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FORGET IT. IT CAN'T BE DONE.
Even now, as Mori stood in front of the clock tower of Dysis, the words echoed in his mind.
Did he really mean that? he wondered. Or that it couldn't be done if he was the one doing it?
Mori shook his head. His mind was made up. If the scribbled drawings in Ren's notebook could change what had happened — if they had even a chance at restoring Arkos — he had to try. And keep trying, until it worked.
The door was locked, but that had never been a problem for him before. He swung the satchel over his back and climbed, jumping between jutting columns and spires until he reached an open window, and shimmied through the gap. He brushed aside a net of cobwebs and wandered through the gloomy interior, wondering when Argent had come here last. The building sang of disuse.
Thankfully, the system room was functioning fine. Mori stood in the doorway to the grand system, his breath catching in his throat. Painfully away that the last time he'd been in a room like this, he'd destroyed it.
He took a deep breath and stepped in, letting the soft gravity carry him down through the system. The energy in here was different from the Tower of Clouds. Unfamiliar gears spun around him. Mori floated between them, trying to draw parallels between the two towers. After a long search, he figured out the section he was looking for and touched down at the edge of the core gear.
His hand slipped into his satchel and withdrew the timepiece he'd spent the night assembling. He'd had to destroy the few timepieces he'd taken to Dysis to build it — the last fragments of Arkos. They'd been some of the first he'd ever made, his first badges as a clockmaker. As they'd lain in pieces on the desk in front of him, he couldn't help but wonder if it was a fitting metaphor for the work he'd done.
Mori slotted the timepiece into the gap. The tower's gears meshed around it and connected, as if the pocket watch had been there all along. The jewels inside the watch lit up as the tower's energy surged through it.
He heard footsteps behind him and turned.
To his surprise, the traveller stood over him. The flora at her neck had changed: now soft, rounded petals spouted from her skin, pink at the tip and fading to pale white.
"You have got to stop sneaking up on me like that," Mori muttered.
Her eyes flicked to the timepiece and she tutted. "A poor clockmaker like you, trying to rebuild a tower?"
Mori tensed. "How did you—"
"Don't waste your time," she said. "It won't work."
Her words, eerily evocative of Argent's, stung. But I have to try.
"Why is it you're both so sure it won't work?" he said.
She stepped towards him. "The ability to create worlds is not something to be taken lightly," she said. "Do you truly believe you can control that kind of power?"
