Gematrail — Echo Observer — Lævateinn Chapter 8: Echo06 – Transurfing The Pendulum of Time

Read chapter 8 of Gematrail — Echo Observer — Lævateinn by ⛰️ Mt.Kongou_Ragnarok on NovelPedia.

↓↓↓ Click here ↓↓↓ 📀 the soundtrack and theme songs 💿 🎶🎧 Spotify 🎧🎶 track Num : 11 / 12 The interior of the black luxury sedan held nothing but the low, unbroken murmur of the engine. The leather seat received her warmth and gave it back as humidity. The car’s signature scent — heavy, faintly sweet, the particular perfume of money — touched the edges of her awareness. She smoothed a crease from her cuff with two fingers, then drew her phone from the breast pocket of her jacket. The screen’s pale blue light cut into the dimness of the cabin and etched her composed profile in cold relief. The driver felt the shift in her attention and adjusted course without being told. She drew a short, deliberate breath — the kind that fills the lungs completely — and tapped the screen. “This is the Yatagarasu Foundation.” “Passphrase.” The response came back without hesitation, fluid and exact. “Yatakarasukamotaketsunominomikoto.” “There’s been movement. I’m deploying your team immediately. The location is in the file I’ve already transferred.” “Understood, my lady.” She pressed the side button. The screen went dark. “…Well then.” Through the window, the sunlight burned the outline of Meiun Shrine into her retinas. She studied it without expression. “This gear was always going to turn,” she murmured. “It was always going to drive you toward the edge.” A pause. “Hold on just a little longer.” Meanwhile — Meiun Shrine Shredded leaves and pulverized stone raked across his cheek like thrown gravel. The smell of scorched air — like gunpowder, or something hotter — preceded the shockwave, and his skin prickled all at once. “As I expected.” Ayaka stepped clear of the impact with a motion that belonged more to air than to a human body. “This is going exactly as I predicted.” “What does that mean.” Her eyes were cold in a way that felt surgical — a clarity that wasn’t calm but precision. “When did you last see Amana?” The world tilted. Something was grinding through his skull from the inside. “Amana… she… the hospital, after I— gkk — ngh — my head—” A high, metallic whine detonated behind his eardrums, and the inside of his skull felt as if a chisel were being driven through it in short, precise strokes. (Amana… who is Amana? Why don’t I—) “Tch.” Her fist drove into his solar plexus with the specific, concentrated force of someone aiming for the organ itself — not the surface, but the thing underneath. His lungs emptied on impact, his throat producing a sound like a punctured bellows. “I was told not to put you down permanently,” she said. “I was not told to be gentle.” “ Kgh— who gave you the order?” “Classified. But you’ll meet them soon enough.” “What do you want?” She took a slow breath, and when she answered, her voice had the flat precision of a briefing. “There is something in this world called The Pendulum of Time. ” “…What?” “It feeds on human emotions — hatred, despair, the resonance of a soul in extremity. What remains in you, the residue of what you survived — to The Pendulum , that is not prey. It is the opposite. It is the one thing that can threaten it.” “So what —” “Which is why you must be monitored. Managed. Kept alive and under observation. The data we gather from studying you becomes the instrument we use to destroy The Automaton of Fate. ” (I can’t process this. The neurons are overheating. Information is arriving faster than it can be parsed, and my thinking is drowning in it.) “Then what does any of this have to do with me?! ” “You don’t need to understand it. You need to stop moving.” (Something is climbing up from my stomach — burning, corrosive. What did I do? What exactly did I do to deserve this?) Her right arm moved — faster than the sound of the air it cut — and the strike landed dead center in his chest. “ Ghff — can’t — breathe—” The pain was intimate and total: as if a thousand needles, individually ice-cold, had been driven simultaneously into every cell of his lung tissue. The taste of warm copper spread ac