I felt sucked and spat out like a big wad of lint. It took me a while to realize that I was still lying on the steel scaffold with Colin next to me.

The square panel was off again. He was already conscious and fiddling about the Lotus Core.

"Did we do it?" I whispered. Uneasy at the silence surrounding us.

Colin sighed with disappointment.

"What now?" I gulped.

"Good news. We're linked to the correct time. The walls, in theory, should stop moving. Bad news. The Lotus Bridge is still out of alignment with the labyrinth," he answered.

"What else is needed to pull the bridge back into working order?" I whispered.

No way was I going to give up.

"Sacral magic. That'd only achieve the demon's aims. The only other magic I know of that can reset and revert time slips without moving destiny is Null. I've never known anyone with that power. I don't even know if it's real or some magis fantasy." Colin gravely stated our options.

"If we were to use sacral magic. And not play into the Hiruda's hands. It would restore the balance and working order. Right?"

"Yeah. The time part. However, the destiny the Hiruda had set here will become permanent. It requires the Power of Preservation to isolate the fate. So it doesn't move when time is restored." Colin's explanation went over my head.

He broke down his explanation with an a.n.a.logy similar to the one Death had provided on time cells.

Basically, Sol was like a vinyl record. The Lotus Bridge a song track. Time was a gramophone playing arm and needle. The destinies were grooves on the record. False destinies were light scratches over the record's grooves. If they were left unattended for too long, they would deepen and become a permanent destiny to overwrite the original score. The Power of Preservation was like a container and an eraser for those light scratches; re-coating the sh.e.l.lac so proper destiny could resume its natural course uninterrupted.

That was good for the destiny issue. We also had a time problem to deal with. I was doing my best not to feel our situation hopeless.

"Brother. The Power of Preservation will not be enough to reset the false destiny you are facing—" I recalled Pesti's words from that vision. It was a dream, right?

"Hey. What if we had both the Power of Preservation and Null. How would that work exactly?" I threw out the idea.

Colin raised his brows. His expression was clearly telling me not to waste time on a ridiculous hypothesis.

Abrupt quaking to the scaffold reminded us of the villain topside.

Colin resealed the Lotus Core. I understood that we had done all we could here. We needed to be topside as well.

I was worried Brystagg was facing his limit, and the Aueralius Brothers' chi was almost gone as they continued to being the power boost for the bridge's stability.

"How do we get up there?" I glanced around. Unable to see a way off this swinging and creaking scaffold.

I gulped a nervous breath and counted numbers to calm my rapid heartbeats when my leg dangled over the formless s.p.a.ce.

Colin answered my question with a knowing smile and a tap of his fob watch.

Magic. Of course.