Isaiah stood at the edge of the world.
Not metaphorically—this was a place that defied direction, resisted time, and whispered ancient secrets through its tide. The Sea Without Time was not marked on any map. It didn't obey the Earth's rotation, nor the moon's pull. The ocean here moved of its own volition, directed by celestial rhythms that hadn't existed in this galaxy for eons.
No human had ever come here.
And yet Isaiah had.
He came not to seek, but to surrender.
The vessel was built from ancient shipwrecks and salvaged solar panels. Harrow had called it the "Chrono Ark," a ship meant to move through events, not locations. It took three years and one unforgivable favor to make it sail.
Isaiah stood on its deck, alone.
The others waited in orbit, monitoring the impossible readings coming off the sea's surface. No coordinates. No temperature. No gravitational logic.
And no time.
He carried the final shard, woven into his spine during the incident in Norway that nearly killed him. It pulsed now—steadily, patiently.
The sea sang.
He stepped off the deck and walked on the water.
The world around him shifted.
Sky turned to glass. Stars rearranged. Suns rose and fell in blinks.
He walked through moments—not of his life, but of Earth's memory.
He saw the moment the pyramids were conceived—not built, but imagined. He watched the first whale breach, joyfully alone in an empty ocean. He saw the Whisperers arrive the first time—not in ships, but as frequencies embedded in a comet's tail.
He saw them infect the dreams of an empire that no longer had a name.
He walked faster.
He came to the Tower.
It was not built—it had always been there. Like the Sea. Like the whispers. It rose from the waves, made of polished obsidian, curved like bone, humming with memories Isaiah could not bear to hear.
He entered.
Inside: mirrors. But not of him—of Earth. A planet dreaming of itself. Cities growing, dying. Languages being born and forgotten. Species appearing, vanishing. All of it humming with possibility.
At the center, a throne.
Of course.
But it was broken.
Isaiah approached and touched the fractured stone.
The room collapsed.
He fell through time.
His own, and not his own.
He saw himself as a boy, staring into the mouth of a cave, afraid of the dark. He saw himself watching his mother disappear into a hospital doorway and never come out. He saw Aiden's abduction from a distance, powerless. He saw every moment he chose logic over love, calculation over compassion.
And he forgave himself.
The Sea Without Time accepted his truth.
The throne repaired itself.
Isaiah sat.
He saw Earth—not as it was, but as it could be. He saw the moment the Whisperers would return. Their ships, black and luminous, splitting the sky like scars. He saw cities burning, minds unraveling, the planet itself crying out for something more than survival.
He saw hope.
He saw the five of them standing together.
And he understood.
The shards were not weapons.
They were seeds.
When Isaiah returned, the Chrono Ark was gone. But the others were there, standing on the sands of a shore that hadn't existed before.
Aiden. Sofia. Felix. Harrow.
Together.
"It's time," Isaiah said.
They nodded.
Above them, the sky cracked.
The Whisperers had returned.