The sky above Velyra had turned violet, the color of sorrow just before a storm.
Alicia stood in the sanctum where it all began—her grandmother's old house, now overrun with vines and silence. Dust coated the walls, and the sigils she'd once drawn with innocent wonder now flickered with unstable light. She was alone here. Jian had already gone. Jackson… was lost to time.
But Alicia had made her choice.
The staff lay in front of her—once whole, now cracked from her last attempt to bend the weave of destiny. Every time she touched it, the light protested. Time was not hers to mold. But her heart ached with unbearable knowing: that Jackson's pain had spanned lifetimes, and in every one, she had failed to save him.
"I can't watch him suffer again," she whispered to no one.
She knelt by the circle of runes, placed the staff in its center, and began the ritual. Her body trembled as the weave of time cracked open like glass beneath her. Visions burst around her—fragments of Jackson across lifetimes: a prince, a rebel, a poet, a wanderer. Dying, again and again. Always alone.
"Show me the thread," she commanded. "The one where he lives. The one where I can reach him."
And time answered.
A blinding strand of gold unraveled before her, wrapped in flame. It led not backward, but sideways—into a splintered reality. One where Jackson still lived, unknowingly cursed, carrying the guilt of lifetimes past. One where she had become… forgotten.
Alicia reached for the strand.
But as her fingers brushed it, the cost roared up to meet her.
The staff exploded in light. Her name burned out of every timeline. Her face faded from Jian's memory. Her presence was stripped from history itself, reformed as whispers and dreams. Her soul was scattered—trapped between timelines like a ghost flickering in reflections.
Her last thought before she vanished:
"I will find you, Jackson. Even if you don't remember me… I will burn through time to bring you back."
And then she was gone.
Not dead.
Just… misplaced.
[Return — Forgotten Flame Tower]
The second dragon scale hovered in the flames, and Jackson's hand reached forward. But now, with the knowledge of what Alicia had done—what she