The clay shard fragments in Leah's clone hands quantumized, dissolving into a swirl of quantum particles that whirled through the Cocoon. Silver sand erupted from Kaine's sonic chain-pierced chest as crimson tumors convulsed in the quantum storm, their surfaces splitting to reveal a mechano-organic hybrid embryo—a newborn whose eyes opened to reveal the First Godslayer's star map, visions of a 30,000-year-old apocalypse virus-bursting into reality.
"This is the meaning of your struggle?" Pope Ilana's mechanical torso unfolded into a crucifix, hundreds of Matriarch cores firing memory beams. Alys' seventh birthday materialized as lethal constructs—surgical lamps became meteors, her implanted chips transforming into nails impaling Kaine. The embryo suddenly wailed. Leah's phantom emerged in the quantum maelstrom, her palm pressing the clay shard. The star map began counter-rotating.
Alys' crystalline heart fractured into a spiderweb from resonance, viridian blood dripping down vines to etch forbidden Church runes into ice. She snapped the memory blades piercing Kaine's chest, frost crawling up Ilana's crucifix: "You think pain can tame me?" Frostrose vines stabbed her own heart, crystallized blood forming a counterclockwise chronometer—Cinder's unfinished Time-String Severance Device.
Cracks spiderwebbed Ilana's mechanical visage. The original Ilana's voice leaked through: "Alys... my child..." The call triggered Alys' deepest memory seal: at age five, the real Ilana—before becoming Matriarch—had sewn a clay-chip into her neck. Now it burned, quantum-entangled with Leah's shard.
Kaine's embryo sprouted a second pair of eyes. Silver sand condensed into a micro black hole, devouring the star map. His right arm mutated into a collapse cannon aimed at his own heart: "The cycle ends... inside me!" Alys' vines speared the singularity first—the quantum storm warped. They plunged into the First Godslayer's memory corridor.