Time was not on their ally anymore. Yulet approached. The crystal and liquid silver petals opened with a mechanical whisper to welcome her. She inserted the Charge into the very heart of the machine. The entire Flower began to vibrate with a deep hum. I'vi felt the power of the machine beneath her legs. It was a wild energy that would need to be tamed. She braced herself, her senses sharpening for the dissonance to come.

Yulet approached, and when she spoke, her voice, usually an instrument of iron and certainty, was strangely low and worn.

-You have sixteen minutes, I'vi. She lowered her eyes to the ground, unable to hold his gaze any longer. The hundred Weavers... they won't hold it for long. The barrier holds by the strength of their last breath. Their song is growing weaker.

I'vi's heart tightened as if caught in a vice. Their options had dwindled, extinguished along with Gix's spark. The hundred Weavers were no longer just a source of energy for the barrier, but the final offering.

-Sixteen minutes, repeated I'vi, not for her, but for Yulet.

She noticed the slight tremor in the scientist's hands. The fatigue weighed on her like a leaden cloak. Yulet carried the weight of every life sacrificed, and it threatened to crush her.

- Will it be enough, Yulet?

Yulet finally looked up, her commanding mask cracking to reveal a moment of immense weariness and doubt.

- Enough? That's a relative term when you're talking about undoing the end of a world, she murmured bitterly. Just don't lose yourself, I'vi. Don't look back. Find the breaking point. That's the only thing that matters. The only thing.

- I'm not alone, I'vi replied with firm gentleness. I'm carrying their song with me. Yours too.

A silence heavy with unspoken words settled between them. Yulet nodded imperceptibly. Her gaze regained some of its terrifying focus. The moment for confidences had passed. The moment for action had returned. Without another word, Yulet took a step back, yielding the center stage to the instrument and its virtuoso.

The air in the Sanctuary, so pure and reassuring just a moment earlier, was brutally ripped from I'vi's lungs. A breath that was no longer hers, but that of time being forced. She closed her eyes, surrendering not to fear, but to the current. Her body, made of flesh and light inextricably linked, was stretched, twisted, disassembled. The fabric of reality tore with a sensation similar to that of a rabid archer scraping the last fibers from a broken bowstring. She was now nothing more than a thread of consciousness passed through the eye of this cosmic needle. Then, nothing. Absolute calm, more terrifying than chaos.

She seemed not to have moved when she opened her eyes again. Everything around her had changed. The world she had left behind was a fresh ruin of violence and sorrow. The air was still, cold, and thin, as if the atmosphere itself had resigned itself and stopped circulating. The dust dancing in the rays of light was not stirred by the wind, but by the last breath exhaled centuries ago. And before her face floated a luminous projection showing the time she had left in the Cosmic Labyrinth. 

16 : 00

That was the time she had left.

08:53

Each of her visits was a different experience. She had to find her way. The Cosmic Labyrinth was constantly changing. Now, her gaze no longer captured visual turmoil, but a fluid map. She saw dying realities, disintegrating into golden dust. She was the first outside witness to the birth of nascent timelines, bursting forth in fleeting rockets of bright light. The realities did not intertwine chaotically. There was order, controlled precision. Despite the beauty and surprise that nourished I'vi each time, she had to focus to accomplish the task for which she came for. 

07:18

She was panicking. It was a familiar feeling that came over her every time she was in the maze. She was moving, floating above reality. Time was not her ally. A sharp crackling sound emerged from the galactic hum: a nearby temporal branch was burning to ashes. A reality had just been extinguished. She wanted to pay her respects. But her world was doomed to the same fate.

- Focus, I'vi. One thread. Thanerth's.

05:50

She ventured further. A multitude of sweet, unfamiliar scents whipped her face. Her hair stood on end, drawn to the static charges dancing in the air like crazy fireflies. She reached the “infinite canyon.” A bottomless void, populated by infinite lines of realities, each alive, signaling its existence in a particular rhythm. And there, amid the chaos of these intersecting lines, she felt it.

A knot.

A point of convergence where countless fibers of light, of different colors and thicknesses, twisted and merged in a slow, hypnotic whirlpool. From there emanated an irregular beat, a dull thump... thump... that made the marrow of her bones vibrate. She descended, approaching with one hand pressed against her chest to contain the disordered beating of her own heart. She had to maneuver so as not to touch other realities, for fear of being sucked into them.

04:02

The countdown became a physical sensation of pressure, as if her bones were slowly compressing. Every minute she spent there informed the Guardians of her intrusion. The grainy silence slowly transformed. The murmurs faded, replaced by a high-pitched crackling, similar to that of a poorly tuned radio desperately searching for a frequency. I'vi knelt before the knot. Her trembling hand reached for the intertwined filaments, her fingers tingling as if submerged in an electric anthill.

- Find the Thread,” she told herself, her eyes fixed on the temporal spiral.

Her hand plunged into the knot. The sensation was immediate and total. It was a raw synesthetic experience. She saw the taste of honey and absinthe, felt the last sighs of countless sunsets, found the texture of velvet and steel on her tongue. A torrent of pure, unfiltered information flooded her brain. And in the midst of this peculiar chaos, she searched for the Master Thread. Thinner than a hair, pale and constant gold. It would have vibrated with a frequency that was familiar to her. All of this was familiar to her.

03:15

She finally found it. And she squeezed the thread between her thumb and forefinger. It oscillated between burning hot and just below freezing. All around her, timelines quivered in unison or in a cosmic proprietary movement. Fragments of past periods belonging to Thanerth flashed by faster: a sea of lava, a city of crystal, a desert populated by memory trees. Her homeworld was magnificent. Each time, she discovered a facet of this world that she had been completely unaware of. After so many passages, it seemed that someone had orchestrated the arrangement of her visions like the courses of a fine menu.

She gently pulled on the thread. Her whole body began to vibrate. The pressure in her chest reached its peak. She closed her eyes, but the visions persisted, projected onto the back of her eyelids. She could feel the Labyrinth struggling, trying to expel her. The Guardians had finally detected her entire presence. She could feel them approaching. She had to hurry. Find the breaking point now that she had found the master thread.

00:47

She began to fade away. The maze now rejected her entirely, recognizing her for the intruder she truly was. She could feel the oppressive presence of the Guardians. She had almost found the breaking point.

Suddenly, nothing.

I'vi opened her eyes. She was kneeling on the floor of the Sanctuary, in the middle of the Flower. Her hands were pressed against her chest. Only a slight tingling sensation remained at her fingertips. She took a deep breath as if to anchor herself. The air burned her lungs after the cosmic thinness of the Labyrinth. A familiar sound struck her eardrums. She slowly turned her head toward the dial. She had used fifteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds. All she could. She was almost there this time. She told herself she would have succeeded if she had had a few more seconds.

But time was no longer their ally.