Chrono-Lantern: Temporal Bridges & Echo Extraction

Carry a path into the past

An air gap. A lava pool. A shrieker between you and the next chest.

Raise the Chrono-Lantern and borrow a few seconds from an intact prismarine past. Glowing temporal bridges appear beneath your feet, while nearby sculk shifts into dormant ancient stone. Your charge is limited. Your route home matters.

Explore, extract, stabilize

• Temporal bridges: Project a temporary 3x3 foothold across open air and fluid surfaces. Bridges fade and restore their original blocks when active support leaves. Toggle bridge mode off or sneak to descend.
• Tactical sculk reversion: Nearby sculk sensors, calibrated sensors, catalysts and shriekers become ancient prismarine while phased. This silences those blocks; it does not despawn an existing Warden.
• Deterministic chrono-veins: Some sculk positions reveal purple veins. Mine one with a pickaxe for 1–3 unstable chrono-shards and permanently cleanse that block into deepslate. Repeated toggling never changes which positions contain veins.
• Roguelite extraction: Bank unstable shards at a Temporal Anchor to make permanent crystals. Death or a depleted active lantern dissolves loose unstable shards in your inventory into XP. Stored and nested-container shards are outside this loss rule.
• Pocket Recall Watch: Rewind your position and health by approximately eight seconds, or sneak-hold for 1.5 seconds to extract to your bound anchor in the same dimension using one stabilized crystal.
• Echo shard utility: Recharge with echo shards, prismarine crystals or amethyst. Inactive lanterns also recharge near an anchor.

First expedition

1. Craft the lantern with copper, chain, amethyst, a clock, a soul lantern and prismarine materials. Recipe discoveries unlock from amethyst, clocks and echo shards.
2. Right-click to toggle phasing; sneak-right-click to toggle bridges. Hold fuel in the opposite hand and use the lantern to recharge.
3. Test a small safe gap, then carry the active lantern in your hotbar or either hand to project bridges. Watch your remaining charge.
4. Enter an Ancient City, phase nearby sculk, and mine revealed chrono-veins with a pickaxe.
5. Right-click an anchor with unstable shards to stabilize the held stack. Craft chrono-ingots and a Pocket Recall Watch.
6. Use the watch on an anchor to bind it. Normal use rewinds position and health; sneak-hold extracts to that anchor. Rewind does not restore inventory or the world.

Fits an existing world

No custom dimensions, biomes or structure generation. Chrono-Lantern works with ordinary vanilla sculk and provides Ancient City utility in existing saves.

Installation

Minecraft 1.21.1 · Java 21 · Fabric Loader 0.16.14 · Fabric API 0.116.6+1.21.1. Install Chrono-Lantern and Fabric API on both client and server.

Back up an existing world before adding mods. Allow temporary phase blocks to restore before removing the mod.

Verification and known limits

The packaged 1.0.0 JAR passed 16/16 automated GameTests plus a separate two-process save/restart persistence test. Standard Gradle execution was blocked by the build environment; the artifact was compiled and remapped with the pinned cached toolchain. Full dedicated-server startup stopped at the EULA gate. Final graphical client gameplay, multiplayer and third-party claim-mod compatibility remain unverified.

Original block states and block-entity data are persisted with recovery records, but arbitrary power-loss recovery cannot be guaranteed. Mature watch history gives an approximately 8–8.95 second rewind; during warm-up it uses the earliest available snapshot. This release contains no Chrono-Weaver armor set or separate Recall Totem.

License and independence

MIT license. Original code and pixel artwork. Chrono-Lantern is an independent implementation, not affiliated with or an add-on for Timeless Echoes. It adds time-manipulation tools, echo shard utility and a temporal bridge extraction loop; it is not a full Ancient City overhaul or world-time simulation.