The ancient manor loomed in the mist-shrouded mountains like a slumbering beast. Its towering walls, weathered by time and veined with creeping ivy, exuded an eerie stillness. The wrought-iron gates stood shut, adorned with faded runes that pulsed with a low, unsettling energy.
Lin Xiaoxia and Xu Yuan approached cautiously. The air hummed with a familiar but far more oppressive force—the same temporal distortion they’d felt in the abandoned factory, but denser, heavier, as if time itself had congealed here.
Under cover of darkness, they scaled the walls and slipped into the overgrown grounds. The estate was a graveyard of neglect—collapsed outbuildings, gardens strangled by weeds—yet a faint glow emanated from the main house.
They moved like shadows, avoiding the patrolling guards. The layout was a labyrinth, every path twisting back on itself, every structure a decoy.
In a derelict courtyard, they stumbled upon remnants of something darker: a ritual site.
Scorched symbols scarred the earth. Animal bones—or were they human?—lay scattered in the ash. Lin Xiaoxia’s throat tightened. The Silver Family’s experiments were far more sinister than she’d imagined.
The main house awaited.
Shuttered windows. A door that shouldn’t have been unlocked—yet yielded at Xu Yuan’s touch, as if expecting him.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of aged wood and something metallic. Portraits lined the halls—generations of cold-eyed ancestors, each wearing the silver ring. Their stares seemed to track the intruders.
Room after room revealed nothing. Then—
The chamber of clocks.
Dozens of timepieces, frozen at the same unnatural hour.
Xu Yuan’s breath hitched. Fragments rushed back: His grandfather’s voice. "Time is not a river—it’s a maze. And we are its keepers."
Then—
A deep chime.
The grand pendulum clock shuddered to life, its hands creeping toward a hidden seam in the wall.
Stone scraped against stone.
The doorway to the maze’s heart stood open.
Lin Xiaoxia reached for Xu Yuan’s hand. His fingers were ice.
"This is where we find the truth," she whispered.
"Or where it finds us," he replied.
Together, they stepped into the dark.
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