The white explosion of the Sovereign Override hitting the Architect's Clock felt like a physical mind-wipe.
Raziel's consciousness snapped back into reality as his body skipped across the stone tiles of the capital's outer plaza.
The ten-meter sphere of white light had held just long enough to prevent their atoms from being shredded by the impact.
He pushed his shaking frame off the ground.
His vision was a fractured mess of red system alerts and rising black smoke.
Behind him, the wagon was a pile of splintered oak and twisted iron.
Lucian, Zorya, and Caius were already scrambling to their feet.
Their eyes wide with the realization that they were inside the walls.
"Noon," Raziel rasped, his voice tasting of copper. "Move. Now."
The central courtyard of the capital was a canyon of cold stone and sharpened steel.
Five hundred Royal Guards stood in rigid, overlapping lines of silver plate around the raised execution platform.
