The void was endless.
Chronos stood alone beneath the towering clock, its pendulum swinging with a rhythm that shook his bones. Shadows hissed in the dark, crawling from the sands with claws like broken glass. He fought, bled, and staggered, but he did not fall.
The first year had been nothing but battle.
The shadow-beasts never ceased. They crawled from the rivers of silver sand in shapes half-formed, half-forgotten. Some bore faces that resembled his siblings—twisted parodies that snarled and bit. Others were nothing but storms of claws and jagged teeth. Their roars shook the void, and their strikes carried the weight of entire futures collapsing.
At first, every fight nearly killed him.
Acceleration tore his muscles apart, hurling him faster than his body could bear. Deceleration left him gasping, lungs crushed under the drag of stolen seconds. Suspension froze a claw or a falling stone, but it left him open to the rest of the world crashing down.
He fell again and again, silver blood spattering across the sands. His chest burned. His mind reeled. But every time he collapsed, he rose again. The pendulum tolled, the void roared, and his voice echoed:
Time will not devour me. I will master it.
Days melted into months, months into a year. The void had no sun, no moon—only the toll of the clock, marking a rhythm that was both eternal and merciless. Yet Chronos endured.
He trained until his acceleration no longer shredded him. Instead of reckless bursts, he learned to sharpen it—to move in controlled strikes, like lightning in human form. His deceleration no longer suffocated him; he bent it into layers, slowing only what mattered. He could drag a beast's claw into sluggishness while letting its roar pass untouched. Suspension remained the harshest. Freezing even a single grain of sand nearly broke his veins, but he refused to abandon it. Slowly, piece by piece, he learned to suspend not just objects but moments—a claw, a falling shard, even a beast's bite.
His scars became lessons. His lungs grew like bellows, his muscles hardened, his veins carried the steady burn of silver sand. He no longer collapsed with every toll of the clock. His breath came ragged, but it came steady.
Still, the beasts never ceased.
On the last day of his first year, the void split open with a roar. A shadow larger than any he had faced crawled forth, its body twisting between wolf, serpent, and faceless giant. Its eyes burned with stormlight, its claws long enough to scrape the clock itself.
The pendulum tolled. The beast lunged.
Chronos accelerated, his body blurring as he dodged the first swipe. Claws split the void behind him, leaving gashes in reality. He struck back, silver light bursting from his fist—but the beast's body only reformed, a storm of sand and teeth.
Snarling, Chronos slowed its next strike. The massive claw dragged through the air, heavy as stone. He leapt forward, suspending half its body mid-motion. The rest of the beast thrashed, screaming, but its frozen half gave him an opening.
He accelerated, his silver hair blazing, and drove his fist into its chest. The suspended half shattered into shards of silver dust. The rest roared, its jaws snapping like thunder.
Chronos staggered, sweat pouring down his brow. His lungs heaved, every muscle screaming. But his eyes burned.
Not this time.
He layered his abilities—slowing the beast's strikes, freezing fragments of its body, surging forward faster than the void could follow. Piece by piece, he broke it apart until the shadow dissolved into nothing but falling sand.
Chronos collapsed to one knee, his chest heaving, silver blood dripping from his knuckles. The pendulum tolled above him, slower now, as if approving.
He remained there for hours—or perhaps days. In the void, time was meaningless, only the rhythm of the clock anchoring him.
At last, he sat cross-legged, closing his eyes. His breath steadied, the silver sands swirling faintly around him. The clock's toll matched the beat of his heart.
He thought of his siblings.
Hyperion, pride blazing like fire. Oceanus, steady as the tide. Phoebe, soft yet unshaken. Themis, her scales weighing silently. Mnemosyne, burdened by memory. Crius, frowning at constellations. Iapetus, fists that shook mountains. Tethys, quiet but strong as rivers. Coeus, lost in scrolls.
Am I the only one fighting like this?
The thought stung, but then he remembered Gaia's words: "Your realms are not fragments. They are worlds."
Then surely… they too are fighting. They too are shaping their worlds.
His meditation deepened.
Within the sands, faint ripples shimmered—threads of light stretching outward, tugging toward unseen horizons. Each pulse felt familiar, like echoes of his siblings' emblems. Oceanus' tide, Hyperion's sun, Phoebe's moons, Themis' scales—they were distant, but they were there.
Chronos exhaled slowly. Even apart, we are bound.
For the first time, the void did not feel so empty.
He let his thoughts drift further. He saw glimpses, faint as shadows: Oceanus battling serpents beneath stormy waves. Hyperion blazing against volcanic winds. Phoebe cloaking herself in silver calm. Themis weighing spirits of injustice. Mnemosyne wandering memory-beasts. Crius charting stars into weapons. Iapetus smashing stone armies. Tethys braving drowned caverns. Coeus resisting madness in ruined halls.
They were fighting, too. Struggling. Enduring.
The clock tolled louder, and the sands stirred, as though approving his realization.
Chronos opened his eyes. The void awaited, but it no longer felt like an enemy. The shadows hissed, but their voices no longer seemed so deafening.
He rose to his feet, silver light blazing from his emblem. His chest no longer trembled with despair. His body no longer staggered beneath fear.
"I will not fail," he whispered into the silence. "And when we return, we will not be sparks. We will be Titans."
The pendulum swung, the sands roared, and Chronos stepped forward into the second year.