Jackson stood before the towering inferno that reached the skies. The Forgotten Flame Tower loomed like a monument to gods long dead. Jian stood beside him, her spear pulsing with a strange, familiar warmth—as if the spirit of her mentor still lingered inside.
The first dragon scale clung to Jackson's chest like a second heartbeat. And the fragment of light he'd recovered from the last relic had begun whispering in his dreams.
"Save her. Save Alicia. She's still alive—somewhere in time."
They stepped inside.
The tower burned, yet didn't burn them. Each step forward peeled away pieces of their past. Jackson remembered lifetimes—his death, the people he hurt, the roles he played. He saw himself not as one man, but many, stitched together by regret and hope.
On the fifth floor, they met the shadows—ghosts from his first life, taunting him. Jian fought beside him without question, as always. But when her spear flared with light to strike down a shadow, it called out:
"Alicia…"
Jian froze.
"…Did you hear that?" she asked.
Jackson nodded slowly. He gripped the Demon Devourer tighter. "Yeah. I think it's time you knew something."
But before he could speak, the tower shifted. The room bent like water, and suddenly the floor beneath them cracked open.
They fell.
[ Alicia – The Light's Memory]
She was broken.
Not physically—her body still moved, still fought—but her soul was torn from the day she bent the laws of time. Now, Alicia wandered a liminal realm, trapped between moments. Her memories fragmented. Sometimes she was herself, sometimes she was a whisper in someone else's dream.
The only thing anchoring her was her staff—now in Jian's hands—and the memory of Jackson.
Every time Jian wielded the staff with purpose, Alicia felt it. Every time Jackson came closer to truth, time bent toward her.
She wanted to call out. To scream his name.
But she was nothing more than light now, scattered across time, waiting to be found.
Waiting… to be forgiven.
[Back in the Tower — Dragon's Heart Chamber]
Jackson awoke to the glow of red fire encased in crystal. The second dragon scale hovered inside a flaming heart suspended above a chasm. Jian was already standing, eyes wide, her spear vibrating.
"This… this is where the scale is kept," she whispered.
But the light from the heart pulsed once—then twice.
And in that moment, Jackson heard her.
Alicia.
"Jackson," her voice whispered through the flames, "you've come so far. One more step…"
He stepped forward.
But the Demon Devourer in his hand burned red-hot. The sword thirsted for blood, its hunger almost unbearable. If he drew on its full power now to cross the chasm and reach the scale… it would eat away at him.
"Use me," it whispered.
But Jian turned to him, her voice filled with quiet terror. "If you push it… you might not come back."
He looked at the scale. Then back at her.
And he remembered.
Alicia's laugh. Her eyes. The way she touched the pen he gave her—the one she still carried in every timeline. His guilt. His suicide. The curse. The love he lost. The truth he almost destroyed.
He stepped forward, sword in hand.