The dust of Tartarus never truly settled. It floated, gray and sterile, between the fallen warrior and the black rock creature. Siegfried looked at the Anomaly. He saw Chronos' veins of liquid gold pulsing beneath the basalt skin. He saw a power that had yet to find direction, a raw force waiting for a battle cry.
Siegfried plunged his broken sword into the slag floor. The metal grimaced.
"You cannot remain a number from hell," Siegfried began, his voice carrying the authority of ancient kings. "The gods call you 'Anomaly' because they fear what they cannot classify. But to wage war, you need a name that your enemies will scream before they die."
The stone being bowed its head. Time seemed to freeze around them, a bubble of silence created by Chronos' presence.
"A name..." murmured the Anomaly. "A name for what?"
"To exist," replied Siegfried. "So that the earth will remember your passing. I saw you break your chains. I saw you devour the essence of Time without flinching. You are the one who surrounds the abyss. You are the one who will one day suffocate the world with your power.
Siegfried placed his calloused hand on the being's cold, rough shoulder.
"I name you Jormund. Like the world serpent that sleeps at the roots of existence. Born of the earth, forged by betrayal, destined to devour the gods."
The moment the name was spoken, a telluric vibration shook the pit of Tartarus. The black rock walls echoed. Jormund. The name was inscribed in letters of golden fire in the Anomaly's mind. It was no longer a bug. It was no longer an error.
It was an entity.
"Jormund..." repeated the stone being. Its voice was no longer a mineral squeak, it had become the rumbling of an avalanche. "I am Jormund."
"Then rise, Jormund," said Siegfried with a fierce smile. "We have a fragment of Titan to digest and an empire to reduce to ashes."
Jormund clenched his basalt fist. Beneath his feet, the ground cracked. The Anomaly was gone. The first of the new Titans had been born.