A NUN saboteur destroys Kern's research station; Kern escapes alone in the cryo-pod as the nanovirus successfully reaches the planet.

The Gilgamesh awakens classicist Holsten Mason after picking up a distress signal from deep in unexplored space.

Holsten solves a series of mathematical equations being broadcast toward the planet, silencing the distress signal.

Kern seizes control of the Gilgamesh's systems and projects herself on their screens, ordering the crew to leave.

After the crew pleads for humanity's survival, Kern gives them coordinates for a different terraformed planet and releases the ship.

Armed mutineers take Holsten and Lain hostage to resist Guyen's plan to force colonists onto a frozen moon.

Mutineers force Holsten and Lain onto a shuttle bound for Kern's World; Kern fires a laser that damages but does not destroy it.

Karst arrives in a pursuing shuttle, kills the mutineers, and forces the surviving crew to abandon Kern's World.

The Gilgamesh reaches the recommended planet and finds it smothered in an invasive fungus and completely unfit for human settlement.

Guyen imprisons Holsten after establishing a ship-wide cult devoted to his own immortality and technological ascension.

Lain engineers a confrontation that halts Guyen's consciousness upload and kills him to save the ship and its passengers.

The Gilgamesh approaches Kern's World and discovers the planet wrapped in a vast orbital web network built by the spiders.

The crew destroys Kern's orbiting satellite; spider warriors board the hull and breach the ship's interior.

Spiders release a nanovirus through the ship's air supply, creating an instinctive empathic bond between humans and spiders.

Holsten's great-great-granddaughter and spider leader Portia embark on a joint interstellar mission to investigate a signal from deep space.

Children of Time begins when Dr. Avrana Kern's experimental world is sabotaged, launching her alone into orbit as her nanovirus reaches a terraformed planet below. Thousands of years later, the last ark ship of humanity detects her distress signal and makes contact, only to be turned away by Kern's unstable consciousness. A violent mutiny forces a shuttle carrying hostages to crash on Kern's forbidden world, deepening the conflict between the desperate survivors and the planet's guardian. The crew eventually discovers a second planet that is uninhabitable, while their commander Guyen descends into megalomania and must be stopped before he destroys the mission from within. After generations of repairs, the Gilgamesh returns to Kern's World to find it transformed, triggering a final confrontation with the civilization that has grown there. The conflict is resolved not through warfare but through the spiders' application of their most powerful scientific tool, opening the door to a shared future between the two species.

The headline story of humanity's desperate search for a new home.

Kern's AI Eliza wakes Kern after only 14 years to report the loss of all Earth contact; Kern returns to cryo-sleep.

The first nanovirus-infected spider Portia hunts cooperatively with a male and produces far more advanced offspring than normal.

A new generation of Portia and companions journey through treetop forests and notice one star moves with unusual regularity.

Spider Portia and Bianca win a combat trial against a foreign spider colony and trade genetic knowledge in return.

Portia discovers ants using fire, metal, and glass tools, then steals their signal-receiving crystal from the top of their mound.

Portia and a few survivors flee back to Great Nest after the ant colony burns Seven Trees to the ground.

Bianca reveals to Portia a chemical weapon derived from beetles that can allow spiders to infiltrate deep ant colonies.

Spiders dissolve chemical packages inside the invading ant column, turning the ants docile and ending the battle for Great Nest.

Nessel, the escaped mutineer, is captured by spiders and spends the rest of her life as a prisoner and research subject.

Guyen dispatches 50 new settlers to the lunar colony under a more compliant leader after the mutiny is suppressed.

Portia injects Bianca with a combined immunity gene and nanovirus cure, successfully saving Bianca from the plague.

Fabian escapes Great Nest with Bianca, brings her to Seven Trees, and uses scent architecture to defeat Great Nest's invading ant forces.

Fabian wins protected rights and the right to form peer houses for male spiders across the nation-states in exchange for his Understanding.

Portia and Fabian launch into near-space aboard the Star Nest to place a satellite in orbit while Bianca watches from below.

Kern's consciousness is transferred into an underground colony of ants and biological computers as the Gilgamesh draws close.

Pool 2 follows the milestones of spider evolution and the supporting human story that runs alongside it. Beginning with the first nanovirus-infected spider producing unusually advanced offspring, the pool traces how the spiders grow from isolated hunters into city builders, soldiers, and eventually pioneers of space. Key turning points include the theft of the ants' signal crystal, the desperate chemical battle that saves Great Nest, and Fabian's historic negotiation for male spider rights. On the human side, a failed mutiny leads to new settlers being consigned to the lunar colony, while the Gilgamesh presses onward under Lain's aging leadership. The pool concludes with Portia and Fabian's daring near-space launch and Kern's final preparations underground as the ark ship at last draws near.

The spider civilization's long rise from instinct to the edge of the stars.

The monkeys are incinerated when their launch pod burns up in the atmosphere, leaving only spiders to receive the nanovirus.

Holsten explains to Kern that Earth's Old Empire destroyed itself and a subsequent ice age drove survivors into space on ark ships.

Holsten deduces that Kern and her AI have fused into one unstable consciousness after hearing two conflicting voices transmitting from the satellite.

Kern's drone records a meter-long spider destroying it, giving the Gilgamesh crew their first visual proof of large life on the planet.

Spiders convert the surviving ant colonies into cooperative allies after the chemical battle, ending generations of destructive war.

A new generation of spiders faces a deadly plague; Portia retrieves immune spiderlings from infected areas to search for a cure.

Guyen secretly leads Holsten to an Old Empire emergency upload facility, barely concealing his excitement at its purpose.

Viola discovers the nanovirus embedded within spider genetics and identifies it as a distinct inherited Understanding called the Messenger Within.

The spiders successfully transmit mathematical answers to Kern's satellite, causing Kern to activate and declare herself their god.

Holsten is pulled from stasis by Guyen's cult followers and imprisoned for months, forced to translate texts without any research tools.

Guyen casually admits to Holsten that he allowed the lunar colony to die without rescue, destroying Holsten's last sympathy for him.

Bianca's transmitted images of the spider civilization reach Kern's satellite and force Kern to finally acknowledge spiders as her true creation.

Fabian triggers his own death by exploiting Portia's mating instincts to provide her food and oxygen so she survives their botched space mission.

Vitas is overrun by spiders while synthesizing a poison and screams an apology upon realizing in her final moments that they are sentient.

Karst, the first human affected by the nanovirus, radios through the intercom to report that the spiders are like us as the invasion ends.

Pool 3 focuses on the revelations and pivotal decisions that change the direction of the story for both species. It begins with the accidental truth that the monkeys were destroyed while the nanovirus survived, setting the entire spider arc in motion under false premises. Across the novel, both Kern and the humans are repeatedly forced to confront what they have assumed to be true — about each other, about the planet, and about the nature of intelligence itself. The spider side is marked by Viola's discovery of the nanovirus within their own genetics, the activation of Kern after the spiders' first mathematical transmission, and Fabian's self-sacrifice in space. The human side tracks Holsten's growing moral unease, Guyen's chilling admission about the lunar colony, and Vitas's final moment of recognition. The pool closes with the nanovirus completing its true purpose, as Karst becomes the first human to understand that the spiders are not the enemy.