Tartarus did not open downward.
It thickened.
The deeper Jormund descended, the more reality lost its coherence. Rock ceased to be matter and became compressed memory—a stratum of ancient decisions frozen in pain. The heat no longer increased. It stabilized at an absolute intensity, as though the world had reached a limit it refused to surpass.
Siegfried walked behind him, silent.
Since the chains had broken, something about his presence had shifted. He was no longer a pillar. Not yet free. He was a body returned to motion, burdened with a new weight: the responsibility of surviving what he had once been.
"You don't have to go lower," he said at last.
His voice carried neither command nor fear—only grave lucidity.
Jormund did not turn.
"I do," he answered.
Each step made his obsidian body vibrate. The lycoris beat slowly now, more heavily than before, as if its rhythm were synchronizing with something ancient… and hostile.
"What lies below is not a god," Siegfried continued. "It is not even a Titan anymore."
They reached a threshold.
It was neither a door, nor a fissure, nor a chasm. It was a fracture in time. Before them, space folded in on itself, forming a spiral of frozen strata—shattered instants stacked without logical order. Fragments of reality floated there, motionless: a half-formed mountain, a scream suspended, a dying star halted before its explosion.
"Chronos," Siegfried said.
The name caused no echo.
It caused resistance.
All of Tartarus seemed to contract, like a body attempting to reject a foreign presence.
"They did not destroy him," Siegfried went on. "They cut him apart. Sealed him. Scattered him across layers of dead time. What you feel… it is not his will. It is his inertia."
Jormund took another step.
The world slowed.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
The beat of the lycoris stretched, each pulse becoming an ordeal. Red light fractured in the air, leaving behind frozen trails like luminous scars. The smallest movement of his arm left a lingering afterimage, trapped within the instant.
"Time no longer flows here," Siegfried said. "It weighs."
Jormund felt his body react.
His obsidian armor groaned—not under heat, but beneath temporal pressure. Every second tried to fix him, to define him, to imprison him in a single, immobile version of himself.
Visions surged forth.
Not memories. Possibilities.
He saw himself frozen on the banks of the Styx. Dissolved.
He saw himself breaking the chains… then failing.
He saw himself as a god. A monster. A ruin.
Each future tried to impose itself as truth.
"Chronos does not fight," Siegfried said. "He imposes."
Jormund staggered.
For the first time since his birth in the Styx, he felt something give way. Not his body. His continuity. His sense of still.
Time was trying to define him permanently.
The lycoris weakened.
Its light pulsed irregularly, like a heart subjected to a force that did not recognize life.
"If you continue," Siegfried said, "you may never reach an 'after.'"
Jormund stopped.
Around him, fragments of reality hung like insects trapped in amber. He extended his hand. His fingers passed through a frozen scene: a Titan screaming, throat torn open, the cry halted before it could exist.
"There is something left of him," Jormund murmured.
His voice itself seemed to arrive late.
"Yes," Siegfried replied. "And that something is dangerous. Even shattered, Chronos is a law."
Jormund closed his eyes.
Within his obsidian cage, the lycoris trembled. For the first time, it did not burn with rage, but with resistance. It was not repelling an external force. It was refusing to be measured.
"Time wants everything to stop," Jormund said slowly. "I want to continue."
He stepped forward.
The impact was brutal.
An invisible wave tore through his body. His armor fractured in several places, revealing unstable red lines beneath. A new pain surged—not a burn, not a tearing, but a desynchronization. Part of him moved forward while another remained trapped a second behind.
He screamed.
The sound arrived before the cause.
Siegfried rushed toward him, only to be stopped short by an invisible wall. Time closed between them.
"Jormund! Fall back!"
Jormund collapsed to one knee.
Around him, the world began to speak.
Not in words. In rhythms.
Beats too slow. Impossible accelerations. Endless silences stretched between fractions of a second.
And at the center… a presence.
A colossal remnant buried beneath layers of dead time, whose very existence warped the surrounding reality. It was not a body. It was an anchor.
Chronos was no longer a being.
He was an absolute weight upon becoming.
The lycoris pulsed one last time… then stabilized.
Its light changed.
It did not grow brighter.
It became denser.
Jormund rose slowly.
Each movement cost him an eternity, yet he advanced all the same. Not because he could.
Because he refused to let time decide in his place.
"I did not come to wake you," he murmured into the frozen chaos.
"I came to eat you."
Tartarus trembled.
Somewhere far above, the gods felt something shift.
And for the first time since the fall of the Titans,
time… hesitated.