The ashy streets eventually bled into the shadow of a monolithic structure; the Old Clocktower that Ioris ever stepped there. It stood like a stone sentinel over the decaying district, its surface frozen at an hour long since passed. This was Ioris's sanctum of cold thought, where the air was thick with scent of rusted iron and stagnant time.
As they ascended the spiral stone stairs, the city's roar faded into a rhythmic, skeletal clicking of internal gears that refused to die. "Claire is not just a ghost in the machine anymore, is she?" From here, the city looked like a sprawling graveyard of ambition. "She was never a ghost," Ioris replied, placing a hand against the banisters. "She was the only part of the mechanism that was still human." Ioris looked through. "You didn't bring me here just to look at the view," Thitta remarked.
"You brought me here because you've decided which part of the city needs to be ruined to get her out." Ioris turned "This city's already chaotic, we know. It's ruining itself before I even get to do so." Ioris pulled a silver case from his coat, the click of the latch echoing against the ancient stone. He offered one to Thitta, then lit his own. The small, orange ember was a lonely spark against the vast, gray desolation of the city. "Why should I soil my hands to break a mechanism that is already grinding itself into dust? It is an exercise in futility— a squandering of time we do not possess."
Ioris leaned against a stone pillar, the shadow eclipsing half of his face as he watched the smoke curl and vanish into the freezing air.
"Would you give me a hand if I were about to fall from a cliff?" Ioris asked, his voice deceptively light, though the weight of the question lingered in the air. Thitta didn't blink. She leaned back against a rusted support beam, crossing her arms with a bored sigh. "Depends," she remarked, inspecting her nails with agonizing indifference. "You might be falling because of being an idiot. I might just take a photo for the archives before I consider helping." Ioris let out a dry, breathy chuckle, the tension in his jaw finally fracturing. "You'd let me hit the rocks just for a bit of blackmail material?", "Oh, absolutely. Ioris looking like a confused bird? That's worth a fortune," she retorted, a sharp, playful glint in her eyes. Then, her tone dropped an octave, the mockery softening into something more sincere. "Jokes aside, I suppose I'd catch you. Mostly because I don't feel like finding a new partner-in-crime." Ioris shook his head. "It's a wonder that I haven't put you aside yet.", "You can't toss me away just like that, Ioris. Such a douchebag." she shot back, stepping closer and giving his shoulder a firm, grounding shove. "Yeah, if I do fall, I'm dragging you down with me.", "Typical," she muttered, already heading for the stairs. "Always wanting to share the spotlight."
They stood in the silence of dying embers, smoke from their cigarettes mingling with the frigid air. The conversation drifted, shifting from the petty squalor of the dealer to the grander, colder machinery of the world they occupied. "It's fascinating," Ioris remarked, his gaze fixed on the horizon where his own country lay— a place of iron-fisted governance and suffocating tradition. "Ones that are here are still bound by the old strings. They obey because they have no other choice; freedom is a phantom, and the Highly's word is the only law that breathes; a world of rigid obedience, where individuals are but a cog in a rusting machine."
Thitta let out a soft, dismissive hum, her smoke forming a halo in the gray light. "Seems a bit primitive, don't you think? To rule through fear and old decrees is exhausting. While mine, the leash is much longer, but far more secure." She began to describe her domain—a country where liberty was the currency, yet she was the one who controlled the mint. She spoke of how she effortlessly steered the nation's course, not by sitting on a throne, but by offering her "guidance" to the government. She was the architect of their industrial blooms.
The invisible hand behind their national budgets, and the silent partner to every major conglomerate. "So, for me," Thitta continued, her voice laced with a sharp, casual brilliance, "I make the people there believe they are free 'cause I don't need to command them. I simply adjust the capital, refine the industries, and provide them that are too inept to manage on their own." Ioris watched her, a flicker of grim respect in his eyes. Since lived in a world where the government held the power; she lived in a world where she allowed the government to believe they did. "You've turned influence into an art form," he murmured. "While here they fear, yours simply pay the toll you've set for them."
Thitta leaned against the weathered stone of the belfry, her silhouette a sharp, dark inkblot against the graying sky. She didn't look at Ioris; her gaze remained fixed upon the horizon, watching the smog of the city drift like the ghosts of a thousand failed ambitions. "To rule is a heavy, unsightly thing, Ioris. It requires a theater of crowns and the hollow rattling of chains— things I find quite tedious," she murmured, her voice is a low, cold current that seemed to whistle through the cracks in the masonry. There was no pride shown in tone.
She exhaled a plume of smoke, watching it dissipate into the freezing void. "I merely sustain it, ensuring the essentials flow so the entire mechanism doesn't succumb to its own rot. If I were to stop, it would simply cease to turn. I must keep the State's lungs moving." Ioris stood in the shadow of the great bells, watching her.
The air in the belfry had grown stale, the smoke of their conversation lingering long after the cigarettes had turned to ash. Nearly an hour had slipped through the gears of the great clock behind them. The sun had shifted, casting longer, sharper shadows across the masonry, but the weight in the room hadn't lifted. Thitta stood by the open stone archway, her gaze fixed on a point far beyond the city's edge. "Last month, they vanished my mother," she began, her voice devoid of its usual melodic bite. It was flat, a low vibration that seemed to seep from the marrow of her bones.
"I was prepared to risk the entirety of my world to pull her from their hands. But by the time I learned the truth of what they had done, it was already beyond the reach of my security." Ioris felt a cold shock bloom in his chest— a rare, staggering sensation of being completely blindsided. He had known Thitta for years, had mapped the contours of her mind like a grand strategist, and yet this was a cavern of grief he hadn't known existed. He looked at her, searching for the tell-tale signs of a breakdown, the trembling hands, the tear-stained cheeks— but found only a hollow stillness.
Ioris remained motionless in the tower. He didn't offer the shallow comfort of a hand to hold or a consolation. In their world, to acknowledge the wound too early was to let the blood ruin the suit. He simply waited, he allowed her the space to exist in her own wreckage. "For days after, remorse was a haunting thing. I wanted to vanish myself, to slip into that same silence and let it grind on without me— not until I realized," She took a slow, deliberate drag of her cigarette, the ember glowing like a dying star. "That would be their final victory. To have me lose what I've kept within my palm just because they struck at a nerve I forgot I had."
Ioris watched her, his expression a monolith of marble. He understood her grief because it was built of the same stone as his own. If he offered her softness now, she would shatter. To keep her whole, he had to keep her sharp. "The dead do not keep ledgers,", "You know they didn't just want your mother; they wanted your collapse." said Ioris. "I will not give them the satisfaction of my collapse. I will hold the world in my hand until my knuckles turn white, if only to ensure they never see me fall." Thitta replied. The shadows had stretched long across the masonry, the gears of the clock behind them grinding out the final remnants of an hour. The air was thick with the scent of old dust and the bitter sediment of their conversation. Thitta stood with her back to the archway, her posture as rigid as the stone.
"How do you manage to keep it up?" Ioris asked, his voice cutting through the heavy silence. He didn't ask out of concern, but out of a need to understand his partner-in-crime before they stepped into the fray. Thitta flicked the last of her ash into the abyss below. "It isn't fortitude, Ioris."
"It's a lack of alternatives. If I fall apart, the machinery stops, and if the machinery stops, they win,", "Every breath I take is a refusal to let them win. To keep steady is simply a matter of logistics."
"If I allow my palm to open, everything I've built spills out. I stay steady because I have no interest in being a casualty of my own grief." Ioris offered a subtle, slow nod. He didn't try to soften the reality of her words, but to understand. To him, her logic was a barrier— transparent yet impenetrable.
"A pragmatic conclusion," he murmured. He adjusted the cuff of his glove, shifting the weight of the atmosphere back toward their objective. "Then let us return to the matter at hand. Claire. She is the loose thread in this tapestry." The mention of Claire acted as a cold anchor, pulling the conversation away from the shadows of the past and back into the sharp light of the present.
"He believes he is the one dictating the terms," Ioris added, his eyes narrowing as he looked toward the smog-filled horizon. Thitta let out a short, sharp breath— not quite a laugh. "Then we should probably get him under our control,"
"and— I've spent enough time in this tower. The air up here is getting too thin for my liking." She straightened her coat. "Show me, Ioris," she said, her gaze now lethal and focused. "If you're capable enough to entertain me." Ioris moved toward the spiral stairs, his silhouette a sharp, dark line against the gray light. "I hope you're not underestimating me." Ioris replied, his voice echoing down into the darkness of the descent.
Thitta took a final, slow breath of the biting air. She straightened her coat, the hollow look in her eyes receding behind a familiar, impenetrable wall of indifference. She didn't need him to tell her it was okay or it was too tough for her that the world really treat her harsh, no. She never wanted to be seem as weak. She only needed him to be there.