Yunho couldn’t help but feel a little lost as he looked around the mechanical jungle of noise surrounding him.

“Beyond the pistons there is a dark path, hidden until you fade to the left. Go down there. Make sure to use your watch after one minute has passed since our separation- this will allow me to also get where I need to go, which isn’t as far as you. Once you’ve stopped time you need to get out of the mechanics and find Yoochun. He should be in the west wing.”

“You told him my name?”

“Not now, Chunchun.”

A small smile caught at his lips as he recalled the abhorred ‘don’t call me that’ face Yoochun made as they created their plan.

Doing as Junsu told him, making sure not to be caught out by the moving panels of the floor, he found the concealed tunnel in the dark and crouched before it. He made a brief time check- seeing a minute had passed, he firmly clicked the watch, and as he glanced around the inanimate world he felt a sudden emptiness. For some reason, he felt entirely alone in the wacky world gone cold around him.

He would be, for a little while.

He hadn’t expected to find this tunnel to be such a labyrinth. There were innumerable choices; some elevated, others blocked half way, others entirely missing panels and simply leading to the mysterious darkness which seemed to exist below.

As he was reverse-crawling from yet another dead end (which he’d managed to discover with his forehead) he began to mutter to himself. It was better than the deafening silence which surrounded him, outside the sound of his breath and beating of his heart; and of course, the occasional “ow” as he inevitably bashed something.

Yunho was gradually coming to realise there was a fundamental difference to how the meshwork of the underground had been before. There didn't appear to be anything manipulatable, just vein after vein in this metal organism. Pausing in the eery silence, Yunho took a moment to really think about where he was going. He needed to go up, but so far he'd been looking with his eyes rather than his hands, and there wasn't any light down here. Tentatively, Yunho touched his fingers up to the ceiling, sliding them across the cold surface as he shuffled forward on his knees, the frostiness of the touch making his arms tingle.

Going around like that made his hands cold and his arms ache, but sure enough after a few dud tunnels and scraped knees, he finally fumbled across an invisible opening. Time to go up, he thought to himself.

And that is how he found himself climbing like a chimney boy up a smooth and slippery chute.

-----

Yunho was dripping with sweat by the time he reached the opening, ankles and wrists straining where he had to press his limbs against vertical surfaces for such a prolonged time. At least Changmin would be proud of him, he mused. It took every ounce of determination to exert himself like this. Rolling his body out of the small opening in the floor, chest stretching in deep breath as his hot back stuck to the cold floor, Yunho only had a few moments rest before the room he'd emerged in really stole his attention.

The tiny point of his emergence was the eye of a great vortex of material; heavy woods, marbles and metals halted in a towering tornado which reached stories up into the room. Despite time being frozen Yunho's mind began to spin with the immense power locked in the motion of these objects, momentum leaving him in awe. Whatever he had done below released immense change above, the entire landscape swayed by powerful forces. All it had taken was a minute. Hauling himself to his feet, he ducked through a gap over a strange ornamental metal design and under a rogue piece of marble into what he recognised as the shell of the main hall.

Where were the two beings? Time hadn't been in motion for quite a while and yet Yunho hadn't spotted a trace of the two. While he found the beings strange and irksome he was even more bothered by the notion he could be completely alone amongst this new mayhem. Navigating the hectic landscape in such dire quietness made Yunho's damp skin tingle with goosebumps. The objects suspended in thin air cast eery shadows down upon him as he walked, carefully minding his footsteps as so many gaps had appeared in the floor.

As he approached the western wall, he found the more he walked and the perspective of the flying objects altered, it was as if he were browsing a tremendous, three-dimensional puzzle. This all came into realisation as, in five more steps, the perspective settled into one picture.

Yunho was seeing a spiral, a hexis much like the central tower, but in it Yunho could see his entire world. It was a timeline, emerging from the darkness of the unknown, and ascending into the not yet discovered. In that moment, Yunho felt as if he was witnessing the reconstruction of the universe in the mechanics of one ultradimension. Where this feeling stemmed from, he couldn't know, but it resonated deeply within him, and something compelled him to climb.

The ascent was hard. He had to jump from platform to platform, some in the form of broken clocks, blind gargoyles, doors with no handles, entangled pipes, purple glass and shards of silver-white wood. Despite the coldness in the world outside time, Yunho was burning up, burning with the feeling kindled within his core. He needed to see what was up there- whether he was meant to or not.

As he was reaching for the next step- an ironwork window frame- he suddenly felt as he he'd hit a glass ceiling. His whole body was struck with sluggish fatigue, entirely unable to ascend further. He stumbled to the side, falling hard on a smooth, flat surface. To his great surprise, it was a translucent, emerald green, and with a hammering heart it hit him that he had landed on a glyph. Briefly paralysed by a choking fear, Yunho could have sworn it was an external force which gave him the strength to get to his feet. The aura surrounding him was potent and had a powerful effect on his body.

"This place is neigh a playground to your fancy, mortal." A demonic voice, split between the bass of a man's and treble of a woman's, resonated. The two beings had flickered into existance before him, stance domineering with folded arms and stern expression. They were different, this time; while at first they appeared separate, a magnetism warped their bodies like a broken screen, merging them in flickers of a moment Yunho could never quite catch. "It is far more complex than what your kind could ever comprehend." Stunned, Yunho could hardly reply. He'd never heard such a sound before. "You must do what has been asked of you, nothing more, nothing less. In Fate's abode, where all of time is ravelled and unravelled, it has never been purposed for a mortal's eye. Restore what has been broken." And with that, they were gone, and Yunho was falling.

He slammed into the air above the ground as if it were water, suspended there above the gleaning marble with his life flashing before his eyes. The world he'd been plunged into was now in such a fragile state of chaos he was beginning to feel and see things he wasn't supposed or allowed to. This included a flash of his mortal self; for after this vision, he thoroughly understood his form here was but a figment of his consciousness- he saw a vision of a broken and bloodied body, unseeing eyes and unfeeling fingers, staring blankly into nothingness. What happened to me? 

-----

Since his realisation, he still hadn't quite recovered from the sense of disembodiment he experienced. Were all the others the same? Had their bodies long since perished? Had his?

The state outside time was far more malleable than he previously imagined. He had been navigating a timeless place as if it were not. It prompted so many more questions than it answered- was it spaceless too? Is that how the beings travelled so effortlessly that they escaped his eye- because he was hard-wired to interpret the world as one gripped by time and physics?

Yunho was too distracted by existential crisis to pay too much attention to where he was going. Finally, Yunho made it to the west wing. He briefly wondered if he'd simply walked through the wall, although he knew it not to be true. And in here, it wasn't so chaotic as the main hall. However, he did walk in to see a rather strange sight.

With the altered composition of the landscape which was new to them, the two had clearly created a plan B in the absence of Yunho and Junsu. Changmin was hovering mid-jump with a rhombus-cut purple stone glinting in hand, seemingly having launched from the squatting Yoochun's shoulder. Yoochun was positioned with linked fingers and a strong stance on the uneven floor, determined look on his face as he stared onward, focussing on his balance for Changmin's sake.

Yunho didn't want to underestimate Changmin's wall climbing abilities, but what he appeared to be trying to do was nigh impossible from his position. For much of the way Changmin would need to run up virticle wall with no foothold, and as skilled as he was, he wouldn't last it. It needed someone to relay the gem to who could then continue to climb. Yunho scouted where the stone belonged- a dragonesque gargoyle was in need of a tongue.

For a moment, Yunho decided to disregard his idea of the impossible. Instead of looking around him for a climbable route- he knew already there wasn't one- he gripped his courage and determination and walked with a straight face for the vertical wall. One foot, two feet, he didn't just imagine but he believed that it was just another surface to walk upon- and suspending his disbelief for for fear it would drop him, he walked, and he walked.

It surprised him how fast he could accept the alteration as his reality. Now the opposite wall was his ceiling, the ground his wall. His chest hammered but he ignored it. He finally realised he was more than just a fleeting heartbeat.

He'd turned everything on its head, and there was no turning back now. He'd transcended, and he'd never be left behind again. He promised it to himself.

He made it high enough. He could see, from there, he would be able to reach Changmin if the other stretched enough and there were one or two more hopping spaces for him to use to get to the top. He realigned himself with reality and reached for his stopwatch.

He took a deep, calming breath in his last moments of silence.

"Changmin, up here!" He called over the bellowing noise of motion around them. He was stood perched atop of two brass pipes which poked out of the gaps in the wall uselessly. He could hear the whirring winds of the turmoil in the great hall, and from up so high could see the power of the vortex which menaced the wall of the west wing, forcing objects and panels to tremble. Heat rose up through him, in stark contrast with the iciness dominant in his alternate world. Instead of overwhelming him it burned and made him feel so alive. He could do this- they could do this.

The warrior sharply looked up, a fleeting surprise crossing his stoic expression. Without any hesitation in his flow, Changmin made true to his reputation by defying gravity and made the great ascent, using even the slightest nook as leverage for his momentum from the initial leap. He got so close- giving Yunho an even deeper respect- but still, no man can run up a smooth surface, and neither could Changmin. In a final attempt to reach Yunho, he stretched every lithe limb in his body and cupped a hand around one of the pipes Yunho stood upon, swinging the gemstone up through the gap for Yunho to grab. Siezing the small object, Yunho took it for granted that Changmin would look after himself hanging there and launched off for his own ascent. Only a few footholds away, Yunho made sure he did everything neatly and precisely, honing his attention on the gargoyle's mouth. The stone was smooth and grim, accepting a very particular hole for the gem to fit inside.

Yunho didn't think hard enough about the fact what goes up, must come down. He found himself falling, passing a horrified Changmin before flicking his stopwatch, skidding to a halt on a wall sapped entirely of warmth. Gathering himself up to his feet once more, as he had done countless times, he calmly walked the last few paces to the floor and hopped down. 

There was something dreadfully wrong.

The more the world tore apart in the rift rapidly emerging, the more nothingness appeared in gaps in the floor below them. Yoochun had been stranded across from them, the nothingness encircling like a python around its prey. While Yunho and Changmin had been so preoccupied above, they had left Yoochun alone, and now that Yunho only just realised his plight he could see in the other's face that he knew.

Yoochun was frowning down at the shifting tiles below him, crouched defensively. By the look on his face, he had seen the approaching threat from afar, but seen his limited options before it even fully manifested.

Yoochun was a philosphical man. In his time spent in an alternate realm he had much to contemplate; the nothingness below, the endless white otherwise surrounding them- their beginnings here, and finally, their end. He'd always wondered when his end would come, and if he'd be ready for it- and now, faced by nothing but fear itself, he sees the beyond. Yoochun didn't consider it death, per say- if he were in his own reality, he would still be just as hesitant to say, as in his belief nobody can know- but now, as the darkness approaches him, he knows fighting it will lead nowhere. Hard to accept as that was... It's his time.

Yunho is less of a philosphical man. He sees Yoochun marrooned from them, the chaos of objects blocking all paths, and he feels deep compassion sway him, gaul spitting up in his throat.

Yunho looked behind him. Changmin was far too high up to be safe, and although he could climb up, there was no way down. Without Yunho to help him, he would surely fall.

Yunho looked in front of him. Yoochun was stranded. Without someone to pull him out, he would surely meet the darkness below.

Now came his dilemma: Changmin, or Yoochun?