A short, yet remarkably burly middle-aged man, his arms bare, scrambled out from a collapsed tunnel. He fell to his knees, howling at the blazing sun as tears stread down his rugged cheeks and disappeared into his thick beard.
Then, as if rembering sothing, he wiped the tears away with a bare arm and opened his tightly clenched right fist. A finely crafted gear lay in his palm, glinting in the sunlight with a white, ethereal glow.
"Ancestors!" he cried. "I've finally found it!"
...
The vision flickered, scenes flashing by in rapid succession. The gear changed hands many tis, its owners shifting from a race of dwarf-like beings to humans. This leap spanned several epochs, the landscape transforming at a dizzying pace. The imnse passage of ti was evident in the ever-changing styles of clothing and dress alone.
...
A young woman sat on a mound of earth, facing an expressionless man who held out a paper box. Several corpses lay strewn about nearby. Swallowing hard, she reached into the box and drew out a slip of paper.
Her hands trembling, she unfolded the paper and let out a hysterical scream. She spun around, scrambling toward a white gate of light that had materialized at the foot of the mound. But a bony claw abruptly shot out of the earth, seizing her ankle. The woman shrieked in terror as she was dragged back before the impassive man.
Her body flattened, thinning until it beca a sheet of paper that fluttered into the box. Her clothes and jewelry tumbled to the ground in a heap, and among them, the gear rolled away, tumbling down the slope.
As the expressionless man also transford into a slip of paper and flew into the box, black tendrils surged from all directions, threatening to annihilate this world. At the very last second, the gear tumbled through the white gate of light, but not before it was tainted by the encroaching black lines.
Its ethereal glow, once pure white, was now streaked with black.
...
The vision flashed forward again. A traveler stumbled upon the gear, glanced around curiously, and slipped it into his pocket. It journeyed through the world of mortals, at tis serving as a simple part in so machine, at others lying buried in the earth for long stretches. But eventually, its true nature was discovered by a group of Enchanters.
...
In a cramped basent, three bespectacled n watched nervously as the gear hung suspended from a thread that pulsed with a red, ethereal glow.
One of them swallowed, rose onto his tiptoes, and carefully dripped a liquid shimring with a black aura onto the silken thread. The droplet rolled down, slid over the gear, and fell into a vial glowing with green light positioned directly beneath it.
The clear liquid inside the vial instantly turned a murky, copper-rust color.
A man with graying hair crouched, took out an old-fashioned syringe, and drew so of the liquid into it. Then, he pointed the needle at his own arm.
...
The scenes flickered past. The gear was used ti and again to perform the sa ritual, and the resulting liquid was repeatedly injected into the bodies of different old n. It appeared to be a thod of extending life by altering one's physical form, but the transformation was excruciatingly slow. Ultimately, just as Jenkins had encountered the Young Flower Seller, the gear's owners had their own fateful, and fatal, encounter with a terrifying creature.
...
In the dead of night, a lone man stood amidst a small village littered with corpses, all of whom had died in bizarre ways. Most had blackened faces, and dark blood trickled from their mouths and noses—the telltale signs of a plague.
The gear lay quietly in the withered palm of an elderly woman dressed in ceremonial robes. A single red moon hung in the sky, casting its crimson light over the grueso scene.
The man, his entire body shrouded in a black aura, turned to leave. But he paused, tilting his head to gaze at the gear, which looked strangely otherworldly in the moonlight.
He smirked, and in an instant, the gear's glow turned completely black.
...
The leap in ti was even greater this ti. Even the solitary red moon in the night sky now had a companion. The gear continued its journey through the world until it was finally found by soone who had been intentionally seeking it.
...
Worshippers holding gear-shaped tal emblems gathered inside an old church. At the very front, the eldest among them knelt on one knee, holding a red tal box.
The box sprang open on its own. The gear within flew out and dropped into a deep well that now stood where the pulpit should have been in the main hall.
The black aura grew ever more intense, and from the depths of the old church, the faint sound of turning could be heard, seeming to emanate from an ancient idol pieced together from countless gears.
A sluggish, tallic grinding echoed ceaselessly through the cavernous church.
...
Only ti moved on. Faces changed, one after another, but they all perford the sa act: drawing water from the well, water that could spread disease.
...
The scene returned to the sa church, but it now appeared far more pristine than before.
Outside, a storm raged—wind howled and rain lashed down in sheets. In a brilliant flash of lightning, a man in a black cloak hurriedly pushed open the main doors and burst inside.
The elders and worshippers did not reprimand him for his insolence, nor for the muddy water from his boots and the rain dripping from his clothes, all of which soiled the crimson carpet.
The man bowed his head and knelt before the holy emblem of the Gear King. The two n who followed him inside carried a familiar grandfather clock, while a fourth, walking last, held a small iron hamr. A faint electrical glow emanated from the hamr, seeming to crackle in ti with the thunder outside.
The kneeling man produced a tal heart from beneath his cloak. It was still throbbing, a veritable work of art. Bronze-hued tal plates interlocked seamlessly, the joins covered in ancient, text-like patterns that resembled thick blood vessels clinging to the heart’s surface.
But these intricate patterns were not static; with each throb of the heart, they flowed like water, constantly shifting to form new inscriptions. As the heart contracted and expanded, the dense, scale-like plates on its surface parted and closed, revealing an even more complex tallic structure within.
It pulsed with a white aura, a stark contrast to the black aura radiating from the deep well before the holy emblem.
As everyone watched, the heart was dropped into the well, and the holy emblem released a golden power.
The ground began to vibrate, and a deafening peal of thunder shook the very heavens. After another streak of blue-white lightning flashed past the window, the beating heart rose from the well.
Thump... thump... thump...
It throbbed violently. With every beat, a jet of rust-colored water imbued with a black aura burst from the seams between its tal plates.
......
The tal heart was carried away from the church. Wherever its bearer stopped, turmoil that engulfed the entire city would follow. The vision continued to shift until a familiar city appeared.
Inside a deserted mine shaft, abandoned pickaxes and heaps of decaying bones were piled against the walls. A minecart lay overturned beside the tracks.
Dozens of people in black robes knelt on one knee, forming a circle. The back of each robe was adorned with a gear-shaped holy emblem.
The man carrying the tal heart raised his hands, and the heart materialized above his palms. The middle-aged shopkeeper stood with him, the form of a grandfather clock shimring into existence behind him.
Soone brought a bowl, and a single drop of copper-rust-colored liquid fell from the bottom of the heart, instantly dyeing the clear water in the bowl the sa shade. The middle-aged shopkeeper, his expression grave, opened the long, flat case he carried. Inside lay nine empty syringes.
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