Time since the asteroid hit Earth: ~5.49 billion years (subjective to Aryan)
Until now, Aryan had nurtured worlds with different limits.
But one thing he had never dared to impose was **time** — not true, ticking, irreversible **mortality**.
> "Everything I've created has danced outside of death," he said to the Light God.
> "Time's the spice," Light God replied, wearing an hourglass hat and stirring stars in a teacup. "But it also burns."
Aryan found the **Verenti** — a crystalline species existing in a timeless stasis.
They processed existence in eternally looping thought-matrices.
They remembered every moment as if it were *still happening*.
No birth.
No death.
No *now*.
Just one infinite awareness.
Aryan changed that.
He introduced a **chronal pulse** into their lattice minds — a slow beat, a whisper:
> _This too shall pass._
For the first time, a Verent thought of *before*… and *after*.
Of *change*.
Of *loss*.
They fragmented.
Some screamed.
Some wept.
Some clung to the present with terror in their glowing cores.
And one — **Kida** — began **sculpting**.
Moments, carved into radiant stone.
A hug. A goodbye. A sunrise seen only once.
> "Why do you make these?" Aryan asked.
> "Because now," Kida said, "I *know* they won't last."
Verenti began building **archives of memory**, **songs of seasons**, **rituals of farewell**.
They aged.
They died.
But before death… they *lived*.
Richly. Urgently.
> "Mortality didn't weaken them," Aryan noted. "It *focused* them."
One Verent, near death, whispered something into the stardust wind:
> "To end... is to begin with meaning."
Light God wiped a tear with a comet tail.
> "And that, my dear Architect, is why even stars explode in beauty."
Before leaving, Aryan visited Kida one last time.
She was old now — her crystal dulled, her pulse fading — but she placed a final sculpture in his hand.
It was him.
Eyes closed.
Hand outstretched.
Time slipping through fingers like light.
> "You gave us the gift of endings," Kida said. "And so… we learned to truly begin."
Aryan named this chapter:
**The Clockmaker's Burden**
Because when he gave time…
He gave everything that comes with it.
— End of Chapter 26