The brass vein screamed behind them like Eleanor's final breath dragged across broken glass. Reg and Isabella sprinted through Southwark's twisting alleys, new power from Clara's stolen echo burning in their separate chests. Reg's gold half-gear pulled him forward with greedy hunger; Isabella's crimson half mapped every crack in the cobblestones three seconds before their feet touched them. The ground shuddered. The vein burst through another wall, thicker now, ribs pulsing with stolen centuries, spraying black blood that aged brick to dust on contact.
"Faster!" Isabella shouted. Her knife was gone, lost in the street fight, but she didn't need it. The crimson gear inside her ribs sang directions left at the gin house, right under the hanging sign every path leading inexorably toward the Cathedral spire that clawed above the fog like a broken bone.
Reg's aged legs should have failed him. Fifteen stolen years weighed heavy, yet the gold half pushed him harder, faster, as though punishing him for every second he had ever wasted on opium and regret. "It's calling us," he panted. "Both halves. They want to be whole again inside the God."
They felt it at the same moment the pull. A magnetic ache deep in their chests. The split gears were singing across the city, gold to crimson, crimson to gold, a duet that made their separate heartbeats stutter in rhythm. Reg's hand brushed Isabella's as they ran. The touch sparked like live wire. For one heartbeat they were fused again, memories flashing: her shadow screaming, his father's smile, Eleanor's empty bed. Then the gears tore apart once more, the pain sharper than any syringe.
The Cathedral loomed at the end of the wide square marble white as bleached bone, clock faces carved into every pillar, each hand frozen at thirteen. Gas lamps around the square burned backwards, flames licking downward into the stone. Reversed bells tolled from the towers, each chime peeling years off the surrounding buildings. Windows aged and shattered. A beggar on the steps turned to dust mid-prayer.
They skidded to a stop at the massive doors. No guards. No enforcers. The Cathedral wanted them. Needed them.
Reg pressed his palm to the gold-veined wood. It aged a century under his touch, hinges groaning open on their own. "This is it. The heart. We walk in together, we walk out with the Bishop's head, or we don't walk out at all."
Isabella hesitated one single second, but Reg felt it like a knife. Her crimson half-gear flared brighter beneath her ribs, pulling her forward even as her steel eyes flickered with something he hadn't seen before: doubt. Longing. The anchor calling its daughter home.
"You feel it too," she whispered. "The God knows my blood. It's whispering promises. Freedom from debt. Power without guilt. A world where no one has to bleed seconds again… if I just stay."
Reg's gold half surged in jealous fury. "Stay? After everything? After Clara? After Eleanor's lie? You're the one who said we break the chain together."
"I know what I said." Isabella stepped closer, voice dropping. "But inside these walls my bloodline sings louder than yours. The original anchor. The first vessel. It wants me back, Reg. It's showing me futures where I rule beside the Bishop where we rule. Where you live free."
The revelation hit him like the vein that still chased them. She had seen the same visions he had in the sewer, but hers carried the pull of blood. Of belonging. The gears were not just calling to each other they were calling her to choose the God over him.
Before he could answer, the doors swung wide. Inside, the nave stretched like a living ribcage. Marble pillars pulsed with brass veins. The air tasted of blood and clock oil. Reversed choirs sang from hidden balconies hundreds of voices chanting backwards, each note ageing the stained-glass saints until they crumbled into sand. At the far end, an altar of pure brass beat like a heart. The Bishop stood before it, robes open, chest bare, his own stolen years pulsing visibly under his skin.
Ambrose smiled. "Welcome home, my children. The God is almost awake. One more thread and it will be free. Your thread, Isabella. Your blood."
The chasing vein exploded through the doors behind them, slamming shut with a boom that shook the towers. It coiled around the pillars, waiting.
Reg's gold gear screamed for theft for the Bishop's centuries, for the God's own heart. But he looked at Isabella and saw the war inside her: the independent rebel he had fought beside versus the bloodline daughter the Cathedral had been waiting for since 1789.
"Choose now," the Bishop called softly. "Stay with me and rule eternity. Or fight me and watch the century die while the woman you love becomes its new vessel."
Isabella's hand brushed Reg's again. The gears sang louder, desperate to fuse. But her crimson half pulled her one step toward the altar.
Reg felt the first real fracture not of the gear, but of trust.
The vein behind them tightened like a noose around the entire Cathedral.
And the Unseen Clock opened one vast, bleeding eye above the altar, staring straight at Isabella.