The stone didn't just tremble. It fractured time.
In the center of the Carving Garden, a stone from the mountains of Java began to glow with inconsistent light. Sometimes bright, sometimes dim. Sometimes appearing in the morning, sometimes at night. Sometimes present, sometimes gone. As if it no longer obeyed the flow of time
Yohwa approached. He heard echoes from both past and future at once. The voice of his childhood mixed with the voice of his old age. "This isn't an echo," he said. "It's a fracture."
Rava touched the stone. She saw visions of a world split in two. The same village, but with two versions: one filled with light, one drowned in shadow. "This stone doesn't choose a time," she said. "It breaks the timeline."
Numa tried reading its frequency. But his instruments failed. Needles spun without direction. "This isn't a pattern," he said. "It's an anomaly."
Raka stood beside the stone. "In my season, there was a legend of the Time Stone. A stone that didn't speak, but broke. I thought it was myth. But it's real."
In the village, children began experiencing two times at once. They woke in the morning, but also felt they had already lived the night. They spoke with friends not yet born, and with friends long gone.
Yohwa sat before the stone. He heard echoes colliding. One voice said: You are not ready. Another said: You are already too late. He closed his eyes. And time stopped.
The Soul Eclipse approached. But this time, it couldn't move. It was trapped in the fracture. It saw itself in the past, in the future, and in a time that never existed.
Rava recorded: "This stone doesn't give us choice. It gives us rupture."
And that night, the Satria realized: time is not a line. Time is an echo. And echoes can break.