Travelling through The Tower was almost laughably easy. The elevator that was damaged when Nadier escaped had yet to be repaired, which made the entire shaft free for their movement. Following Nadier's instruction, Adelaide teleported the trio up to the twentieth floor through the elevator line, which lead them to a long corridor that seemingly circled on itself. The ceiling was three times their height and designed in an arc, making The Watcher feel as if the walls were collapsing in on them.

Guards patrolled the level in random intervals and directions, but with a few well timed temporal manipulation from The Watcher, they got through the blockade with literal whistling and hands in their pockets. They passed by multiple doors lining the outside walls of the corridor until they reached the opposite end from the elevator where a double wood door stood mirrored on the inside. Nadier stopped with his hand on the knob, just before entering.

“What's wrong?” The Watcher asked. “You left the oven on or something?”

The dark elf replied solemnly, “I don't really have great emotional attachments about this room.”

Adelaide jabbed sarcastically, “Compared to your normal emotional attachments about people.”

Without any further explanation, he pushed opened the door and disappeared within. Adelaide and Watcher shrugged at each other and stepped after the dark elf. Immediately, they understood why Nadier detested the particular chamber.

The room was circular and extensively large, made of pale grey concrete that bled boringness into the corner of their eyes. A stark contrast to the otherwise copper and red bricked design of the rest of Everwind. Conical pillars held the five stories high ceiling up at four corners. Ledges lined the walls at intervals, large enough to be rooms of their own with no way up nor walls to keep out intruders. In the middle of everything, tied to a cylindrical pillar, the scene reminded The Watcher of what he had seen at the New York Stock Exchange. Information fed through information, knowledge of the world at the tip for anyone to access and play with at their will, except with less humanity involved.

Half a dozen copper pods were hung around the central pillar. Within them through clear glass were blue liquids that held sleeping bodies of humans, hume, and elves that were scraggy and hairless. Rubber and copper tubes ran from each pod to the main attraction that hung in the middle facing the entrance. A female human, whose body was wrapped within a copper shell up to her neck, dangled from a set of bars that held her up like a punching bag. Her face was wrinkled and bony, with grey hairs falling from the seams of her scalp. Despite the shrivelled look, The Watcher knew she was no older than fifteen.

The girl's eyes flickered open, and with a soft musical voice, smiled and said, “Wanderer. Did you bring me something nice to eat?”

Nadier replied, “I'm sorry, Rena. Not today. I had not expected to come here.”

“A shame.” The withered girl turned to Adelaide. “Demon Eyes. It's been a long time.”

Adelaide asked, “Have we met before?” Her voice shook slightly at the grotesque masquerade of a human before her.

“We are meeting now.”

The Watcher walked up to the girl and placed a hand on the shell that encased her, looking up and down the machine, to-and-fro the connecting cables. His left hand balled in a fist and trembled. “Who did this?”

“Watcher,” Rena replied gently. “You know very well who. I suspect you have since you got here.”

Adelaide bombarded, “What is this room? What's going on? And who are you?”

Nadier began his explanation. “This is Renasque Isvael. She is the Overseer of The Forum. She has the ability to predict the future of individuals by names and a brief description of their power or accomplishment. She's the one who gave us our epitaphs.”

The Watcher cut in, “No. That's a half truth. She's a seer. A precog. But I'm guessing her original ability was not to predict the names and epitaph,” he corrected grimly, limply moving over to the pods of bodies. He stopped at one that had decomposed to nearly bones, but still held the pale reddish hue of living skin and the bloodshot glow of faded circuits. The body had degraded to the point where he could not even tell if it was a man or a woman. “I'm guessing that power belongs to this person.”

Rena replied unsurprised, “That is correct. My original ability was to view the glimpses of consciousness from the deaths of individuals. I see the death of people.”

Nadier asked The Watcher, “How do you know all of this?”

“This machine is a circuitry modification pod. A Lusus Naturae. I'd recognize this technology anywhere. It confers the specific ability of one to another. If you placed me in the pod and had another of my species in the shell, you'd be able to give the person the same power over time I have. There was this girl, Emily Young, who... It doesn't matter... It was a long time ago.” He drifted away from the memory.

Turning back to Rena, Nadier said, “Rena, I apologize. But we're not here to chat.” He explained the plan to hide out within the Overseer Chambers. “The ledges on the walls are high enough that no one can see us from the ground. It's the perfect place to conceal ourselves until the anointed time.”

Adelaide added, “Right under their noses.”

“I understand,” the girl replied with a cramped nod that looked as painful as it was uncomfortable to execute. “It is unlikely that anyone would find you here. It is, as literal as the saying, the last place they will look.”

“Thank you, Rena,” Nadier told her, which she smiled back in reply.

Adelaide placed a hand on the dark elf's shoulder and reached out to The Watcher. The latter took it and with a blink, the trio teleported to one of the ledges on the walls, two and a half stories above the chamber floor. Post teleportation kicked up a cloud of dust. The floor of the ledge had gathered a thick layer of particulate over the years, perhaps even centuries, from the looks of things. Each of their steps left a fresh print on the concrete.

“So,” Nadier asked, taking a seat in a discreet corner. “How does this work?”

The Watcher snapped his fingers and Nadier froze in place. But he was not completely immobile. His eyelids was closing at a excruciatingly slow pace.

“Nine hours,” The Watcher explained to Adelaide, who watched on with a mixed expression of shock and awe. “He's living one year in nine hours. At that rate, it would take him about five minutes to blink. One thousand times slower than us.”

“That is just geared up accelerant,” she dropped into a native slang of words as she squatted before Nadier to get a closer look of the phenomenon. “What about–”

Before she could finish, The Watcher locked her in a time bubble of her own. At that speed, any sound they made would not have enough audio over time to carry any substantial distance, effectively rendering them muted from the world. With a nod of satisfaction at his handiwork, The Watcher decided to take care of one last business. Taking out his pocket watch, the magic crystal embedded within glowed a light lavender. With a slight push of force, he teleported himself back down to ground level, manipulating the spin of the planet and pull of gravity in infinitesimal and instinctual ways to perform the feat.

He approached Rena, who had apparently waited for him. He asked her, “How long have you been connected to that contraption?”

“Should be a year now,” she replied with a nonchalant smile, as if her predicament was the most casual of situations.

The Watcher noted, “I can save you.”

“I know.”

“If you stay there any longer, your magic circuits will be too far damaged to remove from the system.”

“I know that too.”

“It has to be now.” He raised his hand and his pocket watch glowed once more.

“You know you can't do that.”

He scoffed. He could feel his power just edging at the tips of his fingers. “I can do whatever I want. I have the power of a god.”

“But you're not one. Are you?”

Even as tears welled up in his eyes, he could see his outstretched hand shaking. “I can save you,” he repeated the mantra. But if he did, there will be a building wide search and he, Nadier, and Adelaide would be found within hours, even with their exceptional concealment. “I can save everyone.”

Rena grinned the innocent smile of a girl her age. “And don't you forget that.”

Once, in what had to be ten lifetimes ago, in the early years of his powers, he had seen first-hand the damage the machine that housed Rena could cause. Someone had brought that same machine over from his universe, for he was sure that despite the similarities between the two realms, the technology on Tearha could not replicate the monstrosity of his age.

With apprehension, he lowered his hand and diminished his power, the glow of the crystal subsiding. Without another look to the seer, The Watcher teleported back to the ledge where his companions were frozen on. By then, Nadier had finished his first blink. The Watcher took a seat beside the two, but did not freeze himself. His mind wandered back to his past, and he knew only one person capable of recreating the devious machine. An invention that was more a freak of nature than the mutants it produced. That same person would also be the Lord Light he faced now.

He found it poetic that his first battle in the Endless War was against a Lusus Naturae, and that another one had reappeared again there on Tearha. Over 10,000 years into the future of his world, the Endless War started with him, his brother, and people who saw fit to call themselves 'god'. Now, 10,000 years before and within another universe, he was about to end it, and finally lay the war to rest.