Vireholt smoldered behind them.
Buildings towered above clouds that hadn't existed before. Some streets curved in ways that broke geometry. Children, unaware of their own looping presence, giggled in infinite echoes. The city was no longer a place—it was a glitching monument to Biggenator's will.
And Elion stood at its heart, breathing slowly, the newly fused Clockroot pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
One second is all you have. Use it well.
He remembered the voice. The ancient warning burned into his veins. But now, more than ever… he felt ready.
Lyra moved beside him, her eyes scanning the warping skyline.
"You've changed," she said.
Elion didn't reply at first. His gaze was distant, focused on something beyond the world around him.
"It's like I can hear the gears in the sky," he finally whispered. "Like time has a rhythm… and I'm part of the song now."
Two glowing Hour Rings spun gently around his shoulders, orbiting like silent moons. Each one etched with sigils from a time long buried. They shimmered with raw Chrono-energy, their presence distorting nearby air.
Time obeyed him now.
But their peace didn't last long.
The ground trembled.
A deep vibration rolled across the horizon, shaking the towers and rippling through the sky itself.
From the warping skyline of Vireholt, a massive form began to take shape.
At first, it looked like a shadow. Then it became a shape. Then a presence.
An Expansion Avatar.
Biggenator had created them once before—massive puppets sculpted from the broken rules of space and reality. They were fragments of his mind, animated by scale and will.
This one… was the largest ever made.
It stood like a god, a colossus made of steel girders, fractured glass, and golden bones. Its head was shaped like a cracked clock face. Its limbs pulsed with expanding light, growing with every step.
"It's growing as it moves," Lyra said, stepping back.
Elion stepped forward instead.
"Then I'll stop it from taking another step."
He moved with a burst of speed—faster than thought.
To everyone else, time slowed. Elion flickered across rooftops like a golden spark. His new Chrono-senses let him feel every motion in microseconds. He wasn't just pausing time anymore.
He was commanding it.
The Avatar lifted its titanic foot, intending to crush the western quadrant of the city.
But Elion raised his hand—and froze the motion.
Midair.
The foot hovered, twitching as if trapped in a nightmare loop.
Elion appeared at its ankle, hand pressed against the metallic limb.
"Let me show you what stillness means."
He activated the First Hour Ring: Static Lock.
A burst of golden gears exploded outward, locking the Avatar's entire leg in a cocoon of frozen time.
The giant stumbled—unable to move.
Elion didn't stop.
He leapt onto its shoulder and activated the Second Hour Ring: Retrosight.
For just a moment, he saw the past of this construct—its creation, its birth from Biggenator's mind, the way the metal had twisted and expanded from mere scrap.
He followed the memory trail—straight to its core.
There, inside the Avatar's chest, pulsed a golden sphere of unstable Chrono-Energy—a seed of Biggenator's expansion will.
Elion raced through time-stilled machinery, gears grinding slower as he passed. He reached the core and pressed both palms against it.
Then he breathed.
Inhale: Control.
Exhale: Collapse.
Time surged.
The core imploded, folding into itself in a spiral of flickering lights.
The entire Avatar groaned—then detonated in silence.
No explosion. Just a sudden absence. It disappeared from existence like a skipped second.
Elion fell from the sky, landing hard but steady. The Avatar was gone. The city trembled—and stabilized.
For now.
Lyra ran to him.
"You… you destroyed it."
"I reversed its creation," Elion said. "I went back to when it was just a thought. And made it stop growing."
He stared at his hands, still glowing with pulsing sigils.
Then a slow clap echoed from above.
Floating in the sky, calm and unbothered, was Biggenator.
"Impressive," he said, voice like grinding tectonic plates."You've become a true Chrono-Lord."
He floated downward, gold cloak unbothered by wind or gravity.
"But all that control… and you still only act within seconds."
Elion narrowed his eyes. "And you act without limits."
Biggenator opened his arms.
"Exactly."
He gestured—and the moon began to enlarge in the sky, inch by inch.
"I want a world that can hold everything. Every thought. Every dream. Every truth."
"You'll collapse the timeline!"
Biggenator smiled.
"That's the point."
He vanished in a flash of bending light—leaving Elion and Lyra staring at a rising moon that now pulsed with distortion.
Back in the Chrono Chamber, Elion stared into the Clockroot once more.
Lyra sat silently beside him.
"What now?" she asked.
Elion touched his second Hour Ring.
"I've awakened," he whispered. "But this isn't enough."
He looked at her, determined.
"There are other Time Relics. Other hidden Chrono-Warriors. If Biggenator plans to expand the multiverse itself…"
He stood.
"…Then we need to make time fight back."