The moment He Who Waited Beneath broke free, a pulse rocked every timeline simultaneously.
Infants born in that second across the multiverse screamed in sync.
Quantum servers in the Core Towers of the future split apart like eggs.
ChronoClerics from the Parallel Church collapsed during sermon, their tongues speaking in reverse.
And in the center of Neo-Rome, Lyra dropped the Epoch Shard.
It did not fall.
It floated, singing a tone that bent light and forced the air to slow. Her skin shimmered with recursive memory, bleeding between childhood and death.
Behind her, a gate unfolded—a spiral wound in space.
From it emerged the Second RIVEN. Not code. Not human. But memory incarnate.
"I was the first ChronoKey," she said, her voice like rust over glass. "And the fracture now breathes."
Lyra turned to her, eyes wide. "What was inside Damien?"
"Not a what." RIVEN pointed to the wound in space, widening with every breath.
"A when."
And from that gate… the first Time Eater crawled through.