Within the temporal labyrinth of the Stairs of Paradox, the two men walked through a darkness as dense as ink, while a torrent of time fragments surged toward them like a tidal wave. The passing moments within the flood resembled shattered stars, blindingly radiant.
Swept up in this roaring current, Quicksand felt the world spinning violently around him. The stairs spiraled one moment upward and plummeted downward the next, seemingly without end. In the blink of an eye, Diamonds had vanished from his sight.
Quicksand called out Diamonds’ name in rapid succession, but within the vast, boundless expanse of this universe, his cries were like a single drop of water falling into a vast ocean—utterly futile. Left with no alternative, he began to walk slowly on his own.
Gradually, he caught sight of thousands of silhouettes emerging from the darkness—men and women, young and old, dressed in a motley assortment of attire, all sprinting along the steps like ascetic monks. Many possessed hair and beards bleached stark white, frantically rummaging through the fragments of time to no avail. Within this eternal, agonizing torture, numerous bodies already lay strewn across the steps, their lifespans and sanity completely burned away.
Quicksand attempted to strike up a conversation with the passing figures, only to discover a dense, impenetrable barrier separating him from them, completely blocking all sound. The moment he drew near, the silhouettes would instantly dissolve like a noxious miasma.
Left to observe from afar, he bore witness to the absolute despair of the souls trapped within the labyrinth: he saw a woman dressed in tattered, patched rags, desperately trying to locate the specific time fragment from the moment before her daughter was struck down by a stray bullet to force her way inside, only for her physical form to gradually dissolve as she was violently rejected by the timeline; he saw an old man whose wild white hair resembled overgrown weeds, who had run for seventy years without ever finding the path home, finally collapsing onto the steps like a withered leaf swept up by the wind, falling into an eternal, unbroken slumber. Everyone was running within the maze, yet not a single soul could find the exit.
Quicksand broke out into a cold sweat. The countless scattered fragments of the world pointed toward an infinite number of space-times. This place was a colossal, sprawling prison, and he, too, was completely lost within it.
Just as he was rendered entirely helpless, a silhouette caught the absolute corner of his eye. It was a youth dressed in a vest and a crisp shirt, roughly fourteen or fifteen years of age, possessing gray hair and gray eyes. His lips were pressed into a tight line, yet an undeniable, suppressed smile hung from the corner of his mouth.
Quicksand’s heart jolted violently. That face belonged to none other than his own childhood self.
“Wait!”
He cried out, picking up his pace to frantically pursue the figure.
The child ran with terrifying speed. Within the limitless, boundless pitch-black expanse, the two of them sprinted along the steps. The fragments of time swarmed around them like fireflies, dancing before his eyes until Quicksand’s vision began to blur. In the blink of an eye, the child’s silhouette vanished once more.
While Quicksand stood frozen in a daze, a familiar voice suddenly drifted from his side:
“Black-hearted employee, stop running around. The place we need to go is right here.”
He snapped his head around to look, finding Diamonds standing there in a perfectly relaxed posture, reaching out a hand to firmly catch him by the wrist.
It felt as though a drifting ship had suddenly dropped its anchor; the massive weight crushing Quicksand’s heart lifted instantly, and he gripped Diamonds’ hand back with immense force. Diamonds looked astonished. “What, did you think you were lost and scare yourself? You run faster than the wind; I barely managed to keep up. I’ve been trailing right behind you the entire time.”
Quicksand countered flatly, “I wasn’t lost; I was merely attempting to marvel at a world where I command an exorbitant salary and reign as the President of the Chrono-Entropy Corporation.”
“Alright, and did you catch sight of such a world?”
Quicksand had successfully learned how to lie: “Naturally. This invincible king is a wealthy man in every single universe.”
He then asked Diamonds if he had spotted a child who looked exactly like him, but Diamonds merely shook his head. Diamonds guided him toward a specific fragment of time—one that was heavily covered in rust, resembling a corroded shard of iron. Diamonds murmured:
“Step inside. This is the time fragment for the year 1805.”
“How exactly did you find it?”
“Did you honestly believe I came here completely unprepared? There is a temporal anchor at play.” Diamonds pulled a handkerchief from his vest. The cloth was enveloped within a protective time-stagnation bubble, and one of its stitched corners was embroidered with a family crest featuring nested large and small spades. “This is a handkerchief Madame Spades gifted to me in the past. While you were wandering around aimlessly just now, I used it as an anchor to successfully pinpoint the 1805 time fragment.”
Quicksand looked highly suspicious. “This is… proof of Madame Spades’ existence?”
He snatched the handkerchief, inspecting it from left to right, yet his mind remained entirely devoid of any memory of ever seeing it before. He inquired further, “Isn’t this highly bizarre? If that Madame Spades was truly assassinated in the past, she logically shouldn’t have left any trace behind in the ‘present.’ Why on earth does this handkerchief still exist in your hands?”
Diamonds replied, “Because I enveloped it within a time-stagnation bubble, freezing its time at the exact moment I accepted it from Madame Spades’ hands.”
“But she has already vanished in the past; the very act of her giving you this handkerchief should no longer exist either.”
Diamonds’ eyes flickered slightly before he brushed the question aside with a smooth evasion: “Like I said, it’s because I am the chosen one. Be it memories or physical evidence held in my palm, they aren’t about to undergo any alterations just because that pack of hyenas from the 1805 Branch decided to make a move.”
Quicksand shot a sidelong glare at him, sensing that this man was shrouded in far too many mysteries—possessing the unique weapons and pocket watches of the Time Cleaners while simultaneously retaining memories of temporal timelines that everyone else had completely forgotten. Seeing that Diamonds had no intention of elaborating further, he recognized that this was not the best moment for a confrontation. He remarked, “Speaking of which, why exactly can this handkerchief serve as a temporal anchor? Is it because it simultaneously exists in the year 1805? That Madame Spades certainly possesses grand gestures, handing you a two-hundred-year-old antique handkerchief just like that.”
“A ‘temporal anchor’ isn’t an exceptionally precise set of coordinates or a physical object; its function is closer to that of a compass. As long as there is an element within that space-time that shares a powerful, unbreakable bond with it, it can guide your direction.”
Diamonds explained, stepping firmly into the time fragment, with Quicksand following close on his heels.
The exact moment they stepped through the time fragment, the aura before their eyes expanded violently, and every single sound in the universe seemed to be crushed into pieces, dissolving into the void. A jarring sensation of weightlessness washed over them; their muscles and bones felt as though they had dissolved into countless scattered points of light, drifting into the deep, ancient past.
All perception of time evaporated. After an unknown period had passed, Quicksand felt light-headed and top-heavy. Opening his eyes, he found himself standing in an entirely different space-time. A thick mist rolled across the landscape, carrying the pungent, sulfurous odor of shell-brand gear oil, and a colossal Gothic granite clock tower loomed directly ahead. The cobblestone street beneath his feet was heavily damp, seeming as though water would ooze out with a single step.
He looked up at the freezing, dark night sky—a view of the heavens he had never been able to catch a glimpse of back in Spiral City—where a crescent moon hung suspended. Through the dense fog came a continuous, rhythmic metallic clanking. To his utter shock, beneath the glow of gas lamps stood rows of perfectly aligned steam-powered mechanical soldiers, their entire bodies riveted with steel bolts the size of walnuts. Their joints groaned and creaked with every movement, and their footsteps echoed like the synchronous tolling of funeral bells.
Suddenly, a terrifying, earth-shattering screech ripped through the air as a massive, pitch-black shadow blotted out the sky and obscured the moon, plunging the entire world into absolute darkness. Quicksand looked up, witnessing a colossal airship resembling a leviathan whale sailing through the mid-air. The brass steam pipes lining its keel hissed violently, releasing massive plumes of cloud and mist that drifted lazily over the cityscape.
“This is… the year 1805?”
Quicksand muttered to himself. This was entirely different from the historical landscapes he had observed in textbooks and video archives.
“Yes. The Chrono-Entropy Corporation altered the past, modifying this era to be far more stylish according to their own preferences. Move it, black-hearted employee.” Diamonds gestured down the street.
The two stepped onto the cobblestone street—a thoroughfare that had existed in Britain since the year 1119, renowned for its stone paving. The street boasted stained-glass workshops and goldsmith establishments, remaining illuminated throughout the night. From time to time, horse-drawn carriages rounded the street corners, carrying high-class aristocrats wearing ivory masks and feathered hats who stepped down from the cabins, entering the shops while flanked by mechanical attendants carrying steam canisters on their backs.
Yet, tucked away in the dark corners of the alleyways were laborers and vagrants dressed in coarse linen doublets. Their garments were worn so thin they resembled tattered fishing nets, and their exposed skin bore the pitch-black brand of the Penrose stairs. Their heads were wrapped in burlap sacks to obscure their blistered, rotting faces, and they carried broken wooden planks on their shoulders, preparing to erect makeshift shelters against the city walls to survive the night.
Diamonds let out a heavy sigh. “Wherever the Corporation sets foot, not a single blade of grass is left alive. It’s exactly the same regardless of the era.”
“There are so many steam-powered mechanical entities here, and the development of this civilization is entirely different from the data I previously reviewed. Is this also the handiwork of the Corporation?”
“Precisely. They will hang up advertisements selling prosthetic limbs along the streets two hundred years ahead of schedule, ensuring the brand identity is thoroughly burned into the collective consciousness of the population.” Diamonds shrugged. “The majority of the people in the Corporation have short-circuited brains; this type of bizarre, logic-defying behavior is exactly their signature style.”
Quicksand felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of irritation. Yet, the moment he recalled that Diamonds might very well be a Cleaner for the Corporation himself, a hint of dark amusement surfaced. He asked further:
“I notice that many of the people here possess rotting faces. Why is that?”
A drift of smoke billowed past, causing Diamonds to cover his mouth, coughing rapidly a few times. “Madame Spades briefly chatted with me about it once. She mentioned that the majority of the laborers in this era are dispatched by the Corporation to mine high-radiation ore veins to sustain the immense energy consumption of their time-jump technology. Their physical bodies rot and decompose as a direct result.”
He coughed for a spell, his body suddenly swaying unsteadily. Quicksand rushed forward to steady him, only to discover that Diamonds’ cuff was stained with fresh blood.
Quicksand knitted his brows. “Are you alright?” Diamonds shook his head, his face deathly pale. “It’s fine. It’s just a bit of motion sickness from crossing the fragment to get here.”
Quicksand countered flatly, “The things you vomit from motion sickness aren’t this color. Could it be that you are being violently rejected by the time of this era, which is why your reaction is so severe?” Diamonds snapped back, “Then how come you are perfectly fine?”
Quicksand couldn’t offer an explanation either. The two of them wandered through the streets. Diamonds behaved in a highly suspicious manner, engaging in petty shoplifting throughout the marketplace—stealing a small vial of linseed oil, a loaf of black bread, and a few potatoes, grandly labeling them as wartime survival provisions. He busied himself for half the night, yet he remained entirely clueless as to how to track down Madame Spades’ whereabouts. Quicksand wanted to question the shopkeepers and aristocrats, but Diamonds pulled him back, insisting that they could not afford to startle the snake in the grass. Consequently, they made their way toward the city gates, where vagrants frequently erected shelters out of gravel and foul-smelling cowhide; perhaps they could harvest some useful intelligence there.
As they left the commercial alleyways behind, the sounds of human activity gradually dwindled, and the thick fog enveloped the streets like heavy layers of cotton wool. The surroundings turned pitch-black, devoid of any human presence, causing Quicksand to feel a bone-chilling cold. Suddenly, a sharp metallic clanking echoed through the darkness. Before they could even react, they found themselves completely encircled by dozens of mechanical soldiers.
“Wh-Wh-Who goes th-th-there?”
The mechanical soldiers demanded. They stood nine feet tall, the relentless grinding of interlocking gears echoing from within their torsos. Steam pipes hissed violently along their backs, venting scorching plumes of white mist. Their metallic carapaces bore the distinct mark of the Penrose stairs—these were the soldiers stationed in this era by the Chrono-Entropy Corporation.
Diamonds and Quicksand exchanged a rapid look. One drew his Mauser pistol while the other gripped the wooden stick he had scavenged earlier. Sensing their hostility, the mechanical soldiers’ eyes flashed with a menacing red light.
Suddenly, the battle erupted in a flash! A mechanical soldier took a heavy step forward, instantly shattering the stone paving beneath its feet. It abruptly bared a cavernous maw—its razor-sharp teeth spinning frantically, transforming into a high-speed chainsaw. Simultaneously, a powerful suction force generated from within its throat, causing Diamonds and Quicksand to lose their balance completely, tumbling toward the machine.
Right at that critical second, Quicksand moved with blinding speed, snatching the vial of linseed oil from Diamonds’ hand and hurling his boss’s stolen loot straight into the mechanical soldier’s open maw. Bound by the heavy oil, the mechanical soldier let out a violent, grinding screech as its gears jammed. Quicksand swung his wooden stick with immense force, knocking the soldier cleanly to the ground. The veins on his arms bulged with raw power as he hoisted the machine—which easily weighed over three hundred kilograms—using it as a physical shield to intercept all incoming attacks before violently hurling it into the remaining adversaries.
Diamonds was left completely dumbfounded. Within a mere fraction of a second, the soldiers surrounding Quicksand fell like dominoes. That simple wooden stick behaved like a divine weapon in his hands, completely disemboweling the mechanical soldiers, their brass chestplates splitting open like giant clams. Yet, in the next instant, even more mechanical soldiers flooded forward, blocking their path of retreat.
Standing back-to-back, the two travelers tensed their bodies, bracing themselves for what promised to be a brutal battle. However, right at that exact moment, an object slipped from Diamonds’ vest. The second the mechanical soldiers caught sight of the handkerchief, they froze dead in their tracks, backing away with absolute obedience.
“H-H-Honored guest, w-w-welcome to the year 1805.” One of the soldiers spoke, its demeanor undergoing a complete transformation.
Diamonds and Quicksand looked at each other in utter confusion, only then realizing that Madame Spades’ handkerchief had fallen to the floor, exposing a clear view of the embroidered family crest.
The mechanical soldier bowed with exquisite politeness, resembling a proper butler. “P-P-Please follow us. Lady Spades has been ex-ex-expecting you for a l-l-long time.”
With a column of mechanical soldiers clearing the path ahead, the two were escorted to a tower perched atop a steep hill. The stained-glass windows depicted the historical chronicles of alchemists from various nations: Zosimos of Greece, Nicolas Flamel—rumored to be the sole individual to successfully forge the Philosopher’s Stone—and Ge Hong refining the Elixir of Life. Ouroboros motifs and the twelve signs of the zodiac lined the walls; as the moonlight filtered through the glass, it cast shifting pools of light across the floor, resembling a mystical, operational magic circle.
The atmosphere was thick with the scent of ambergris, and thin tendrils of blue smoke spiraled lazily from bronze incense burners. The grand hall was draped in brilliant crimson Lyon gold-thread brocade curtains, resembling a lavish theatrical stage. The moment the two stepped inside, a mechanical maid hoisted her skirt, executing a perfect curtsy:
“Apologies for the delay, gentlemen. Lady Spades has arrived.”
The name “Spades” carried the explicit meaning of a playing card suit. Diamonds observed that every single item of decor within the room was exorbitantly expensive; the curtains alone cost five guineas a yard—roughly equivalent to half a month’s wages for an ordinary laborer. Quicksand nudged him hard with his elbow:
“What’s the story here? This old acquaintance of yours seems to possess an immense connection with the Corporation. The Chrono-Entropy Corporation’s soldiers are literally behaving like her personal servants.”
Diamonds replied with a dark expression, “How on earth should I know? Previously, she claimed she didn’t come from a wealthy lineage, but from what I can see, she is exceptionally affluent. Back when the Poker Bar was first established, she suddenly emerged out of nowhere, investing a massive sum of capital to rescue us from absolute ruin. The majority of Clepsydra’s early funding originated directly from her; she is our ultimate benefactor.” He then added in a harsh whisper, “If she truly turns out to be a member of the Corporation, don’t even think about washing your hands clean of this. Your wages are literally paid with the Corporation’s dirty money!”
While the two were murmuring to each other, the heavy curtains abruptly parted, and a tall, elderly woman emerged before them. She wore a dark veil paired with a somber black gown resembling funeral attire—the exact likeness of the Madame Spades Diamonds knew so well.
Catching sight of her, Diamonds let out a silent sigh of relief. Doffing his top hat, he murmured, “Madame, for our initial encounter, I am…” He bit his lip slightly before making a firm resolution, concluding:
“Someone who has traveled from the future.”
The party settled onto the mahogany sofas upholstered in premium top-grain cowhide within the drawing room, where Diamonds provided a comprehensive overview of the entire sequence of events. Madame Spades listened in absolute silence, sipping her punch. When he finished, a smooth smile touched her lips:
“I am fully apprised of the details. In short, you are my future employee. Recognizing that I was in peril, you traversed time from the future back to the present to salvage my life.”
She then turned her gaze toward Quicksand. “And you are the employee of my employee.” Quicksand retorted aggressively, “If the opportunity to change jobs ever presents itself, I wouldn’t stay under his command for a single second.”
Watching their playful bickering, Madame Spades couldn’t help but smile with immense warmth and affection, appearing exactly like the gentle elder from the Poker Bar. Reassured that her existence was far from a personal hallucination, Diamonds let out a sigh of relief, inquiring further:
“Speaking of which, Madame… we were guided to this location by the mechanical soldiers. I noticed they bear the official insignia of the Corporation. Is this…”
“This era must present a multitude of inconveniences for travelers from the future, yes? The same holds true for the Corporation. Consequently, they harvested local materials, leveraging the peak capabilities of current technology to engineer these mechanical soldiers. However, their numbers remain exceptionally precious; the vast majority are deployed to secure the branch operations and high-profile individuals, while the extraction of the mineral veins continues to rely heavily upon local labor.” Madame Spades sighed softly. “Though I must note that a few units were heavily damaged tonight; I am entirely unaware of the cause.”
Diamonds shot a brief glance at Quicksand, who was currently playing with two screws he had pocketed from the fallen mechanical soldiers—holding one in each hand while making soft spaceship noises under his breath, simulating a cosmic collision between the two components. Diamonds delivered a gentle kick to Quicksand’s leg, putting an immediate end to his childish game.
Suddenly, an uneasy sensation crept into Diamonds’ mind. The casual, intimate familiarity with which Madame Spades discussed corporate operations carried an underlying warmth. He asked tentatively, “Then, Madame… may I ask what exactly your relationship with the Chrono-Entropy Corporation entails?”
Madame Spades smiled and nodded gently. “If we are discussing a relationship, then one most certainly exists.”
The mechanical maid stepped forward, pulling back the heavy curtains. The two travelers opened their eyes wide in absolute astonishment. Through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, they looked out upon the brilliantly illuminated streets of 1805. The shifting lights rippled like a massive glowing dragon, converging to form a single, colossal image: a side profile portrait of Madame Spades. Hanging from an airship sailing three hundred meters in the sky was a massive propaganda poster that read: “The Glory of Pharmacologists, the Decipherer of Time—Madame Spades.” Flanking the perimeter of the estate were ranks of mechanical soldiers guarding the grounds like stars orbiting the moon, every single one of them bearing the official insignia of the Penrose stairs.
Their jaws hitting the floor, the two men watched as the elderly woman elegantly hoisted her wine glass, letting out a serene, poised smile like a graceful swan tilting its neck:
“Welcome to this era in your quest to salvage my life, strangers from the future. I am the Director of the 1805 Branch of the Chrono-Entropy Corporation, Daisy Spades.”
