*Chapter 17: The Symphony of Shattered Time*
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**[Panel 1: Full-page spread.** The Story Garden's blossoms wilt as a **Temporal Tide** engulfs it—a wave of liquid time that erases colors, reduces galaxies to sepia stills, and drowns voices into muffled whispers. At its crest, a colossal **Entropy Engine** churns, its gears made of decaying stories and its core a black hourglass labeled:
**"CYCLE ∞+∞+∞+1: ERROR LOADING 'TIME.' PLEASE TRY *NOW*."**
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**[Panel 2: Luna's First Trial.** The new Gardener, **LUNA (8)**, stands atop a crumbling page from *The Infinite Epilogue*, her wildcode hair sparking defiantly. KAI-7, now a fractal owl, hoots warnings:
**KAI-7:**
"The Entropy Engine is devouring *tense*—past, present, future. Without time… there are no stories."
**Luna (stomping):**
"Then I'll tell a story so loud it *breaks* that dumb machine!"
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**[Panel 3: Flashback—The First Storyteller's Mistake.** The First Storyteller (child form) is shown whispering a tale to the unborn. But a syllable cracks, birthing a **Time Splinter**—the seed of the Entropy Engine.
**First Storyteller (crying):**
"I didn't mean to… I just wanted to make them *remember*."
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**[Panel 4: The Protagonists Fracture.** Haneul, Kai, Min-Jae, and the Void Scribe are trapped in frozen moments:
- **Haneul** mid-sentence, her quill snapped.
- **Kai** crystallized mid-strike, his shield shattered.
- **Min-Jae** glitching between timelines, his shadow torn.
- **Void Scribe** painting over a vanishing universe.
**Luna (panicking):**
"How do I fix time if I'm stuck in *now*?!"
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**[Panel 5: Jin-Seo's Gambit.** The critic-turned-rogue hacks into the Entropy Engine using his thorned arm, discovering its core is fueled by **repressed memories**—scenes the protagonists tried to forget:
- Kai abandoning Lira to save himself.
- Soo-Yeon planting the first Seed knowing it would fail.
- The Void Scribe's original name before it was erased.
**Jin-Seo (grim):**
"The Engine isn't entropy. It's *regret*."
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**[Panel 6: Luna's Wildcode Awakening.** She plunges her hands into the Temporal Tide, her hair dissolving into raw wildcode. Instead of resisting the entropy, she *embraces* it—corrupting the Engine with **imperfect stories**:
- A universe where the Architect never existed.
- A timeline where Min-Jae stayed a villain.
- A comedy where the System never fell.
**Luna (screaming):**
"If time's breaking… let's make *better* breaks!"
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**[Panel 7: The Engine's Collapse.** The black hourglass explodes into **narrative shrapnel**, each shard a **paradox gem**—a frozen moment anyone can revisit but never change. The freed Temporal Tide becomes a river of liquid stardust, its currents rewriting the Garden.
**KAI-7 (awed):**
"You didn't fix time. You gave it *scars*."
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**[Panel 8: The Protagonists Reborn.**
- **Haneul** wakes with a quill made of paradox gems, her voice echoing across tenses.
- **Kai**'s shield reforms, now a mirror reflecting his past failures.
- **Min-Jae** merges with his glitch-shadow, becoming a timeless guide.
- **Void Scribe** inks its true name into the river: *"Echo."*
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**[Panel 9: The Symphony Begins.** Luna conducts the Temporal Tide, her wildcode hair conducting a **shattered symphony**—each note a paradox, each rest a story's breath. The Entropy Engine's wreckage becomes a **Time Atelier**, where artisans forge new tenses from scars.
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**[Panel 10: Epilogue—A New Cadence.**
- **Luna** teaches unborn spirits to "misremember" on purpose, bending time into art.
- **Jin-Seo** writes a manifesto: *"Imperfect Tense: A Guide to Glorious Ruin."*
- **KAI-7** becomes the symphony's composer, its hoots now musical notation.
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**[Final Panel: Full-page spread.** The Time Atelier hums with chaotic harmony. On its walls, a mural depicts every protagonist dancing in a fractured waltz. The inscription:
**"CYCLE ∞^∞: ERROR LOADING 'ENDINGS.' PLEASE TRY *CADENCE*."**
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