The meeting room Margaret had prepared looked nothing like the cave chambers where training occurred. This space was almost aggressively normalâ€"comfortable chairs arranged in a circle, soft lighting that didn't pulse with ancient magic, refreshments on a side table like this was a PTA meeting instead of a council deciding whether two children should continue training that would probably kill them.Elena sat between Damon and Isabella, their three chairs forming a united front against whatever arguments were coming. Across the circle, Claire looked like she hadn't slept in days, designer clothes hanging on a frame that had lost too much weight. Beside her, Iris maintained professional composure that didn't quite hide the concern in her eyes.Senator Williams occupied the chair to Damon's left, tablet displaying legislation she'd been drafting to protect god-touched minors from exactly the kind of exploitation the Covenant had attempted. Dr. Chen sat opposite, monitoring equipment

Dawn found Elena and Isabella in a chamber that shouldn't exist within normal spacetime.The walls here didn't just pulse with light they moved through time itself, showing past, present, and future simultaneously. A tapestry of moments that made linear existence feel like arbitrary constraint rather than fundamental law.Margaret stood at the center, her form flickering through ages. Young, old, infant, ancient, all of them existing at once in ways that made Elena's enhanced vision blur with incomprehension."Stage Four addresses temporal anchoring." Margaret's voice came from multiple points in time past Margaret explaining what would happen, present Margaret experiencing current instruction, future Margaret already knowing the outcome. "Human consciousness experiences time linearly. Past, present, future in orderly sequence. Divine consciousness doesn't."She gestured, and the chamber walls exploded with visions. Elena saw h

She met their eyes with centuries of experience. "Previous students who attempted ego dissolution with less than two weeks until Convergence had zero percent survival rate. The transformation load proved too much for consciousness still integrating from Stage Five. If training falls behind schedule, I'll have to make decisions about whether proceeding helps or just guarantees worse outcomes."The implication was clear: if they couldn't complete Stage Five quickly enough, Margaret might terminate training entirely. Leave them with incomplete preparation rather than pushing them into ego dissolution when timing made success impossible."Then we don't fall behind schedule." Elena forced conviction into her voice despite her body screaming for rest. "We maintain timeline. Complete Stage Four in twenty-eight days. Survive Stage Five in time for integration period. Face Convergence prepared instead of broken.""Optimistic." Margaret's voice carried something almost like affection. "Previou

The sight of Jennifer Washington, cycling through an entire human lifespan in the span of seconds, was a horror Damon Blackwood could not reconcile with his enhanced senses. One moment, she was a twelve-year-old girl, her face smooth and unlined; the next, a withered elder, her skin translucent, before snapping back to infancy and beginning the terrifying loop again. The final words Margaret had spoken—"her biological load prove"—hung in the air, a truncated sentence of scientific despair."Prove what?" Damon demanded, stepping back from the sealed chamber, the cold glass doing little to contain the temporal chaos within.Margaret, her face a mask of weary resignation, completed the thought. "Proved too much for her physical form to handle. The temporal expansion is meant to unlock the potential of all ages simultaneously, but the body can only sustain so much contradiction. Jennifer's system is trying to be twelve, forty, and eighty-five all at once. It's a paradox engine, and it's