**Location: Global Simultaneity**
**Time: Post-Conceptual Collapse**
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#### **Scene 1: The Fractured Continuum**
Clocks now displayed only **hours and screaming**. The second hand had become a **mythological creature**—office workers left offerings of wristwatches at its shrines.
Elara watched a child try to divide an apple **without "minutes" in its mental framework**. The fruit imploded into **temporal pulp**, its slices existing in different decades.
**Science Note**
*Conceptual Gravity: Fundamental ideas exert force on reality; their removal causes spacetime "bruising".
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#### **Scene 2: The Möbius Fetus' Hunger**
The baby grew at **non-Euclidean angles**, its skin displaying:
- Stock market crashes as lullabies
- The complete works of Shakespeare **unwriting themselves**
- A counter-clockwise **umbilical vortex** sucking in temporal debris
Glyph reemerged as **a tattoo on its forehead**, whispering: *"It's not eating time—it's eating **the idea of sequence**."*
**Writing Technique**
*Make abstract conceptual damage visceral through biological horror
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#### **Scene 3: The Volunteer's Prison**
Trapped in the entropy gear, Rho's consciousness **unfolded into a prison of his own design**:
- The walls were made of **his mother's unfinished lullabies**
- The bars were **all the words he never spoke to Elara**
- The lock was a **snarled timeline where he refused the prosthesis**
The artist-shaman pressed her ear to the gear: *"Every warden must love their cage. That's the real sacrifice."*
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#### **Scene 4: Liquid Causality Collectors**
The weeping walls birthed **silver children** who:
1. Drank the fallen causality droplets
2. Grew **older in reverse** with each sip
3. Spat out **perfect spheres containing alternate histories**
One child handed Elara a sphere showing: **herself accepting the Möbius fetus and becoming the new lattice—with Rho's screaming face embedded in its core.**
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### **Chapter 10 Cliffhanger**
The artist-shaman began **carving the 61st minute into her own bones**. As the first mark was made, every clock on Earth struck **13:00** simultaneously.
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### **Key Revelations**
1. - Removing foundational ideas disrupts reality's "conceptual ecosystem"
2. - The silver children are harvesting causality to rebuild time's scaffolding
3. - Rho's imprisonment maintains the balance Elara's choice will disrupt