Darkness clung to the world like a living thing. Jason stood at the edge of the Celestial Maw, the chasm where time fractured and whispered truths long buried. The Gate pulsed behind him—half-open, bleeding colorless light into the sky.
Beside him, Nyra staggered, clutching the amulet Elias had reforged. Her voice trembled, "The Oath has broken... The last Anchor is dying."
Jason turned. Seren knelt beside Maelis, whose breathing had grown faint. His eyes—once silver fire—were now fading embers. The ritual that had once sealed the Bloodline Gate had reversed. The sacrifice was consuming them.
A voice emerged from the Gate—echoing yet familiar. It was Young Jason, the mirrored self born of timelines collapsed. "You fractured the Oath when you doubted your blood. The Gate no longer listens."
But Jason had changed. He had seen the hollowness inside the Hollowborn, heard the regrets of Watcher ghosts, held his father's final dream in a shard of flame. He stepped into the Gate's light and whispered, "I don't want power. I want the truth."
The Gate responded—not with rage but with sorrow. A tear in reality opened, leading to the first war. Not a vision, but a walkable fracture.
Jason stepped in.
---
He stood in the skyless field of ash where the Watchers first fell. Soldiers of flame and shadow clashed across aeonic plains. In the midst stood Elias—young, fierce, untouched by age. Jason watched his father walk beside him, armoring his heart against fate.
Jason moved unseen, a ghost in the wound of time. He followed until he reached a moment lost to history: the betrayal.
Elias, once loyal, had tried to seal the Bloodline Gate prematurely. He feared it would awaken not knowledge but the end of memory itself.
Jason's father had stopped him—at a cost.
Now, standing in this fracture of time, Jason saw what the world had forgotten: Elias was not the traitor. He was the martyr. His sacrifice bought them time.
Suddenly, Jason's body cracked with light. Time noticed him. The scene shattered, pulling him into a new fragment.
---
Jason awoke in the Mirror Tree. It was the convergence point of all timelines, where every decision lived and died.
He was surrounded by versions of himself:
One that had opened the Gate fully and became a Hollow King.
One who destroyed it and doomed the world to stagnation.
One who never found the truth.
They circled him like judgment.
But Jason held the Pendant. Nyra's voice—soft and resolute—rippled through the Tree: "You are not just a reflection. You are the thread that binds."
He reached into the heart of the Mirror Tree and found a small light: a seed. It pulsed with a thousand lives, with beginnings untainted by war or Gate.
"I choose this," Jason said. "A world that forgets me but remembers love."
The tree wept. The timeline cracked.
---
Jason returned to the Celestial Maw, now crumbling into echoes. Seren, Maelis, Nyra—all stood silently. Behind them, the Gate flickered, no longer menacing but almost… restful.
Elias knelt, old and weary once more. "Did you find the truth?"
Jason smiled, blood running from his nose. "I found the seed."
He held out the light. It flew into the sky, shattering the Hollowborn's essence and binding the Gate once more—not with chains, but with memory.
One by one, the characters began to fade—Seren into flame, Maelis into mist, Elias into the soil.
Jason turned to Nyra. "Stay," she said.
"I can't," he answered. "But you can tell the story."
They touched foreheads. Then Jason walked into the light.
The Gate closed.
---
Epilogue: The Tree Beyond Time
A young girl with silver eyes sat beneath a great tree in the forest of Myren Hollow. She held a pendant in her hand and looked at the sky, where a new star shimmered—a silent guardian.
The world had changed.
But legends remembered.
And the Gate… watched in peace.