The Lumina complex did not want to let them go.
As the crew retreated toward the extraction point, the corridors began to collapse into themselves, not physically, but conceptually. Doorways looped back into earlier rooms. Gravity tilted without warning, sending loose debris drifting upward before snapping violently downward again. Time folded in layers, each second stretching and compressing with cruel inconsistency.
Lyra shouted coordinates as she ran, constantly recalculating paths that refused to remain stable. Her cybernetic eye sparked as conflicting data streams overwhelmed its processors.
"The structure is reacting to the removal of the Core," she called out. "The Nexus was anchoring this place. Without it, everything is unraveling."
A surge of temporal energy erupted from the floor, rippling outward like a shockwave. Jax stepped in front of Kaito instinctively, raising his armored forearm to shield him. The energy struck him head-on.
For an instant, he vanished.
Then he reappeared, collapsing to one knee.
His armor had aged centuries in seconds. Metal plates cracked and flaked away, etched with rust and fracture lines that told the story of time moving too fast to be understood. Beneath it, his skin bore the weight of years he had not lived. His breath came in ragged gasps, eyes wide with a horror he could not articulate.
"I felt it," he said hoarsely. "Entire lifetimes. Ending. Again and again."
Lyra skidded to his side, overriding her own panic as she redirected a reversal field around him. Slowly, painfully, the damage receded, though the memory did not. Jax rose unsteadily, shaken to his core.
They ran again.
Kaito was not spared. As the corridors warped, memories that did not belong to him forced their way into his mind. He saw himself standing over burning worlds he had never visited. He felt grief for people he had never known, rage for wars he had never fought. The Astro Blade screamed within his thoughts, its sentience overwhelmed by the sheer weight of unrealized possibilities.
"Focus," Kaito whispered to himself, forcing his feet forward. "Stay here. Stay now."
They burst through the final breach moments before the complex folded inward, space collapsing with a silent violence that erased the Lumina ruins entirely. The Nebula sealed itself shut, as if ashamed of what had been done within it.
Aboard the Stardust Drifter, the tension did not ease.
Lyra locked herself in the lab, integrating the Temporal Core fragment with the remaining Chronos Dust. The process was painstaking, dangerous, and entirely unprecedented. Energy surged unpredictably, forcing constant recalibration.
"This is not healing," she admitted quietly over the intercom. "This is bargaining with the universe."
Kaito remained in the medical bay, watching Elara's fragile form.
"Do you feel it?" he asked the Astro Blade.
"Yes," it answered. "The universe is no longer indifferent."