Hourglass of Undoing

The Hourglass of Undoing is the enormous projected mechanism governing Nux's fourth Temple of Time trial. It repeatedly reverses the trial battlefield to restore the Eternity Warden, but its contest with Nux damages the trial until the Temple replaces the original objective.

History

The fourth trial's collapse

Nux encounters the Hourglass as a mountain-sized image lying sideways above a battlefield, with luminous sand flowing in both directions. The trial orders him to defeat the Eternity Warden, yet each death is undone when the Hourglass reverses time. Bloodedge, the Law of Absolute Death, Absolute Devour, and even an attempted black-hole erasure all fail to make the victory permanent. Direct attacks pass through the Hourglass, showing that the visible object is a projection rather than an ordinary target. (Chapters 2007–2009)

Unable to end the loop by killing the Warden, Nux opposes the Hourglass's reversals with his own control of time. Their repeated exchanges exhaust him without resolving the trial, and he finally releases the Aura of his universe. The Temple warns him to stop, but the damage has already made the Hourglass's time energy unstable and opened widening cracks into distinct realities. The Temple responds by changing Trial Four to The Shattering Multiverse and assigning Nux the task of making time meaningful again. The source does not show the projected Hourglass returning to stable operation afterward. (Chapters 2009–2010)

Abilities and properties

• The Hourglass reverses the flow of time across its battlefield, returning dead soldiers and the Eternity Warden to earlier states. Its reversals also restore a Warden killed by effects that ordinarily prevent regeneration. (Chapters 2007–2009)
• Its displayed body is intangible: Nux's attacks pass through it. The corpus does not establish a portable physical original, a maker, or any use outside the Temple trial. (Chapter 2009)
• It can contest repeated reversals from Nux's time control for an extended period, implying a large energy reserve. That endurance is demonstrated, but no finite charge count or ordinary activation method is given. (Chapter 2009)
• Nux's universe-level Aura and continued opposition destabilize its emitted time energy. The resulting cracks and trial conversion are consequences of their interaction, not an innate destructive function of the Hourglass. (Chapters 2009–2010)

Ownership and custody