\\ DUSK\\ Fantasy AU \ ATEEZ Fanfic

// Chapter 10 \\

Peace and a soft warm feeling of comfort thrummed through my body. It was so unusually content— my entire state of being. However, it wasn't at all foreign. This feeling felt right, like it had belonged to flow through me. It didn't meet halfway, it filled me with such a full state. There was no fear, no sadness, no spite, no conflict. I felt truly and entirely happy— fulfilled. I was satiated.

The room blossomed in a gorgeous gold. Every inch and ever surface was covered in that: gold. So pure and so bright that maybe perhaps it could've been mistaken for a gorgeous white. All in the same, the room looked completely saturated from this. A glowing and unblinking beauty. It was formed into a square shape and the roof aimed on into the heavens where color and pictures floated and flourished. They fizzled and zinged, changing into a new time from one flicker to another. It was as if time itself had owned that ceiling. Below the dancing pictures were bright golden rings with even protrusions of square shapes. Those floating objects called gears which were linked by those protrusions in a sanctuary of movement. It was so fitting and intricate— a delicate balance of harmony.

It all surrounded the golden clock tower. Every inch of its square space seemed to be filled with gears of all shapes and sizes. Even the golden vine which grew in between and around these gears didn't deter this fit. Even the vibe grew blooms of gold which were shaped into gears. These gears, somehow, also pieced together with the other gears. They all pieced together perfectly, rotating in perfect motion. All of the rotation which met at the top of the tower where the white clock-face. The intricate golden hands of the clock moved along its rotation perfectly. Peacefully. It ticked in sync with time which was how we all ticked.

Suddenly, a hand on the tower shuttered with a churn, sending my heart into a jolt at the same time. It had hurt. It hurt me.

A hand had gone to my chest as my brows suddenly furrowed in question, gazing up to the great tower.

Surely that didn't actually happen. It would never happen.

For a while, everything seemed to tick in harmony like normal. I'd almost let out a sigh of relief. The fear that had jolted inside me with the previous churn began to mist away into nothing as harmony ticked inside me once more.

Another churn.

It was loud and thunderous. It was disruptive of the delicate balance. I could tell by how the gears creaked and clanked in a whimper. Their whimper was far greater than my own as I clutched my chest, curling in as I fell to my knees. I squinted my eyes closed. I caught my breath as the effect of the shutter began to wear off, the clicks of a clear path snapping back into place.

That didn't last long.

The shutters and uneven clanks and clatters continued, breaking down every gear and every fizzling picture above. It all seemed to be a blur because it all happened at once.

One by one, the pictures above all began to flicker and fizzle. The noise of them seemed to blare and become erratically faster. Just as the images which blurred and ultimately became a chaos concealed in a fuzz.

The gold of the room began to appear not so saturated, shining, or white. It began to gleam like a dull polish, eroding in its efficiency like a plague of rust.