The small fragments of blue crystal which appeared in the ATLAS cavern (and elsewhere) on Crystal Day were made from a material hitherto unknown in our universe which, during the ensuing events, was given the scientific name of chronoclastite (meaning “time breaker”) but was normally called “Time Crystal” by the people who lived through that unprecedented series of events.

Every fragment of chronoclastite is surrounded by a small bubble of time. Outside those bubbles, the whole universe was frozen at the moment when the crystals were created, as recounted in Time Crystal Volume One: The Cosmic Monopole.

The size of these time bubbles was found to be exactly the same for each and every fragment of chronoclastite, except when fragments fused together to form superfragments. In this case, the size of the time bubble depended upon the number of fragments which had fused.