The steps led them into a resounding space filled with sound.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Not just one clock. Thousands. Millions. All ticking out of sync, creating a cacophony that instantly made your head split.
The Hero and Medusa stepped out onto a metal platform and froze, staring at the spectacle that unfolded before them.
Gears.
Gigantic bronze and steel gears filled the entire space—up, down, in all directions. Some were the size of houses, slowly rotating, their teeth the size of a man meshing with other gears. Others—as huge as stadiums—dominated everything, their rotation creating a wind, a hum, a vibration that sent shockwaves through your bones.
Between the gears hung pendulums—tens of meters long, massive bronze weights swinging, cutting through the air with a whistling sound, ready to crush everything in their path. There were dials everywhere—on gears, on the walls, hanging in the air, huge and tiny. The hands moved erratically—some forward, others backward, others jumping, others freezing and suddenly darting forward.
Light filtered through the gear teeth in streaks, creating shifting shadows, disorienting, hypnotic.
"What... is this..." Medusa whispered, covering her ears with her hands. The ticking was deafening.
"A clock mechanism," the hero replied, also raising his voice. "A giant clock."
Sparks flew where the gears rubbed against each other. Black oil dripped from above like rain, leaving greasy stains on the metal. The air smelled of machine oil, metal, ozone.
The hero took a step forward—and tripped.
Not over anything physical. The world simply jerked, slowed for a moment, then sped back up. A step that should have taken a second stretched to a minute. He watched his foot slowly, unbearably slowly, lower itself, touching the floor.
Then everything returned to normal.
"Time," Medusa exhaled, her eyes widening. "Time here... is abnormal."
The hero nodded. He looked around, searching for a way forward. The platform on which they stood hung between two gears. Ahead, a bridge was visible—narrow, metal, leading to the next platform.
"Come on," he said. "Careful."
They moved across the bridge. Beneath their feet, a chasm descended into darkness, where even more gigantic gears rotated, their size impossible to estimate.
Halfway across the bridge, the world changed again.
Time sped up.
The hero walked, but each step took an instant. Seconds turned into fractions of a second. He saw Medusa, next to him, speed up, her movements becoming blurry.
Then—old age.
The skin on his hands began to wrinkle and turn gray. His hair was losing its color. His joints ached, his muscles weakened. He was aging. Fast. He was living years in seconds.
"Hero!" Medusa's cry was high-pitched, accelerated. She, too, was aging—heroic skin was growing dull, the snakes on her head were becoming limp.
He tried to run, to escape the zone. But his legs no longer obeyed him—old, weak. He fell to his knees, his hands trembling.
Eighty years. Ninety. A hundred.
His heart gave out. It stopped.
Darkness.
Inhale.
The hero woke up at the beginning of the bridge. Young. Whole. But the memory of old age remained—an ache in his bones, weakness, the feeling of his body disintegrating from within.
Medusa lay nearby, also resurrected. She looked at her hands, clenching and unclenching her fingers.
"I was... old," she whispered. "I felt like I was dying of old age."
"The time acceleration zone," the hero said, rising. "We need to go around it."
They retreated, walking along the edge of the platform, searching for another way. They found a narrow passage between two gears—dangerous, the teeth passing close, but seemingly safe in terms of time.
They squeezed through. The gears turned slowly but inexorably. One false step and they would be sucked in, ground to pieces.
The hero went first, carefully, pressing against the wall. Medusa followed, holding her trident horizontally to avoid snagging.
They had almost passed when the gear twitched, accelerating.
Medusa didn't have time to react. The teeth caught her cloak and tugged.
"Hero!"
He turned, grabbed her hand, and yanked her toward him. The cloak tore, remaining on the gear, pulled in and torn to shreds.
They collapsed on the other side, out of breath.
"Thank you," Medusa breathed.
"Always."
They moved on. Platform after platform, bridge after bridge. A labyrinth of metal and time.
Suddenly, they entered a deceleration zone.
The hero walked, but each step stretched out into minutes. The air became thick as water, resisting his movement. He saw the pendulum swinging ahead, approaching him. Slowly. Unbearably slowly.
He tried to retreat, but his body wouldn't obey. His movements were viscous, as if he were in a stream.
The pendulum approached. A huge bronze weight, about five meters in diameter. The hero saw every scratch on the metal, every detail, as it approached, centimeter by centimeter.
He couldn't dodge.
The pendulum struck.
The pain was instantaneous, despite the slowdown. His body was torn in half, blood slowly leaking out, his insides slowly falling out.
He saw his death, stretched out over minutes. Consciousness faded just as slowly.
Finally—darkness.
Resurrection.
Medusa was nearby, also awakened. She had died from the same pendulum.
"I hate this place," she hissed.
"Me too," the hero muttered.
They circled the slowdown zone, finding a way around it. But each new section brought new dangers.
In one zone, the hero saw himself.
Or rather, his copy. She was walking ahead, about ten meters. The same tattered clothing, the same gait. He sped up, wanting to catch up.
The copy turned around. The face was his, but distorted, old. Or young? It was hard to tell. She looked at him, smiled—eerily, empty—and stepped between the gears.
It was drawn in, ground down.
The hero stopped, shocked. Was it him? From the past? The future? Another timeline?
"Don't think about it," Medusa said, tugging at his hand. "Time is broken here. Don't try to understand."
They continued walking.
The wound on the hero's hand opened before he cut himself. Blood flowed, and he looked—the skin was intact. A second later, he caught on the sharp edge of a gear, and the wound appeared physically. Time was jumbled, the effect preceded the cause.
Medusa ran for a minute, but only covered a meter. Then she walked slowly, but covered a hundred meters in a second.
The disorientation was complete. It was impossible to predict what would happen next. The sound of ticking, striking, and grinding gears became unbearable. The hero felt his mind begin to slip, losing its grip on reality.
Then they saw them.
The watchmakers.
Humanoid figures of bronze and steel, mechanical but with a semblance of intelligence. They moved jerkily, like a broken clock—a moment of stillness, then a sharp jerk forward, then stillness again.
They held enormous keys in their hands—the size of a man, sharp and heavy. A weapon and a tool all in one.
One watchmaker noticed the hero and Medusa. His head jerked around, clicking. His eyes—clock faces—stared at them.
A jerk. He was a meter away from the hero. The key flew up.
The hero rolled back, drawing his dagger. The watchmaker froze for a second, then swung. The hero parried, metal clanging on metal.
Medusa attacked from the side, her trident piercing the watchmaker's back. The mechanism hissed, steam escaping from its joints. But the watchmaker didn't stop. He spun around, slamming the key down. Medusa flew off, hitting a gear.
The hero leaped onto the watchmaker's back, plunging the dagger into his neck where the gears met. He twisted it, as if opening a lock.
Something clicked. The watchmaker froze, then collapsed, the parts scattering.
Medusa rose, clutching her side.
"We need to leave before the others arrive."
Indeed. Three more watchmakers approached, moving jerkily, keys at the ready.
"Let's run," the hero decided.
They ran, weaving between the gears, dodging the pendulums. The watchmakers pursued, but their jerky movements were unpredictable—sometimes they were far behind, sometimes they caught up instantly.
One caught up with Medusa, the key piercing her back and exiting her chest. She screamed and fell.
The hero turned and attacked. The dagger plunged into the eye-dial, a twist. The watchmaker collapsed.
But Medusa was already dead. Blood spread across the metal.
The second watchmaker struck the hero from behind. The key crushed his skull.
Darkness.
Resurrection.
They ran again, choosing a different path. They died again. They resurrected. They learned.
They understood that the watchmakers could be tricked—they reacted to movement, but in the slow-time zones, they lost their target.
They exploited this. They lured one into the slow-time zone, the watchmaker got stuck, his movements became unbearably slow. They walked around him while he was trying to turn.
They found other travelers.
The woman stood on the platform, took a step forward, backed up, took the same step. Over and over. A time loop. She was stuck repeating the same action forever.
The hero tried to call out to her. She didn't respond. She simply continued pacing back and forth, her face blank and her eyes glassy.
"We can't help her," Medusa said quietly.
The hero nodded. They passed by.
They found another man—a man falling endlessly. He stepped off the edge of the platform, falling down, but time looped. He fell forever, never reaching the bottom, never dying. Just falling, screaming silently.
"The Dungeon breaks not only bodies," Medusa whispered. "But time too. Reality."
The hero squeezed her hand.
"I won't let you get stuck here. I promise."
She squeezed back.
"And I will for you."
They continued, helping each other, pulling each other out of the Zones whenever one of them started to get stuck.
Finally, after countless deaths, Zones, and Clockworkers, they saw it.
The Arch. Stone, simple, untouched by mechanisms. Beyond it, silence. True silence, without a tick.
999 988.
They reached the archway and stepped through.
The sound stopped instantly. The ticking, the grinding, the chimes—all vanished.
The Hero and Medusa stood in silence, disbelieving. Their ears rang from the sudden absence of noise.
"Are we... out?" Medusa whispered.
The hero nodded. He looked back—the mechanism continued to spin, but here, beyond the arch, there was only peace.
They sank to the floor, leaning against each other. Exhausted, covered in oil, wounds, but alive.
"How many times did we die there?" Medusa asked.
"I didn't count," the hero replied. "Many."
She laughed wearily.
"I didn't count either. But I feel every one." She touched her chest. "Here. All the deaths. All the pain."
The hero nodded. He understood. The collection of agony grew with each floor.
"Let's rest a bit," he said.
"Good idea."
They sat in silence, simply enjoying the absence of chaos, of time as an enemy, a mechanical nightmare.
The dungeon awaited ahead.
But now—there was silence.
And it was beautiful.