Time doesn't wait.
It doesn't pause when you're wounded. It doesn't slow when you're grieving. But for Elion Vale—Chrono-Lord and bearer of the fused Clockroot—it listened.
For now.
He stood in the heart of the Vault of Pendara, an underground cathedral lost to history and hidden from causality. It existed between seconds—folded inside a crack in time. Most people would never find it, even if they searched for a million years.
Elion had stepped through a time veil to reach it. Lyra followed, her steps careful, eyes wide at the marble walls, where shimmering hourglass-shaped columns pulsed gently with light.
Each column was a sealed moment in history—and inside them?
Warriors.
Frozen in their final breath. Heroes, soldiers, mystics, and time monks from every era. Each one locked in temporal stasis, chosen for one purpose:
To be awakened if the war for time ever returned.
And now—it had.
Elion placed his palm against the first hourglass. Inside, a knight in silver armor floated suspended, his sword half-raised, a final battle cry frozen on his lips.
Lyra approached cautiously. "Do you even know who he is?"
"No," Elion said. "But the Clockroot does."
He closed his eyes. The pendulum within him ticked once—then again.
A hum filled the chamber.
The hourglass cracked.
The knight fell forward, landing on one knee, eyes wide as he gasped in air he hadn't tasted in centuries.
Then, without hesitation, he rose and bowed his head.
"I serve the Keeper of the Clockroot," the knight said, voice like gravel and thunder. "Name me, and I shall fight."
Elion blinked, stunned.
"…I name you Sir Corvan of the Broken Gear."
They moved fast after that.
Each hourglass brought forth another legend, and Elion's Chrono-Warband began to form:
Sir Corvan, the Knight of the Second Sundial—wielder of the Halting Blade, which could pause movement with each strike.
Inari, a blind time-scribe from the 8th Spiral Century, whose ink could rewrite five seconds of reality.
Tekt, a floating construct built by a civilization that existed outside linear time. It communicated in pulses and fought by slowing localized entropy.
And finally, Jun Meras, a defector from Biggenator's early cult—one of the original Expansion Acolytes who had turned against him before being sealed by the Hourglass Guard.
Each warrior woke with a single shared message etched into their memory:
"When Expansion comes, the Clockroot must rise again."
Now, it had.
Meanwhile, Biggenator wasn't idle.
From the floating ruins of the Infinity Loop Citadel, he sat upon his throne of golden bones, overseeing his Multiversal Expansion Protocol.
Dozens of timelines now bent at the edge of collapse. Some had been stretched until history snapped. Others had been duplicated and layered—entire worlds now existed twice, glitching against each other like pages out of order.
His Expansion Avatars spread across the folds of time like viral thoughts. In each world, he planted a seed: a whisper, a distortion, a longing for more space, more possibility, more freedom.
He fed on it.
The more the multiverse yearned for endless growth, the stronger he became.
Back in Pendara, Elion sat cross-legged in the central chamber, meditating before the Clockroot altar. His hands hovered over a temporal map, displaying ruptures and pressure points across timelines.
Lyra entered silently, placing a scroll beside him.
"What's this?" he asked.
"An anomaly," she said. "A pocket of frozen time near the ruins of Novara. I think it's hiding something."
Elion scanned it—and his heart skipped.
It pulsed with the same energy as the Clockroot.
A second relic.
He stood instantly. "We leave at dawn."
At the ruins of Novara, the Chrono-Warband emerged from a timefold tunnel into a dead city where snow fell in reverse and shadows refused to follow the sun.
At the center, an hourglass-shaped crater whispered with energy. Elion stepped into it and knelt.
"The memory here is ancient," he murmured. "Before Biggenator. Before even the Timekeepers."
As he touched the earth, his vision shifted.
He saw a third Hour Ring, buried deep below—a relic known only in myth.
The Ring of Echoes.
It allowed not just the manipulation of time… but the duplication of it.
A second self. A moment reborn.
He dug, hands glowing—and there it was: a golden loop humming like a second heartbeat.
He reached for it—
But time snapped.
A rift opened above them, and out dropped one of Biggenator's strongest Expansion Avatars yet: a hybrid of beast and clock, pulsing with multiversal energy.
"The Expansion does not permit resistance," it said, voice like static and storm.
Sir Corvan drew his blade. Inari dipped her brush. Tekt hovered, forming a shield of slowing particles.
And Elion?
Elion placed the Ring of Echoes on his arm—and suddenly, a second version of himself appeared beside him, three seconds in the future, ready for the battle Elion had not yet fought.
Time bent to his will.
"War it is," Elion said.
The battle was like no other.
Frozen seconds turned into weapons.
Moments rewound and played again.
The Expansion Avatar fought like a storm unbound—but Elion, now with his full Chrono-Lord's kit, danced between futures and pasts.
He deflected a blow before it was thrown.
He struck after his echo landed the first.
And finally, with a whisper of time slowing to nothing, he activated Chrono Breathing: Pulse Three.
Everything stopped.
Elion walked through the pause, reached the core of the Avatar—and removed its scale seed.
It crumbled without a word.
The war had officially begun.
And for the first time, Biggenator felt it:
Opposition.