WHITE FLAKES FLOATED DOWN FROM THE SKY, PRICKING HIS SKIN LIKE NEEDLES AS THEY LANDED. 

It never snowed on Arkos.

Hunched over on a narrow balcony, Mori watched them fall. He didn't know how long he'd been there for. The smog-cloaked sky had darkened, and the streets were shrouded in twilight.

I should have stayed.

It felt so unfair. He would have if only Ren had given him the choice. Stayed and let someone else take his place, stayed and laboured at the collapsing tower a little longer. Anything to avoid ending up here like this.

He wanted to be angry at her. But somehow, he couldn't. He remembered with crystal clarity the mechanism rattling, flying out from the gear train he'd just attempted to fix. He knew if Ren had repaired the defect, none of this would have happened.

But she'd trusted him, and he'd screwed it up, and Arkos was gone because of it—

His head dipped between his knees, taking deep, quick breaths to quell the nausea rising from his stomach. As it curdled within him, he realised it wasn't nausea but hatred, not for Ren or anyone else but himself. Hating that he was here, safe on Dysis, safe from the consequences of the disaster he'd caused while the rest of the world crumbled.

The door slid open. Mori glanced up, hopeful and terrified it might be Ren. But Argent stepped outside, breath ghosting through the cool air.

He jumped when he saw Mori. "What on—have you been out here this whole time?" he said. "I thought you'd gone out with Ren."

Mori frowned. "She's gone?"

"She left a couple of hours ago." Argent took him by the arm and tugged him to his feet. "Said there was something she needed to check out."

Mori almost laughed. It was like they'd never left Arkos.

Argent directed Mori to the sofa and disappeared to the small kitchenette in the corner. He returned a few minutes later and pushed a cup into Mori's numb hands. "Here. Drink this."

"What's in it?"

"Mist leaf tea," Argent said. "Should help to settle your thoughts."

"I'm fine," Mori said.

Argent smiled. "Sure, sure. Well, at the very least, it'll warm you up a little."

Black, needle-like leaves swirled at the bottom of the cup, staining the liquid amber, then dark mahogany. Bitter steam warmed Mori's face. He leaned in without thinking, letting the gentle heat wash over his face. The scent was eerily evocative of a time he'd long forgotten, before he became a clockmaker. It was the gentle touch on his shoulder after a hard day, words of reassurance.

Unbidden, a smile fluttered at the edge of his mouth. He looked up and caught Argent watching him, his mouth quirking.

Mori scowled and looked away. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Argent said, folding his arms behind his head. "I never got your name."

"Mori," he said.

Argent nodded. "It's funny. Of all the clockmakers, Ren was the last I'd expected to take on an apprentice. You must be something pretty special."

Mori tensed. "Not really," he muttered. "She just needed someone to look after the tower while she's working on something."

"Oh?" Interest glimmered in his eyes. "Any idea what she's working on?"

Mori shrugged. "She hardly stuck around to explain anything."

"Pretty standard fare for Ren, to be honest." Argent leaned forward, a finger curled against his lips. "She's been working with Suria on something for a while now. I've no idea what. But things have been getting weird recently, and I don't know if they're connected." His eyes flicked up to meet Mori's. "You jumping towers, for one. Was that Ren's work?"

Mori hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't think so. We had this timepiece. Some strange girl gave it to us."

"Strange? How so?"

"I don't know," Mori said. "She didn't look like she was from Arkos. And she had some—" he gestured to his throat — "flower thing going on over here."

"The traveller?" Argent murmured. "That's very interesting."

"You said she was missing earlier, didn't you?" Mori said. 

Argent smiled. "Perceptive, I like it. She normally visits every few days. That's how we share information across the grand system, seeing as we can't move between worlds like she can. But nobody has heard from her recently."

"Maybe Ren's been looking for her?" Mori said. "That would explain why she's been away all this time."

"That's probably part of it," Argent said. "But from what I've gathered, Ren's work was more involved with the deeper parts of the system. Its background, purpose...heavy stuff like that."

Mori nodded slowly. "She was doing a lot of research on the towers..."

Argent looked at him, and again there was that flicker of interest in his expression. "What do you mean?"

Mori reached down and burrowed around in his satchel. Ren's notebook was still tucked inside. He opened the book to a random page. Neatly sketched out on the sheet lay a schematic of the Tower of Clouds, rendered in such detail that for a moment Mori thought he was back on Arkos.

"Ren drew this?" Argent breathed. "Incredible."

Mori flipped through the next few pages. He hadn't given it much thought last time he'd looked through it, but now the level of detail astounded him. Ren had divided the system into sections, each meticulously annotated. The exact size and shape of each component, how it related to its section, how the section related to the system. Mori shook his head, turning the page. How long had this taken?

The drawing overleaf was smaller in scale. It looked like a timepiece, but it took Mori a while to figure out what it was supposed to do; it was so different to the ones he usually made. A regular timepiece would capture latent energy from the tower and expend it in a single burst when wound.

But this...

Mori shook his head. This timepiece was designed to store energy and release it in a constant stream. The jewels in the system could be modified to match the power signal of any tower on the system.

"It's an energy source," Mori muttered. "For a tower."

Argent shook his head, staring incredulously at the diagram. "Why was she even thinking about something like this..."

Mori looked up at Argent. His mouth was dry. "Do you think we could use this to recreate Arkos?"

"I think," Argent said, "you might be overestimating our abilities a little here. You can't just build a clock tower. That's far beyond anything we're capable of."

"I..." Mori's grip tightened around the cup. "I can't let the world fall and not do anything about it."

Argent sighed sympathetically and got to his feet.

"Listen, Mori," he said. "If Ren thought this would work, she would have started building it by now. I know you're cut up about the tower. But something like this..." he shook his head. "Forget it. It can't be done."