The River of Forgotten Tomorrows collapsed behind them with a soundless roar. Time folded inward like a dying star, and Jian and Jackson landed hard on the stone floor of the real world—back within the heart of the Forgotten Flame Tower.
But the air had changed.
Gone was the eerie stillness. Now, the very walls throbbed, pulsing with a dark rhythm, as if something ancient had begun to breathe again.
Jackson groaned, his body sore but intact. Jian steadied herself, her staff humming with the resonance of three dragon scales embedded in it now. A sharp light glowed in the cracks of the floor, forming sigils neither of them could read—but they both felt.
Something had awakened.
"We took the scale," Jian said, voice low, "but we also pulled a thread we weren't meant to touch."
Jackson's flame flickered to life in his palm. "Alicia warned me. She said the relic was sleeping… bound by time and fire."
"Then it's waking up." Jian looked toward the flame altar. "And it remembers us."
As if in response, the entire chamber shook. Stone cracked. Ash poured from the walls like tears from the past. And from deep below the tower, a growl—a sound so low and primal it felt like it came from underneath the world—rumbled into their bones.
The Shadow Prince's relic had stirred.
But amid the tremors, something else glimmered beneath the altar—an ember.
It was tiny, no larger than a seed. But its light pulsed with a heartbeat that matched Jian's own.
She stepped forward, hand outstretched.
"Jian—wait!" Jackson warned.
But she didn't stop. The ember called to her—not as a trap, but as a truth.
Her fingers brushed it—
[Flash—Memory Burst]
A vision.
Alicia, kneeling at the same altar years ago. Her hands burned from trying to contain the relic's energy. Her voice chanting ancient words to bind it.
But the ember didn't come from the relic.
It came from Alicia.
She left it behind. A seed of her magic. Her essence.
Jian gasped and staggered back into the present.
"She knew this would happen," she whispered. "She left part of herself here... just in case."
Jackson joined her, staring at the ember. "Then it's not just a relic anymore. This tower—it's her last defense."
"Not just defense," Jian said slowly. "It's her message. Her memory."
The ember glowed brighter now, warming instead of burning.
Beneath the ashes of the Shadow Prince's prison, Alicia's will still burned.
Jian looked at Jackson, her expression set with new clarity. "We're not just fighting to save her. We're following where she led us… even before we knew it."
Jackson nodded, his flames lighting the altar again.
And behind them, unseen for now, the tower walls cracked further.
From deep in the dark, a form began to stir—not Alicia, not a wraith… but the first vessel of the Shadow Prince's soul.
The next trial had already begun.