A tremor shook Forks — not of the earth, but of time.
At exactly 2:17 AM, every clock in town stopped.
Then reversed.
Not by much. Just thirteen seconds. But it was enough.
Raiko sat upright in bed, eyes wide open before the second hand ever twitched. She had felt it — not in her bones, but in her soul.
Time had blinked.
Downstairs, Alice was already pacing with a map and string of glowing stones, each carved with sigils that hummed slightly off-beat.
"It wasn't a mistake," she said. "It was a warning. Or a test."
Rosalie arrived with a laptop open to a news site: time-disruptions were being reported in cities across the globe.
Raiko walked to the table and placed her palm flat on the surface. Sparks rippled outward.
A name surfaced in her mind: Chronoquartz.
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Deep beneath Mount Rainier, an ancient formation pulsed in rhythm with the disrupted seconds. A quartz spire shot through with threads of violet lightning — Raiko's energy.
She didn't remember creating it.
But she had.
During the night of her trial in the Rift.
Now, it was growing.
And it was altering time itself.
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Accompanied by Rosalie, Alice, and three Stormwalkers, Raiko descended into the caverns. As they neared the core chamber, time itself began to stretch. Footsteps echoed twice. Voices warped.
Inside the main chamber, the Chronoquartz stood nearly 30 feet high. At its base, old glyphs had appeared — part Raiden, part celestial.
Raiko approached it and placed both hands against its surface.
A jolt.
Visions surged.
Forks 1000 years in the future. A storm temple in her image. People praying in static. Time gates opening across dimensions.
She saw herself — dozens of selves — each living a different version of this life.
Then it collapsed into now.
Raiko exhaled. "It's my anchor. But also… my fuse."
"If it grows unchecked," Alice said, "it could detonate time around you."
"Then I'll contain it."
Raiko knelt. With her blade, she etched a seal into the ground — combining celestial, Inazuman, and Quileute sigils.
The Chronoquartz pulsed once… then calmed.
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Above ground, the clocks resumed, time stabilized.
But from that moment forward, every second that passed near Raiko carried a resonance — a soft, harmonic echo.
As if the universe was no longer just ticking.
It was listening.