The Perpetual Motion Machine Express building trembled, as though the world itself were shaking.
Then Kira noticed ripples spreading across the metal walls around him. Cold wind carrying the smell of rust poured from the ceiling vents. The lights overhead went out one by one, and the lampshades drooped like melting wax, evaporating into brilliant blue motes in midair.
The metal patterns on the floor began rotating counterclockwise, while the rebar embedded in the concrete let out the dying shriek of tortured metal. Even the clouds beyond the windows seemed frozen in that instant, as the entire space collapsed like a torn-apart jigsaw puzzle.
Clark's face filled with despair.
"No! Don't!"
As though he had realized something, he began screaming in desperation, flailing wildly through the distorted space.
Strange visions flashed before his eyes as countless figures appeared amid the warped space. He even saw himself—himself from three minutes ago. His phantom from three minutes earlier was entering an unlock code for Godwin at the console, but now that lingering image had appeared and was being erased from the feet upward by an invisible eraser.
Then the same thing began happening to him.
As the gatekeeper of the Time Machine, Clark might have been nothing more than a low-ranking pawn under Iliaster, but he knew perfectly well what was happening.
He was being erased!
He was not being killed, nor executed. Someone was manipulating history to erase his very existence from the river of time!
"Don't! Save me! Save meeeee!"
Right before Kira's eyes, Clark vanished.
Then the entire building followed.
It all happened in an instant. Everything within the building—the Time Machine before him, the control console, the reinforced concrete walls, the entire structure—seemed to be erased from the void, vanishing into thin air before Kira's eyes.
Silent Magician's