There was no ceremony. No decree. Only a stillness that spread like frost through the roots of Gaia's body.
Kronos woke that morning knowing something had changed.
He had not been summoned. He had not been told. But deep in his bones—the bones of a Titan—a pulse guided him downward, into a fissure no mortal could perceive.
He moved through stone as if through mist.
And at the bottom, in a chamber untouched by light or time, he found it.
The sickle.
Curved. Silver. Silent.
It rested not on a pedestal, but on bare soil—Gaia's own skin. As if it had grown from her.
Kronos knelt, and for a long time, he did not reach for it.
Because to touch it would mean choosing.
Not dreaming.
Not wondering.
Choosing.
In the Echoing Hollow, Elias stood beneath the silver tree. Its branches arched over him like scripture, every leaf a forgotten possibility.
The air felt wrong.
It wasn't Gaia.
It wasn't Kronos.
It was above.
He turned, and for the first time, he saw the sky itself ripple.
A slit opened in the air—too narrow to call a rift, too wide to be a flaw. It was attention made visible. A golden eye without a pupil. Cold. Ancient. Absolute.
Uranus had noticed.
And he was looking.
Elias did not panic.
He simply stepped forward and let his realm unfold.
The Hollow stretched, dreamlike. Paths rearranged themselves. Trees whispered in forbidden tongues. Glyphs flared to life across the grass.
This was his world—woven from thought, sealed in memory.
He raised a single hand.
"You may look, Sky-Father," Elias said, voice resonant, "but not touch."
The eye blinked once.
A soundless thunder rolled through the Hollow.
Leaves burned. Roots turned to ash. The silver tree shivered.
But Elias held firm.
Below, Kronos reached for the sickle.
His fingers brushed the hilt.
It pulsed—not with power, but with recognition.
He was not yet a warrior.
But the blade knew him.
Not by name. Not by strength.
But by resolve.
Kronos lifted it.
The air did not change.
The sky did not darken.
But deep within Gaia, a breath was released.
And far away, Elias smiled.
The eye vanished.
Not in defeat.
In retreat.
Uranus had seen enough.
He would return.
He would press harder.
He would crush what defied him.
But Elias had learned something too.
Uranus could not enter the Hollow.
Not fully.
Not yet.
There was still time.
That night, Elias carved a circle around the tree of Echoes, sealing it in starlight and bloodless ink.
He sat beneath it, whispering words that had no beginning.
Words that would one day become myths.
A sky severed.A mother freed.A son devoured.A storm born.
In the cavern below, Kronos looked up.
The sickle gleamed in his hand.
And for the first time, he no longer felt small beneath the stars.
He felt like a boundary.
And boundaries were meant to be broken.