The city of Vireholt was swallowed in silence.
What once had been a bustling metropolis of towering towers, glass trains, and shimmering solar domes was now… enormous. Not just large—but absurdly oversized. Streetlamps as tall as mountains. Benches the size of apartment buildings. A single manhole cover large enough to park an airship on.
And at the center of it all stood a lone figure in gold, surrounded by the trembling echoes of warped space.
Biggenator had arrived.
He didn't walk. He glided, as if time itself refused to hold him still. His cloak billowed with weightless defiance, and each step he didn't take rippled across reality like pebbles in a glass pond.
He lifted one finger—and the sun grew larger in the sky.
No one saw how.
They only screamed when it nearly doubled in size, then shrank back like a yoyo pulled on cosmic string.
He smiled beneath the hood.
"Bigger. Better. Beyond."
Miles away, deep beneath Elion's workshop, he stood breathless inside the ancient Chrono Chamber.
Sweat rolled down his neck. His hands shook as they hovered above the pendulum. The golden ring pulsed faintly with stored time energy—waiting to be awakened.
He had been training nonstop for days, guided by Lyra's relentless instructions.
"Time is not just a river," she told him. "It is breath. You inhale potential. You exhale motion. You must learn to control the rhythm—before the world collapses."
Elion could now hold his breath for minutes—not from lung capacity, but from temporal control. He could slow time around himself for moments. Enough to dodge falling tools. Enough to pause a moment of pain.
But it wasn't enough.
Not for what was coming.
Lyra burst through the chamber door, her eyes wide, breath short.
"Elion," she gasped. "It's begun. He's hit Vireholt."
Elion's pulse froze.
As they ascended through the streets of Halvenreach, whispers already filled the air.
"Did you hear? A whole city just—expanded."
"My cousin said his apartment is now a canyon."
"They say he grew the river. The whole river!"
Elion didn't stop to listen. He and Lyra rode the liftbound rails to the high cliffs overlooking Vireholt. The moment they reached the peak, Elion gasped aloud.
It was worse than he imagined.
The city had grown. Not rebuilt. Not damaged. Grown. Buildings stood twisted and stretched, like children's toys left out in the sun. Windows taller than skyscrapers. Roads that looped across the sky.
In the center of it all, Biggenator hovered—arms wide, cloak glowing.
Then he saw them.
Even from this distance, Elion felt the villain's gaze pierce through dimensions.
The gold figure lifted a single hand.
"Come closer, Little Watchmaker. Let me show you a world without limits."
Suddenly, the mountain beneath Elion's feet grew. Not collapsed. Not shattered. Grew. It expanded violently beneath him like a balloon of stone and soil.
Elion stumbled, grabbing Lyra as the world beneath them expanded upward at an impossible rate.
Within seconds, they were hundreds of feet higher than before.
Gravity twisted.
Time wobbled.
Elion reached for the Hourcore crystal inside his cloak. The moment his fingers touched it, he felt time stabilize around him, just for a heartbeat.
DA-DUM.
A ticking echoed in his mind.
DA-DUM.
He focused—gathered every breath into stillness—and paused time.
The expansion halted mid-pulse.
The dust froze in air.
Even Biggenator slowed slightly, his movements sluggish.
Elion leapt down the expanding slope in a blur—every step echoing across frozen moments. In that three-second time-pause, he closed a thousand meters of distance, landing behind Biggenator with a trembling heart.
"Stop this," he said, voice echoing in the frozen air.
Biggenator turned his head, slowly, amused. The air cracked and unpaused in pieces.
"You've finally arrived. The child of clocks. The heir of rust. The little boy who thinks he can stop the ocean with a teacup."
He raised a single hand—and Elion felt the universe stretch around him.
His clothes fluttered unnaturally. His own shadow grew until it wrapped around buildings behind him.
"You can't stop what's meant to expand."
Elion gritted his teeth.
Then…
He rewound time.
Just five seconds. That's all he could manage.
But it was enough.
He blinked—and was back at the mountain's edge. Lyra beside him. The ground not yet grown.
He had cheated time.
"Did you… just loop?" she whispered.
He nodded, chest heaving.
"I can't beat him. Not yet. But I can survive."
That night, they returned to Halvenreach shaken, but alive.
Elion stood in the Chrono Chamber once more, staring at the pendulum, now glowing faintly with resonance.
"I touched time," he whispered. "I moved it."
He lifted his hand, and the golden pendulum shivered—responding.
He wasn't just an apprentice anymore.
He had faced Biggenator—and though he hadn't won…He hadn't lost.
And next time?
He would be ready.