"Jinhsi, are you alright? Did you push yourself too hard?"
After carving out a safe zone free from the temporal distortion for Mount Firmament's residents, Changli turned to Jinhsi with open concern. But the younger woman shook her head, her expression unchanged.
"I'm fine, Changli."
"You are not fine. I know what your abilities can handle. Freeing that many people from the time currents, then stabilizing an entire area on top of it? That's past the limit of your Forte."
Changli's brow creased. Every person pulled free of stasis meant absorbing a share of that stasis yourself. The frozen time of over a hundred Mount Firmament residents now rested squarely on Jinhsi's shoulders. And carving a pocket of calm out of the raging temporal storm demanded a cost beyond imagination. Even as the Sentinel's Resonator, she shouldn't have been able to bear it.
Worse still, Jinhsi's power was bound to the Sentinel's. With the Sentinel critically wounded, her own Resonance would be diminished.
Her lifespan had to have been cut short already.
Changli was the kind of person who'd throw her own life onto the scales without hesitation for the sake of duty. She'd come to Mount Firmament fully prepared to lose decades more, or die outright. But she refused to watch her student pay the same price.
Jinhsi shook her head again, her gaze drifting to Rover, who was chatting easily with Xinyi as though nothing weighed on him at all. Admiration and gratitude flickered across her face.
"He shouldered most of the burden for me."
"...What?"
"More than most. Nearly all of it. I was bracing myself for Overclocking when he took my share along with his own. He's... extraordinary."
Changli stared at the dark-haired young man. He moved so lightly, showed so little strain, that it had never crossed her mind he'd done something on that scale. The ease of it had fooled her completely.
Meanwhile, the freed residents of Mount Firmament shared what they knew of the Sentinel's fate.
"It was Fractsidus!" Xinyi's voice sharpened. "They used ancient devices called Chronosorters, invented by the Court of Savantae, to ambush the Sentinel!"
"Chronosorters?" Jinhsi repeated.
"Yes. They only function here on Mount Firmament, within the reach of the Sentinel's Temporal Mandate. The Court of Savantae designed them to manipulate the flow of time in a limited area. The effect is modest under normal circumstances. But those criminals stormed the mountain not long ago, provoked the Sentinel into revealing herself, and then overloaded dozens of modified Chronosorters all at once. They hijacked the Sentinel's own Temporal Mandate, turned it against her. The Sentinel's power devoured itself!"
Had the Sentinel been at full strength... no, had she been in anything but the worst possible condition, such a crude trick would have been meaningless. But Jué had been wounded for centuries, and the damage had only deepened with time.
That sliver of weakness was all Fractsidus needed.
Wounded further by the backlash, Jué had no choice but to retreat to the Mianloong Chamber to heal. And that was exactly what Fractsidus had been waiting for.
Even crippled, the Sentinel was far beyond anything they could fight directly. But the Mianloong Chamber, the chamber where the Sentinel slept, could be turned into a prison. It was the vessel through which the Sentinel had descended into this world, built by the same higher civilization the Sentinel hailed from. It could hold even her.
"Jinhsi, Changli, and you, Sir Rover." Xinyi's gaze swept across the three of them, worry etched into every line. "I know you've come to save the Sentinel. But please, be honest with us. What are your chances?"
The crowd pressed closer, tension running through them like a wire pulled taut.
In all of Jinzhou, no place held deeper faith in the Sentinel than this mountain. Mount Firmament was where Jué had descended, the land sheltered beneath divine power for centuries. The people here had long since ceased to regard the Sentinel as a mere guardian.
To them, Jué was a true god.
They'd carved an entire mountain in her image.
"Everyone, please be at ease." Jinhsi placed a hand over her heart. "If I perform a Second Awakening with the Sentinel, the one who carries a portion of her power... me... then the wounds that have plagued the Sentinel for a hundred years can be healed."
The words fell into silence. One by one, the faces of Xinyi and the mountain's people twisted with anguish. They understood what she wasn't saying.
The risk wasn't the Sentinel's.
It was Jinhsi's.
Calling it nine chances of death out of ten would have been generous.
The crowd wavered.
The Sentinel was their god. But Jinhsi was Jinzhou's Magistrate, and more than that, she was a child born on this mountain. Choosing between the two was something they could not do.
But Jinhsi had already accepted the path ahead.
"Please, no more arguments. My mind is made up. If this is the only way, then I won't run from it. The Norfall Barrens front is locked in battle with a Threnodian as we speak. Jinzhou needs the Sentinel's power. And if the Sentinel recovers, the temporal storm over Mount Firmament will settle too. One act, two salvations. There's a chance of success, which means this isn't a death march. I'm going to fight for Jinzhou's future and protect the home I love. I have no reason to retreat."
She smiled at them, her eyes clear and certain.
"Besides. Perhaps this was always meant to be."
Memory reached back across the years.
Over a decade ago, when Tacet Discords ran rampant and Jinzhou teetered on the edge of collapse, a peasant woman had fled the chaos with a newborn clutched to her chest. She'd hidden in the ruins of a barren hillside, but the Tacet Discord Tide found her, swarming until there was nowhere left to run. All the mother could do was shield her child with her own body, praying her death might buy her flesh and blood a chance to live.
But when the mother died, her baby had no hope of surviving either.
The infant wailed over its mother's body, a single cry of grief.
And that cry carried a hundred miles, all the way to the Sentinel's ears. Jué descended in an instant, annihilating every Tacet Discord with a sweep of divine power. But it was too late. The baby was already dead.
That night, a dragon's roar split the heavens above Mount Firmament.
The Sentinel took the dead child and soared into the sky.
Time reversed. Rivers ran backward. Stars wheeled in their courses. For seven days and seven nights the impossible unfolded, until at last, the dead infant drew breath again.
That child grew into the Sentinel's Resonator. The Magistrate of Jinzhou.
Jinhsi.
"Perhaps the Sentinel foresaw this day from the moment she saved me," she said softly. "Whether her purpose was for me to one day perform the Second Awakening and restore her power, or whether it was pure compassion for a fading life, I believe it was a warm and powerful choice. The Sentinel gave me my life. Mount Firmament is my home. And I am Jinzhou's Magistrate. The Second Awakening is dangerous, yes. But if it succeeds, it saves the Sentinel, saves the mountain, and saves Jinzhou. I have no right to run. This is my duty and my wish."
Her gaze rested on Xinyi, warm and unwavering. This woman was one of many who had raised her. After her mother's death, after the Sentinel breathed life back into her, she'd been taken in by the people of Jinzhou.
This city was her family. Her home.
She was Jinhsi. The "Jin" of Jinzhou.
Xinyi and the mountain folk stared at her, struck silent. In that moment they realized the girl the Sentinel had carried home all those years ago had grown into someone who bore the weight of an entire city's future on her shoulders. Pride and heartache tangled together in their chests.
"Then, Jinhsi... whatever the outcome, we face it with you." Xinyi's voice was gentle, a mother's tenderness woven through every word.
"Thank you. Then let's not waste another moment."
Jinhsi turned to Rover and Changli.
And in that instant, her vision blurred.
Something shifted inside her mind, like a hidden compartment in a box of memories clicking open. Images surfaced, familiar and foreign at once. The Sentinel had been the one to resurrect her, yes. But why, in this sudden flash, did she glimpse someone standing beside Jué on that day?
Hair dark as the night sky, and eyes the color of gold dawn...
"Jinhsi? Jinhsi, are you alright?"
"Was it too much after all?"
Her vision cleared. Rover and Changli were watching her with concern. Her gaze locked onto him, and she couldn't look away. The figure from her memory and the young man before her overlapped.
She reached out and pressed her palm to his face.
"Hm?"
Rover blinked. Jinhsi's hand rested against his cheek, her expression caught between intensity and a kind of dazed wonder, studying him as if trying to match a half-remembered dream to something real.
Changli cleared her throat. "Jinhsi, our Rover is certainly handsome, but the Magistrate might want to mind her image."
Around them, the residents of Mount Firmament broke into knowing smiles.
"Sir Rover, what do you think of our Jinhsi?"
"Heh, once this is all over, we'll have to arrange a proper celebration."
"Well, our Magistrate is certainly at that age..."
"...!"
The realization of what she was doing crashed over Jinhsi all at once. Her pale face flushed scarlet and she snatched her hand back as if burned. Glittering Dragon Scales bloomed across her cheeks, each one flushed the same deep red.
"I'm... I'm sorry, that was terribly rude of me."
"It's fine." He grinned. "And you know, a moment ago when you were making that speech, you looked really cool. But right now? You're adorable."
"A... adorable..."
A few more Dragon Scales shimmered into existence.
But this wasn't the time. Out on the Norfall Barrens, people were still fighting and dying. And despite how effortless Rover made everything look, the truth was that maintaining Changli's temporal balance, freeing the frozen residents, and establishing the safe zone had all taken their toll.
Even he was feeling the edges of fatigue.
His smile didn't waver, though. A Rover couldn't afford to look weak.
"The Sentinel's Mianloong Chamber is protected by layers of mechanisms built by the Court of Savantae," Xinyi told them. "They've all been activated. You'll likely need considerable time to solve the puzzles guarding the entrance."
"Court of Savantae mechanisms?" Rover shrugged. "That shouldn't be a problem."
The three of them made their way to the Mianloong Chamber. When Jinhsi and Changli saw the entrance sealed behind ancient but formidable locks, both momentarily at a loss for how to proceed, Rover walked up to the door.
"Open."
One word, spoken without inflection.
[Identity confirmed. Welcome, Collaborator.]
Under two pairs of astonished eyes, every mechanism the Court of Savantae had set unlocked itself in sequence. The sealed path fell open, unobstructed.