The moment the green bird's tail feathers brushed the back of his hand, the hourglass mark suddenly exploded with a searing pain. Ah Che jerked his hand back, watching the silver-lined hourglass begin to leak sand furiously. As the fine sand passed through the neck of the bottle, it felt like the fast-forward button had been pressed, piling up into a small pyramid at the bottom, its edges so sharp they threatened to pierce his skin.

"The cycle is about to collapse prematurely," Mobius' voice, shrouded in the murmur of electricity, tumbled from the green bird's throat, its wings flapping nervously. "It won't last more than six hours this time."

The distant bell tower chimed again, but like a stuck tape, trembling repeatedly on a strange syllable, shaking the air with jagged ripples of wheat. Ah Che looked up. At the edge of the village, where smoke curled around the edges of the stone bell tower, an inky black liquid oozed from the walls. It snaked down through the cracks in the bricks, leaving hideous claw marks on the warm yellow wall. "The 'loop anchor' on the back of your hand." Mobius suddenly pecked at the hourglass mark with his beak. Silver light instantly climbed up his feathers, leaving tiny scorch marks on his emerald green wings. "Yesterday's reset was erroneous. Your body has memorized the energy from the well—this is the key to breaking the loop, and the clock keepers' new prey mark. They're already sharpening their scythes."

Ah Che clenched her fists. The burning pain of the hourglass mark coursed through her veins, like countless tiny needles tap-dancing on her nerves. She followed the green bird through the wheat fields, deliberately avoiding the road at the village entrance, stepping slowly through the weeds along the edge of the field. As she approached the village's back gate, a fence suddenly loomed before her. The thorns tangled in it bore blood-red flowers, each petal curled into the shape of a miniature hourglass, swaying gently in the wind. "Don't touch these flowers," Mobius suddenly lowered his voice, his wings flapping nervously, his feathers bristling. "They're the clock keeper's surveillance cameras." As he finished speaking, the nearest flower suddenly turned towards Che, its petals unfurling, revealing its black stamens—not stamens at all, but countless sesame-sized eyes, densely packed together, their pupils reflecting her panicked face.

Che jerked back, his lower back bumping into something hard. Turning back, he saw a scarecrow. Its rag-and-paper coat was embroidered with a faded hourglass pattern, and beneath its straw hat, not straw, but a wriggling mass of silver light, remarkably like the substance seeping from the skin of a villager in Eternal Village. "Outsider?" The scarecrow's tattered mouth moved up and down, a sound like sandpaper grinding against rusty iron. "How many times has this cycle gone on?"