“Mm... mm...”

Tang Coco’s awareness drifted back like a tide returning.

Rustle—rustle.

Sound brushed around her, like wind combing through grass.

“Wait, wasn’t I in my room? Why is there wind?”

Confusion tightened first, then her mind stalled. She pried her eyes open. A sky of clean blue flooded in, sunlight clear as rinsed glass, and she raised a hand to shield it.

“This is...”

She sat up and looked around. What she saw knocked the breath from her.

She stood in a once-red ocean of flowers, endless, the red so deep it felt uncanny, like a sea of blood stretching to the horizon.

“This is... the bi’an flower? The red spider lily?”

She plucked a bloom at her side and realized she actually knew it.

“Bi’an—the Flower of Hell. Don’t tell me... I died again?”

“Heavens, I just touched my chest. I couldn’t have groped myself to death, right...”

She stared, utterly baffled.

She pinched her thigh. Pain bit back.

“Damn. Not a dream.”

She eased to her feet. Only then did she notice the dress on her body—blood-red, light as mist, trimmed with clusters of red flowers.

She gave it a quick once-over, then let it go. The world had changed; clothes changing wasn’t the strange part. She swept the horizon. The red sea rolled on, reaching the edge of sight.

While she struggled to make sense of it, a sound ticked through the air, like a clock. She turned. A giant dial floated in the sky. Its sudden appearance startled her—there had been nothing there a moment ago.

“What is this? The Clock of Hell?”

Folk tales say everyone has a life-clock in hell. If this was hell, that floating dial might be hers.

She frowned at the massive face. Its hands crept painfully slow—definitely not counting seconds. And one detail snagged her attention. The hands sat at eleven fifty-nine, about to meet again at twelve.

“It looks familiar. Where have I...”

She stared, and the shape tugged at memory.

“Oh! I remember. That’s the face from Dad’s watch. How... how can it be...”

Shock hit as she recalled it—the watch always on her father’s wrist, later stored away by her, long broken. The dial matched this one exactly.

“Is it a coincidence? And this hell is way too comfy. Isn’t hell supposed to be brutal and terrifying?”

A thunderclap slammed down from above, making her jump. Overhead, two thin cracks ripped open, like glass scored into slender wounds. Two blood-red chains shot out, wrapped her wrists with cruel precision, and yanked her into the air to the dial’s height.

“Ah! Damn it, what is this!”

Pain flared hot in her wrists. She thrashed. The chains didn’t budge.

As her mind scrambled, another seam tore open in front of the giant dial. A red silhouette stepped through, feet on air, stopping mid-sky.

A crimson mask with sharp angles. A red chassis veined with lines that pulsed in and out. On its back, a pair of perfectly proportioned mechanical wings shed a haze of pale-blue particles. No obvious weapons. Tang Coco knew Mechs; details snapped into place at a glance. The crimson Mech fully encased the person inside, hiding any hint of who they were.

“Who are you? Did you bring me here? Where is this?”

Her fear spoke first; the questions followed.

“Fate... Clock... not only... the Fated... Hour... soon... arrives.”

A broken voice spilled from the dark figure.

“What are you even saying?”

The sound was muddy, but her focus held firm. She caught the words. The meaning slipped through her fingers.

“Wait. That voice—no way... how... you’re—”

It pricked something buried. She looked again at the Mech that felt both alien and familiar. Understanding hit like lightning—it was her. No, it was the him she used to be: Tang Ke.

“No... it can’t be... how is this—”

She stared at her former self, breath staggered. A bell-tone rolled out. She looked past him. Every hand on the giant dial locked at twelve.

“The Fated... Hour... has... arrived. Fusion... begins...”

The red figure’s words thinned to whispers. Air around him roared up. His body blazed with stabbing red light. The giant dial unfurled twelve chains. They lashed around Tang Coco and tethered to the crimson Mech. Bound midair, she flared with scarlet. Trapped, yet a force tugged inside her, tearing at her from within. The pain cut to the bone.

“Ah!!!”

The energy storm swelled. Red spider lilies ripped free and spun in the gale. The whole region drowned in red. From his feet upward, the red figure broke into particles. The storm ferried those particles into Tang Coco. Anomalous Energy rampaged between them like a wild flood.

“Tell—tell me! What is happening!”

She saw him thinning and screamed through the hurt, voice shredding.

He didn’t answer. Not until his head began to fade. The Mech’s mask peeled first, showing a face she knew too well—the handsome boy watching her. As he neared transparency, at the edge of vanishing, she saw it. He smiled. For the first time, that smile felt impossibly gentle.

“Take care...”

The words left him like a soft wind. Then he was gone, dissolved into scarlet dust.

When the red figure fully dispersed, when every particle poured into her, the field peaked.

“Ah!!!!”

The surge wrung a bright scream from her. Centered on Tang Coco hanging in the air, a wave of annihilation slammed outward. The earth shuddered. After a savage beat, silence fell.

The once-beautiful red ocean was now a vast, dark crater. The floating dial was riddled with rot-like cracks, shattered into dropping shards. A lone figure hovered there. Red Mechanical Armor covered the vital lines of a girl’s body, leaving skin white as jade bare to the light. Four mechanical wings spread behind her, touched with yellow and black, shedding a soft mist of blue particles. Strings of code spiraled around her like future-fireflies. The peerless maiden lifted her head slow. Her light-blue eyes deepened like a lake at dusk. Her voice rang out, perfect and bell-clear:

“Fusion... complete.”

White radiance burst from her body. A seam opened in space. She vanished without a trace.