He and Gunner moved as one, slipping into the narrow gap just as the nearest blade rose and the next began to fall.

The air thickened with sound: the whoosh of steel slicing through space, the heavy clang of its return arc, and the low groan of hidden weights shifting.

Arthur pressed himself flat against a shallow recess carved into the stone,just deep enough to fit his shoulder,while the next blade skimmed by so closely that he felt its wind brush against his cheek.

Gunner mirrored him across that precarious centerline.

"One," Arthur called, eyes locked on the next blade. "Two. Now."

They slid forward into another pocket. The rhythm was precise and well paced.

Mireille and Stone followed closely behind, moving tight and smooth with bated breath. Mireille's boot heel struck the floor a heartbeat before a blade swept through where her ankle had just been.

Stone barely managed to flatten himself into his side recess; the blade grazed his shoulder plate with a metallic hiss.

Adrian's breath hitched as he crossed with Marta.

He had always imagined encountering history's great machines in museums, behind glass with placards and velvet ropes but instead, he pressed his chest against a cold wall while a blade hummed past, feeling its ghost ripple through his shirt and into his bones.

Kaelen and Josef were next; then Ren and Helena.

Ren moved steadily, one hand resting on Helena's backpack to guide her pace.

Helena clutched her camera tightly to her chest, fingers turning pale around its casing.

"Breathe," Ren said calmly,a mantra born from practice. "Just breathe."

Lukas and Clara followed suit. Lukas whispered counts so softly they were almost lost in the din of machinery around them.

Clara's eyes widened in fear but matched her steps to Lukas's timing as if they had rehearsed it since childhood.

A soldier behind them tensed suddenly. "Sir," he called out tightly, "this spacing..."

"Hold your slot!" Ethan barked back sharply. "If you eat steel, I'm not carrying you."

Rask and Vos crossed next; Marek and Holt followed closely behind them along with Lyra and another rifleman.

The corridor devoured pairs like clockwork, returning them one pocket at a time.

And then it happened.

A soldier near the rear,a young man drenched in sweat with an uneven breath,lost count entirely.

He watched helplessly as a blade rose but forgot about the one already falling ahead of him. Instead of taking two steps forward like everyone else did… he took just one.

"Don't...!" Ethan opened his mouth

The blade caught him mid-stride, slicing through flesh with a brutal precision.

A clean line just above the elbow opened like a door, blood spraying against the dark steel of the corridor.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

The man's scream echoed, shattering the tense silence as his forearm dropped to the floor with a dull thud,unbelievable and horrifying.

He staggered back, eyes wide in shock, teetering dangerously close to the return swing of the blade until Holt lunged forward, slamming him into the recess of the wall.

"Hold him!" Ren shouted urgently.

Ethan slammed his shoulder into the soldier's chest, pinning him down while Ren worked deftly to wrap a tourniquet around what remained of his arm. It was so fast it seemed almost like magic.

The man's breath came in ragged gasps as he clawed at his wound with his remaining hand.

"Look at me," Ren said, his face inches from his visor. "You're alive. Stay with me,eyes on me."

The soldier's gaze locked onto hers; sweat dripped into his eyes as he nodded in frantic jerks.

"Move!" Arthur called from up ahead. The pendulums wouldn't wait for mercy.

They pressed on,one pair after another,until Ethan dragged the wounded soldier through the last gap by sheer willpower.

Behind them, silence fell again as the pendulums slowed and locked into place with a soft click that felt disturbingly satisfied.

In their safe alcove, they huddled together, breathing heavily but saying nothing for what felt like an eternity.

The severed arm lay abandoned on the far side of the corridor,a dark shape against darker stone and no one dared go back for it.

Ren taped a pressure patch over Jace's stump and checked his pupils. "What's your name?" He asked gently.

"Jace," he managed to reply.

"You're going to be okay," he assured him firmly. "You need to keep that blood right where it is and you're going to walk. Understand?"

He nodded resolutely, jaw clenched tight.

Ethan let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a curse directed at their surroundings.

"You and your dramatic timing," he muttered to no one in particular. "Next time, try giving us a friendly wave."

Mireille raised her visor slightly, her expression flat as she shot him a look that could freeze fire. "Save it."

"I'm just trying to lighten the mood here," Ethan protested weakly.

"Don't."

Arthur scanned them all carefully,counting heads without disguising it because fear can fracture even the strongest teams from within while attention can hold them together by mere threads.

"Listen," he said, his voice steady and calm. "That was just the first challenge. It won't be the last. We're here because we chose to be, and that means we honor our choice,by keeping our heads clear and watching out for each other. We don't panic. We don't guess. We keep breathing and we keep moving."

Professor Adrian wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist, looking older than he had just an hour ago.

"Your map," he said, his voice hoarse but even, "it predicted this, didn't it?"

Arthur lifted his forearm to show the map to Adrian. The corridor was sketched as a long, thin rectangle adorned with jagged hash marks on either side.

Above it, someone had scrawled a single word in clipped handwriting: BALANCES.

"It suggested this," Arthur replied thoughtfully. "Enough to expect a rhythm."

Kaelen let out a short, shaky laugh. "Azurian engineering at its least generous."

Marta glanced back down the blade hall, rubbing her forearms nervously.

"They didn't mean these for us; they meant them for whoever came after them,which is us."

"It's always us," Ethan muttered under his breath.

Gunner pressed a hand against the wall in their safe section, letting his fingers trace the pulse of the stone beneath.

It felt like nerves and echoes combined, but he swore he could sense the machine behind the rock,quiet now but waiting patiently.

"We move," he declared.

And so they did.

The passage beyond the pendulums didn't return to neat grooves; instead, it opened up into a series of carved panels,soldiers wielding square shields; ships powered by oars; a king draped in a long mantle holding a scepter that crackled like lightning.

The figures were flat and stern,their eyes sharp points and their mouths mere thin lines,as smoke from their torches stained everything in shaky strokes.

"See that chisel work?" Josef remarked enthusiastically as they walked past the panels, clearly more animated when discussing stonework.

"Notched from left to right! Multiple crews or one crew changing shifts? If this kingdom declined toward its end, you'd see cheaper tool marks but this? This is money and time well spent."

Helena raised her camera hesitantly before snapping two manual clicks with the power off.

"If the film survives," she quipped lightly to no one in particular, "I'll buy your crew a drink."

"Don't say 'survive' right after an amputation," Ethan interjected dryly. "Bad form."

Clara snorted before she could stop herself; she quickly coughed to cover it up while staring intensely at a row of glyphs.

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