. It was a ghost of what had been—the City of Demise. Yet there was beauty still. Even in the fissures of the earth, she could sense the smallest threads of life. Even as the sky above froze over and the stars refused to shine, flowers of light bloomed where death had left its mark.

  They said Elthia cursed Ecliss. That her longing for eternity had bound the city in endless twilight. But she remembered the truth.

  The sins she bore were not only her own.

  Elthia closed her eyes. Within the darkness, she heard it—the faint pulse, steady and distant. A heartbeat. Not hers.

  Leozet.

  His name was written in the nguage of magic: Lei-ol-zet. It meant zero, and hope, and beginning. She had named him for the promise of starting again.

  The gears of the clock ground to a halt.

  Elthia opened her eyes. The city below seemed to breathe. Mist rose from the ke in the west, curling up the avenues like smoke from an ancient pyre. Somewhere in that mist, footsteps echoed.

  She descended the tower with swift grace. The bell did not ring, but the silence rang louder than any chime. Her long hair trailed behind her like a river of night.

  The streets narrowed as she walked, leading her toward the ke’s edge. The water, bck as polished obsidian, showed no reflection. Yet she saw herself in it—standing still, eyes empty but burning gold.

  “Elthia,” said a voice. It was quiet, but it struck her like a bde. “Why do you remain here?”

  She turned slowly.

  The one who spoke had no shadow. They were a shape of light and hollow space, their outline shifting like smoke caught in moonlight.

  “I remain because I must,” she replied.

  The figure tilted its head. “You dream of eternity still.”

  “I guard this city,” she said. “And the one who will inherit it.”

  The shape of light drifted closer, a breath against the veil of the world. “The city is dying. Your son sleeps beneath the ke. What do you guard but the memory of loss?”

  Elthia’s gaze hardened. “I guard the hope that he will wake.”

  The figure said nothing. It extended a hand as if to touch her, but did not. Instead, it pointed toward the horizon, where the moon climbed higher. The moon had never looked closer, nor more distant.

  “He will awaken,” Elthia said again, softer. “When I have paid the weight of this sin.”

  She knelt at the water’s edge, ying her palm upon its stillness. Ripples spread in silence. The figure remained motionless.

  “Leozet,” she whispered.

  The ke stirred.

  Beneath its surface, the outline of a door appeared—a gate sealed in golden light. Symbols etched upon it glowed faintly, the nguage of the old world. She pressed her hand deeper into the water, until her fingertips met cold stone.

  “Come home,” she said.

  A faint sound echoed in reply: a heartbeat, slow and strong. The gate shuddered. Cracks split its face, thin lines of light bleeding outward.

  The figure behind her said, “It is time.”

  And so it was.

  The gears of the clock in the tower spun wildly now, time unwinding like thread from a broken loom. The city shook, but did not fall. Petals, like snow, filled the air.

  Elthia stood as the gate opened. From within the darkness, a figure emerged—smaller than she remembered, but unmistakable. Leozet’s eyes gleamed bright gold beneath dark shes. He said nothing at first. He only looked at her with a sadness too old for his years.

  “You called me back,” he said at st.

  She nodded.

  Leozet’s hand found hers. “And now you must go.”

  “I know.”

  Elthia kissed his forehead. It was warm, alive.

  As she stepped away, the figure of light, the one who had watched her, moved toward Leozet. It folded around him like a cloak, not to imprison him, but to shield. He bore the city now. The weight, the memory, the hope.

  Elthia walked into the ke.

  The water rose around her, cool as sleep. She did not resist as it cimed her, and the world above dimmed.

  The moon, once so distant, opened like an eye. Light fell across Ecliss, golden and soft, seeping into every broken corner. Flowers bloomed from stone. Rivers ran clear. The holy bell rang once more, its chime shaking the air.

  And in its sound, the city breathed.

  In time, Leozet stood where his mother once had—at the peak of the cathedral’s tower. He gazed toward the horizon, where the moon still rose, though now it no longer hid its face. The city of Ecliss lived again, not as it was, but as it might be.

  He dreamed not of eternity, but of beginnings.

  Beneath his gentle gaze, a golden light dwelled. It painted the city not as it ended, but as it began anew. The gears of the clock turned, steady and sure.

  And Elthia’s name was whispered in the wind, not as a curse, but as a prayer.

  The City of Moon Chasing was no longer trapped beneath the weight of time. It rose.