Madeleine's pocketwatch gears buzzed within Louis' chest, shaking century-old yeast crust from cellar rafters.
Emilie pressed her astrolabe against his petrified vines, copper grids branding cauterized patterns—an electrotherapy technique gleaned from Roman hydraulics scrolls.
"Parisian ore altered your blood's conductivity."
She angled the instrument to focus dawnlight through a Caesar coin.
"Now we replicate their silver-plating rites—"
Louis' scream scattered ravens from wine barrels. Argent veins spiderwebbed beneath his skin, imprisoning rampant tendrils within human contours.
Neither noticed sweat droplets crystallizing into miniature vineyards on the stones—exact replicas of Morter Estate hours before the 1902 uprising.
In the mill ruins, Joseph uncovered Madeleine's lab notes. Waterproof vellum glowed with September 1920's entry:
"...Roman mycorrhizae exhibit quantum entanglement in lead-zinc solutions. Recommend relocating graft trials to..."
Wine stains obscured coordinates, but the carpenter's blade peeled apart pulp fibers—revealing a hair-embroidered relief map matching the boar-trampled north slope springs.
The constable's hounds yelped retreat, paws pierced by silica spikes erupting from soil.
Joseph raised the pocketwatch—Madeleine's specter pointed skyward where three falcons circled in perfect triangulation, mirroring the Faun's Staff constellation on Roman currency.
Demolition crews at Chavain Manor struck Roman-era lead pipes buried two meters deep.
Emilie leapt into the excavation pit—her astrolabe detected abnormal radiation from calcified deposits.
"Don't touch the growths!"
She severed fungal threads snaking up a worker's arm with ancestral pruning shears. Severed hyphae sprayed 1914 Pinot Noir that solidified into barbed wire midair—identical to German trench obstacles from war museums.
Louis plunged vine-fingers into pipe fractures.
The aqueduct exploded with 1902 holograms—young Madeleine pouring bioluminescent ore into lightning-scorched earth, vines bursting from her palms to strangle striker's torches.
At the smithy, the constable incinerated confiscated spore sacs.
Flames shifted spectral blue, projecting an argument between Joseph and Madeleine onto soot-stained walls—the 1920 storm when shattered "Tears of Pan" awakened slumbering Roman fungi.
"So you knew."
The constable seized the smith's apron.
"That Parisian geologist transporting ore twenty years back—"
The smith's pupils contracted into grape seed slits—Madeleine's voice poured from his throat:
"...grafts require living vectors..."
His red-hot poker struck fluorescent ore stockpiles. The blast tore off roof tiles as north slope springs erupted with tectonic screams.
Dusk revealed Roman aqueducts transformed into bioluminescent mycelium oceans. Emilie navigated berserk silicon vines via astrolabe, while Louis armored himself with solidified wine.
At a tributary fork, they found Joseph's abandoned grafting kit—inside lay Madeleine's wedding band, its sapphire replaced by a silver spore sac.
"Not gemstone."
Emilie dissolved the setting with acid springwater, exposing micro-transmitter components.
"She's been signaling through—"
The fungal network convulsed, hurling them onto a caduceus-carved altar.
Louis' vine-arm snapped into stone grooves, activating 47 BCE holograms—Roman legionnaires funneling prisoner's blood into grape roots as "Ave Caesar" flickered on wet stone.
When the lunar clock's seventh chime rang, Saint-Cyré's entire surface pulsed with luminous veins. Joseph watched from quaking mill ruins as Madeleine's watch gears tore through Louis' ribs—reassembling midair into Moscow time: 23:17, November 7, 1927.
"We're the culture medium.
" Emilie smashed her astrolabe against the altar. Patina flaked to reveal Soviet titanium alloy beneath.
"Silver grapes are biobatteries... harvesting eras through temporal grafts—"
Boar roars drowned her words. The lead tusker's fangs bore regenerating 1902 union banner scraps—now weaving hammer-and-sickle patterns.
Louis' autonomous vines speared the altar. Acid geysers inverted skyward, forming colossal DNA helixes braided from strike-year flames and glowing mycelium.
Emilie's whipping skirts revealed 1902 striker manifests sewn into linings. Names erased by history bled through parchment, coalescing into Latin warnings midair:
"When grafts become irreversible, roots shall pierce time's membrane."
Louis' vines metastasized within the light column, blossoming mechanized flowers with gear-stamen hearts. His remaining human eye reflected Joseph carving open his own chest—embedding 1920's watch movement into crumbling mill foundations.
"Sever... quantum links..."
Madeleine's voice reverberated through spacetime. Emilie hurled her disintegrating astrolabe—reforming mid-flight into a sextant that locked into the helix core.
Beneath smithy wreckage, the constable writhed in molten lead. His badge absorbed fungi into a living compass—needle quivering north. Bullets fired at mutated anvils disassembled into 1914 rifle parts midair, reassembling as Mauser cartridges.
"Temporal matter's collapsing!" He screamed into a radio crackling with 1920 lab recordings:
"...Subject Seven exhibits chromosomal grafting... activate Protocol Purge..."
At the helix apex, Louis' biomechanical blooms ejaculated silver spore clouds—each encapsulating eras:
1939 shepherd disguises, 1943 cellar collapses, 1953 comet weddings exploding oak casks...
Emilie tore open a 1947 memory-pod with her teeth. The vision revealed her limping future self burying the astrolabe in phylloxera nests—insect carapaces engraved with Madeleine's watch serials.
"Early warning!" She smeared pod-ichor on Louis' flesh arm.
"Our future ghosts are—"
Boars leapt en masse into the light column. Banner fragments on their tusks absorbed chronal energy, weaving crimson root-networks across Provence. Each nexus point sprouted vines flowering Soviet crests.
Joseph cranked the embedded watch movement.
Mill ruins imploded, exposing a subterranean mega-clock—hour hand forged from 1902's lightning vines, minute hand a 1914 bullet mosaic. As hands aligned with the seventh moon disc, Saint-Cyré's leylines reversed flow.
Emilie watched her astrolabe quantum-leach into Louis' vines. When the helix dissolved into stardust, Madeleine's warped warning clarified:
"...Moscow's graft-labs... devour all timelines..."
Pre-dawn silence settled. Louis' torso mapped with ligneous scars, Emilie's astrolabe missing crucial pins. They huddled watching soldiers haul Joseph away—his wounds sprouting cog-embedded tendrils.
"Not the end."
Emilie lifted a glowing spore-pod containing 2013 lab footage.
"Madeleine sows seeds across every when..."
North slope boars howled as the lunar clock reset. In rubble shadows, 1920's watch gears quietly reassembled—newly etched coordinates marking 1939 Luftwaffe targets.