Chapter 27: Echoes of Eternity
Neo Pandora
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Neo-Pandora's rebirth was a fragile illusion. Five years after the Weaver's fall, the city thrived under Lila Kane's leadership, its skyline patched with chrono-stabilizers and memorial gardens where the Godforge once stood.
But beneath the calm, whispers lingered—of shadows that flickered too slowly, of children born with Elias's eyes, of a cult that murmured prayers to the Weaver's ashes. Lila stood at the edge of the Chrono Memorial, the Compass—reforged into a symbol of hope—cold in her hands.
A hologram of Elias smiled beside her, frozen in a loop of his final words:
"We choose our own time."
"You sure about that?" Jax muttered, his face scarred by temporal burns.
"Because the Grid's picking up anomalies. Old ones." He tossed her a datapad.
The screen showed a fracture in the Badlands, its edges pulsing with spiral light.
"That's not a fracture," Lila said, her blood chilling.
"It's a mouth."
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Badlands
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The Badlands fracture had devoured an entire settlement.
Not erased—consumed.
Where homes once stood, there was only a void humming with static.
Survivors spoke of a creature made of "hungry time," its form shifting between a child, a storm, and a black hole.
"It's feeding," Wren said, her teenage frame now hardened by combat.
She projected a hologram of the anomaly—a silhouette with too many teeth.
"Call it the Chronophage. It eats timelines. And it's growing."
Jax snorted.
"Just what we needed. A time vampire."
"It's drawn to the Compass," Lila realized, the relic warming in her grip.
"To us."They explored the Badlands. Unexpectedly they met an kids unconscious in a destroyed house.
Jax take the kids on his back and they went back after finishing thier investigation.
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Neo Pandora
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Jax put the boy in the bed. Lila threats the boys.
The boy wake-up, the Chrono Compass began to light up giving an signal to an anamoly.
"What's your name? Boy." Jax asked
"Kieran." Replied the boy.
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A Fracture
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The cult emerged from the sewers, their robes stitched with Hourglass sigils.
At their head stood Dr. Lysandra Veyra, Elara's estranged niece, her eyes glinting with spiral fire.
"The Weaver's death left a void,"
Lysandra proclaimed to her followers.
"We will fill it. We will become it."
In a hidden lab, she activated a machine built from scavenged Forge shards.
The air screamed as a fractured timeline bled into reality—one where the Weaver never fell.
"The Chronophage is not our enemy," she whispered. "It is our god."
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Badlands
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In the slums, a boy named Kieran traced equations on cracked concrete, his fingers leaving faint trails of light.
His foster mother, a retired rebel, watched in awe as he rebuilt a broken chrono-drone with a touch.
"Where did you learn that?" she asked.
"The man in my dreams," Kieran said.
"The one with the sad eyes." The drone whirred to life, projecting a symbol: Elias's old Temporal Institute crest.
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Neo Pandora
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Wren "I have found them."
"Who" Jax asked.
"The cultists." Wren replied.
"Those lunatics who want to revive that monster." Jax continues. "Should we beat them up."
"Yes, let's go." Lila replied. Chrono Compass glowing in her hand.
"I'm also coming." Kieran sounded.
"Boy, this is dangerous." Jax warned.
"It's okay." Kieran replied.---Lila's team infiltrated the cult's lair, only to walk into a trap.
Lysandra's machine fused the Chronophage with Weaver shards, birthing a titan of devouring time.
Buildings aged to dust in its wake; rebels screamed as their futures were erased.
"We need Elias!" Jax roared, phasing through a temporal blast.
"He's gone," Lila said, but her Compass pulsed—Kieran's face flickered in its light. Jax attacked the cultists.
They fired temporal Ray at them.
"Don't get hit boy." Jax said to Kieran.
Wren used her drones to snatch the Temporal Gun from them.
Jax a attacked the cultists with thier guns.
The Temporal Ray hits and the cultists became old and died.
Seeing that Lila's team getting and an upper hand.
Dr. Lysandra opens an fracture and escapes with the remaining cultists.
The Chronophage which was fused with the Weaver's shard began roared in pain.
Kieran stood before the Chronophage, unafraid.
The beast hesitated, its void eyes reflecting Elias's ghostly form within the boy.
"You're hungry," Kieran said, pressing his palm to the creature's shifting skin.
"But you don't have to be." Elias's memories surged—Lila's laugh, Zara's sacrifice, the Weaver's truth—flooding the Chronophage with humanity it couldn't digest.
The creature recoiled, vomiting swallowed timelines.
Lila seized the moment, plunging the Compass into Lysandra's machine.
The cult's lab imploded, the Chronophage dissolving into stardust.
They went back Neo Pandora.
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Neo Pandora
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The city celebrated, but Kieran collapsed, his veins glowing spiral-blue.
"What's happening to him?" Jax demanded.
"The Compass didn't just stabilize timelines," A voice came.
"It copied them. Kieran's not a boy—he's a backup. A living paradox."
Above them, the sky cracked open. Not a fracture—a window.
On the other side stood a figure in Elias's coat, their face obscured.
"You saved one world," they said, voice echoing across dimensions.
"Who will save the rest?" The figure then disappeared, "I will came back."
To Be Continued…---