The peace that followed the binding of the third spark lasted only minutes.
Kaien stood at the apex of the Palace of Gravity, its once-shifting corridors now locked in stillness. The three sparks burned within him—Elion's fragmented will, each glowing in rhythm with his breath. He had not become a god. But he was no longer a mere man either.
The Moon stilled for him.
Time stilled for him.
But fate—fate was not finished.
Not yet.
The sky cracked open with a soundless scream.
A tear in the firmament—a rent in reality itself—blossomed above the fractured moon like a festering wound. From it poured the Spiral Choir.
Not an army in the traditional sense. No ships. No flags. Just forms—figures of distortion and will, humanoid shapes composed of stretched memory, decayed timelines, and Expansion glyphs carved into their very skin. Their arrival was silent, but their presence drowned out all meaning.
Kaien stepped onto the palace balcony. The others joined him, eyes wide.
"They've come," Mirra whispered.
"They felt the third spark activate," Lyra said grimly. "And now they're here to take it."
Kaien's fingers twitched. "Let them try."
The first wave descended like locusts.
Fifteen Spiral Wraiths dropped onto the moon's surface, moving with impossible grace—stuttering in and out of time, skipping moments with every step. Their claws shimmered with nulllight. Wherever they landed, reality bent.
Gorran raised his particle cannon and roared, "Line up and burn!"
He fired.
Three Wraiths evaporated into spirals of memory mist, screaming as they dissolved.
Mirra deployed a barrier, her hands slicing through interface glyphs faster than Kaien could track. "This won't hold long!"
Kaien felt it—resonance flaring in his chest. The sparks within him hummed, begging for unity.
But he wasn't ready yet.
He needed time.
Lyra launched into the air, drawing a blade from her back forged from condensed lunar core. "I'll stall the flanks!"
She met the Wraiths midair, a blur of golden strikes and whirling shadow. Each clash of her blade sent temporal shockwaves rippling through the air. Every strike felt like a page from history being torn out and rewritten.
But the Choir didn't fight fair.
They multiplied.
From the rift came more—spiral beasts, time-hounds, memory leeches. The moon trembled as thousands descended.
Kaien turned to Mirra. "Buy me two minutes."
"What are you doing?" she shouted.
"Combining the sparks."
Her eyes widened. "That's suicide! They'll burn you from inside out!"
"Then I'll burn brighter than they expect."
He retreated into the throne chamber.
The sparks pulsed violently now—each one vibrating at its own frequency. They were not meant to coexist in one host for long. Fragmented for safety. To be used separately. But Kaien had no choice.
He dropped to his knees and slammed his palm into the ground.
A circle of energy erupted around him. The palace responded. Glyphs ignited on the floor. The very foundations of gravity and memory shuddered.
"I am Kaien.I carry Elion's Flame.I carry the pain of what was lost,the strength of what endures,and the gravity that holds it all together."
The sparks screamed.
Not in pain.
In challenge.
Outside, the battle raged.
Mirra overloaded her defense matrix, forcing a bubble of compressed time to freeze thirty enemies mid-strike—but the feedback blew her meters backward.
Gorran fell to one knee, wounded, shielding Mirra with his body.
Lyra floated high above, locked in combat with a higher Spiral—a being of swirling wings and collapsing stars for eyes.
Even she was losing.
And then—
Kaien stood up.
The moment he rose, the moon responded.
Light—not of this world—poured from the palace. A tri-colored storm burst into the sky, arcing across the lunar horizon and striking the Spiral Choir's army like judgment incarnate.
Kaien emerged from the gate, eyes glowing with three fused sparks spinning like miniature suns around his heart.
His voice echoed across the battlefield.
"I am the Flame that Remembers.The Weight that Grounds.The Will that Resists.I am Chrono-Legacy."
He raised his hand—
—and time obeyed.
The Wraiths faltered.
Kaien's presence became a singularity of stability. Where they skipped time, he anchored it. Where they twisted moments, he froze them.
He moved through their ranks like a god of memory and gravity—wielding the fused sparks like a sword and shield. Every wave of his hand restored a lost second, rebuilt a broken past.
He struck the ground with his foot and a ripple of force sent Spiral beasts disintegrating into nothingness.
The Choir began to fall back.
Until one of them stepped forward.
A Spiral General—nine feet tall, wrapped in robes of infinite regress, its face a mirror.
Kaien saw himself in it.
Literally.
The General was Kaien.
A version of him that had failed. That had bent the knee to Biggenator and become his herald.
"You cannot change fate," it spoke, voice layered in echoes of Kaien's own past doubts. "You are too late. You are already me."
Kaien stepped forward.
"No," he said. "I'm what you couldn't be."
They collided.
The battle between Kaien and the Spiral General twisted the laws of the moon. Shockwaves of time and memory exploded in all directions. Each strike of their weapons summoned echoes of possible futures—cities that never were, stars that had not yet burned.
The others could only watch from afar.
Kaien screamed as the General stabbed into him—not physically, but mentally, throwing memories into his mind to break his focus:
His parents burning.
Lyra dying.
Mirra choosing to leave him.
Gorran crushed under Expansion.
Kaien faltered.
But then…
He remembered something stronger.
The child who survived.The man who endured.The dream of Elion still burning.
He grasped the General's face and poured all three sparks into it.
"No more lies," Kaien whispered."Time listens to me now."
The Spiral General shattered—like glass breaking inward. It collapsed into spirals of undone memory, which dissolved into golden dust.
Silence fell.
The army of the Choir stopped moving.
Then began to collapse.
One by one, the Spiral constructs lost cohesion. The link to the General severed, their existence unraveled. The Rift above the moon began to close.
Kaien dropped to one knee, breathing heavily.
The sparks inside him were stable—but barely.
Mirra rushed to his side. "You did it."
Kaien nodded. "Not yet."
He looked up.
Toward the stars.
Toward Biggenator.
Far beyond, in the center of the Expansion Core, Biggenator stirred.
He had watched everything.
And now, his grin widened.
"You've awakened the whole spark.Good.
Now come and stop me."