Anchor 7777.W — The Sands of Serath
The sandstorm had been raging for decades.
Not metaphorically. Literally. A storm of broken time — powdered causality, fractured events, and burnt memories — swirling across an endless battlefield where the past fought the future, and the present just tried to survive.
This was Serath — the Anchor where the Hourglass War first began.
And now, Kael and his team stood in its center.
---
Aren immediately collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest.
Ghost Ronin lifted him. "What's wrong?"
Myra's eyes widened. "This is the Anchor where the ChronoSeed was created… but it wasn't born — it was forged. In battle."
They looked across the dunes.
Two armies charged through the swirling storm:
The Sandborn — warriors wrapped in red chronoweave, bound to the past.
The Glasswalkers — futuristic, fluid, data-bodied, wielding unstable tech from futures that hadn't even happened yet.
Both sides were fighting for control of one thing:
> A broken, burning Hourglass — large as a cathedral, floating in midair, dripping time like blood.
---
The moment Kael stepped closer, the battle froze.
Literally. Mid-swing. Mid-scream. Mid-suffering.
Then a voice echoed from the Hourglass:
> "You're late, Kael Voss."
A figure emerged.
He wore time like armor.
Eyes of hourglass glass.
Hair that turned white, then black, then vanished, then returned.
He was known only as:
General Shard.
The first being ever caught mid-paradox and still functioning.
---
"You started this war," Shard growled.
Kael blinked. "Pretty sure I've started a lot of things."
"You broke the loop that kept the Sandborn and Glasswalkers apart. They weren't supposed to meet. You made them remember."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "And now they're killing each other over who gets to own time."
"Not own," Shard said. "Define."
---
Then, the Hourglass cracked.
Time bled.
And every soldier on the field began shifting identities — aging forward and backward, glitching through timelines, merging with their own futures and pasts.
"It's becoming unstable!" Myra shouted. "If the Hourglass explodes—"
"We get infinite war," Aren gasped. "Endless conflict in every Anchor. No past, no future. Just now, forever."
Kael activated his chrono-dagger.
"Then let's end it before it begins."
---
They split:
Ghost Ronin took the east flank — dueling his own past selves reborn as Sandborn captains.
Myra climbed the shattered Hourglass, rewriting fragments of its core with her chronoglyphs.
Aren unleashed a blinding pulse — stabilizing time just long enough for Kael to leap through the storm to confront General Shard.
---
Kael and Shard battled atop the falling sands of memory. Blades struck. Time skipped. Kael was 15, then 50, then unborn — but always fighting.
Shard finally screamed, "You can't erase a war, Kael!"
Kael drove his dagger into the Hourglass.
"No. But I can pause it."
With one final pulse, he froze the battlefield.
---
Anchor 7777.W – STABILIZED (TEMPORARILY)
The Hourglass War: Postponed
General Shard – Status: Withdrew
---
Back in the Sanctuary...
Kael sat, bruised, bleeding, but alive.
Ghost Ronin handed him a drink. "You stopped a war."
"Paused," Kael corrected.
Myra added, "And made an enemy of someone who lives between seconds."
Kael exhaled.
> "Then we better move faster than time