The sky above the crash site turned black. Not from night, but from shadow.
Titan 00: The Chronos-Keeper fell.
It didn't fall like a rock. It fell like a judgment. The massive, hourglass-shaped construct, miles high, descended with a terrifying, silent grace. It slammed into the center of the crashed Dissonance Mother, directly over the cavern where Julian and the Herald stood.
The Herald looked up. For the first time, her faceless visage rippled with fear.
OBSTRUCTION.
She raised her hands, firing a beam of pure Unmaking at the falling Titan.
The purple beam hit the black stone of the hourglass. It didn't destroy it. It simply stopped.
"You cannot unmake Time," Julian rasped, his dissolving skin knitting back together as the Herald's focus broke. "It is the only constant."
CRASH.
The Titan smashed through the roof of the bio-cavern.
It didn't crush them. The lower pyramid of the hourglass pierced the floor of the chamber, burying itself deep in the earth. The upper pyramid loomed overhead, filling the "sky" of the cavern.
The two pyramids locked into place.
CLICK.
The golden sand in the hourglass stopped moving.
DOMAIN: CHRONOS.
STATUS: ABSOLUTE ZERO.
A wave of grey energy expanded from the Titan.
It passed over the Herald. It passed over Julian. It passed over the Rift.
Time Stopped.
The Frozen World
The cavern became a still photograph.
The purple lightning arcing from the Herald's fingers froze in mid-air, looking like jagged glass sculptures.
Lyra, trapped in the liquid floor, was frozen in mid-scream.
The falling debris from the roof hung suspended.
Only two things moved.
The Herald, moving sluggishly, fighting against the weight of the stasis field like she was wading through deep tar.
And Julian.
His nanite arm pulsed with a grey light—synced to the Titan. As the Conductor of the Chronos, he was exempt from the freeze.
"You..." The Herald's voice was distorted, slow. deep. "You... cheat..."
"Physics," Julian said, walking normally toward her. He picked up his Sonic Lance from the floor. "It's a harsh mistress."
He looked at the Rift. The tear in space was frozen, but it was still open. The purple light was still bleeding through.
"I can't close it alone," Julian realized. "I need more power."
He looked at the Herald. She was raising her hand, trying to cast another spell. It would take her ten seconds to complete a motion that usually took a microsecond.
"Plenty of time," Julian muttered.
He placed his hand on the black stone of the Titan.
Network. Open.
Call the choir.
The Six-Note Chord
Outside the bio-moon, the world was also frozen. The dust hung in the air. The Legion soldiers were statues.
But the Titans were awake. Their cores, protected by Aether, resisted the time-stop.
Listen, Julian's voice echoed in their minds.
Target: The Rift.
Frequency: The Aether Dirge.
Fire.
Titan 01 (Gold) raised its hands.
Titan 02 (Water) opened its maw.
Titan 03 (Fire) glowed red.
Titan 04 (Wind) spun its rings.
Titan 05 (Ice) howled.
And Titan 00 (Time) acted as the lens.
They fired simultaneously.
Five beams of elemental energy shot toward the crash site. They struck the upper pyramid of the Chronos-Keeper.
The energy didn't explode. It was channeled.
The hourglass took the fire, the ice, the wind, the water, and the gold. It mixed them. It compressed them.
It turned them into a single, blinding white beam.
The Final Note
Inside the cavern, the upper pyramid of the Titan began to glow.
The Herald saw it coming. She screamed—a slow, low-pitched moan of terror.
Julian stepped back.
"Cover your ears," he whispered to the frozen Lyra.
The Titan fired downwards.
The white beam shot through the narrow waist of the hourglass. It passed right through Julian (who resonated with it) and struck the Herald.
SCREEEEEEEEE.
The sound was absolute. It was the Perfect Note. The frequency of the planet itself.
The Herald didn't dissolve. She Shattered.
Her form cracked like porcelain. The white light burst out of her, obliterating the purple energy.
The beam continued. It hit the Rift behind her.
The Rift tried to swallow the energy. But it was too much. The white light was "Order." The Rift was "Chaos."
Order won.
The edges of the Rift began to stitch together. The tear in reality healed, forced shut by the sheer pressure of the Aether.
With a final POP, the Rift vanished.
The connection to deep space was severed.
The Collapse
The beam faded.
SYSTEM: DISCHARGE COMPLETE.
TIME: RESUMING.
SNAP.
Time rushed back in.
The debris fell. The lightning dissipated. Lyra finished her scream.
"Julian!"
She pulled herself out of the (now solid) floor.
The Herald was gone. Where she had stood, there was only a pile of white ash.
The cavern began to shake violently.
"The host is dead!" Skid yelled, her datapad flashing green. "The biological integrity is failing! This whole moon is liquefying!"
"We have to go!" Marcus's ghost seemed to whisper in the shaking air.
"To the Titan!" Julian pointed to the Chronos-Keeper embedded in the floor. "Inside the field!"
They scrambled up the black stone of the lower pyramid. A hatch hissed open—the maintenance airlock.
They dove inside just as the bio-cavern collapsed.
Tons of rotting flesh slammed into the Titan's shields. The Chronos-Keeper shuddered, then engaged its thrusters.
It ripped itself out of the corpse of the Dissonance Mother.
It rose into the sky, carrying the team to safety.
The Rain
From the observation deck of the Titan, they watched.
Below, the massive carcass of the Dissonance Mother was dissolving. Without the Herald to sustain its reality, the chaotic matter couldn't exist in this dimension. It turned into white vapor.
It began to rain.
A gentle, white rain fell over the Silent Sands.
"It's over," Isolde whispered, leaning against the glass.
"The invasion is stopped," Julian said, clutching his exhausted arm. "The Rift is closed."
"But the Emperor is still out there," Zephyr pointed to the sky.
"Let him drift," Julian said. "He has no ship. No station. No army."
He looked at the Titan fleet hovering around them. Six gods.
"We have the world."
Skid walked up to Julian. She looked at the sensors.
"Julian," she said softly. "The signal... the screaming from space... it stopped. But..."
"But what?"
"I'm picking up a new signal. From the wreckage below."
Julian looked down.
In the center of the dissolving moon, something metal was glinting. It wasn't organic. It was a black box.
"A transmitter," Julian realized. "The Herald wasn't just an invader. She was a scout."
"What does it say?"
Skid decoded the final burst of data the Herald had sent before she died.
MESSAGE: VESSEL SECURED. INCUBATION COMPLETE. AWAKEN THE SEVENTH.
Julian went cold.
"The Seventh," Julian whispered. "Titan 07."
"But Titan 07 was destroyed," Lyra said. "The Spire blew up."
"The Spire was just the housing," Julian realized. "The Titan itself... the core... we never saw it destroyed. We just assumed."
He looked up at the stars.
"The Emperor didn't go to the Spire to hide. He went there to become the Seventh."