Alison staggered out of the collapsing mirror prison, her skin still seeping the burn marks of temporal fissures. Fragmented souls pierced her flesh like shards of glass, each breath tearing open new pain. She collapsed to the ground, staring at her palm—the pocket watch had completely disintegrated, its gears and marrow core shards scattered like black stars. A deafening metal grind echoed from afar; she looked up, pupils contracting abruptly.
In the ruins of Charles' penthouse, a twisted deity rose from the mirror prison's . Its body was stitched from broken glass and all of Charles' avatars: tentacle-like limbs coiled around Nazi steel bones from World War II, glass eyes embedded across its form, each playing images of Alison from different timelines. The most horrifying was its head—Charles' face split into twelve pieces, each cackling differently, merging into a chaotic roar: "You created me... I am the end and rebirth of the mirror prison."
"The Shattered God," the alchemist's voice emerged from a rift in the void, his robe submerged in the mirror prison's blood river, silver-gray eyes shimmering with mournful light. "You liberated it. All of Charles' corrupted soul fragments merged into a being beyond time and space when the prison collapsed."
Alison tried to rise but found soul fragments from her body, transforming into streams of light flying toward the Shattered God. The deity's tentacles coiled around each ,chewing her memories and personality into new blasphemous incantations. "Every act of your resistance feeds my power," its voice was a thousand Charleses screaming in unison as the floor began oozing mirrors, trapping her in a closing cage.
The alchemist suddenly leaped from the mirror, cobalt serum boiling in his veins. He grabbed Alison's hand, his skin beginning to melt into Charles' face—his corruption accelerating. "We must reunite your soul. Otherwise, it will be consumed and become the deity's eternal fuel."
Alison glimpsed the secret beneath the alchemist's robe: every stitch was embroidered with the name "Alison," and the cobalt serum's formula matched exactly the marrow curse on her chest. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded, but the deity's tentacle pierced the alchemist's shoulder, yanking out a wisp of his soul.
"I know the answer," the Shattered God tossed the alchemist's soul fragment into the mirror abyss, Charles' faces on its head grinning. "You are my original'seed.' When Charles first split his soul to escape death, you were born—as a 'backup' to resist corruption. But you failed, splitting into more versions, manipulating her across centuries toward my birth."
The alchemist coughed up blood and mirror shards, yet injected cobalt serum into Alison's heart. "The truth doesn't matter. What matters is you must survive today." Alison felt the marrow curse surge from beneath her skin, reacting with the serum to generate a temporal storm. Her soul fragments began flowing back, but the Shattered God had torn open a mirror, pulling the alchemist's head into the void.
"No ally can save you." The deity's tentacles stabbed into Alison's marrow, siphoning marrow core energy. Her vision began to drown in the mirror prison's scarlet, but the alchemist's final roar echoed in her ears: "In the heart symbol... lie the memories of all my versions."
Alison bit through her tongue, reciting the blood curse in reverse. The Shattered God's body suddenly trembled, all Charles faces erupting in —the memories of the mirror prison's birth were . Seizing the chance, she stuffed her last soul fragment into her chest, the marrow curse bursting with blue light to form a temporal lock with the cobalt serum. The deity's tentacles began to rust as Alison leaped into the mirror abyss, searching for the alchemist's memories among the shards.Flashback: The Alchemist's OriginIn Salem times, the true Charles Lancaster first injected cobalt serum, splitting a "backup soul." The backup witnessed Charles' corruption in the temporal void, so it split itself into the 18th-century alchemist, WWII scientist, modern mentor... Each version guided Alison, trying to stop Charles from devouring all timelines. But every soul that touched her became contaminated, eventually part of the Shattered God.
A crucial memory emerged: In the WWII lab, the alchemist engraved Alison's marrow curse into the Time Anchor, setting a trap—only when she destroyed the anchor could the curse reverse-devour Charles' power. But the plan required her to voluntarily sacrifice part of her soul.Present: Showdown in the Mirror AbyssAlison leaped back to reality from the memories, the Shattered God having the alchemist's final fragment, its form expanding to burst the apartment. She mixed cobalt serum with marrow energy and stabbed it into the deity's core. Blue light and scarlet exploded within the god, all of Charles' faces crumbling into mirror dust. Yet the deity laughed: "I have transcended death... you only delayed the end."
Alison felt the curse on her chest burn—she realized she was the key. In the last Salem memory, the alchemist had engraved the ultimate marrow curse into her heart: sacrificing her own soul to reverse time and consume all of Charles' existence.
"Choose, Alison," the Shattered God pinned her to the mirror wall. "Become part of me, or vanish into the temporal rift."
She clenched the curse, blood pouring from her orifices. All corrupted versions of the alchemist materialized in the mirror abyss, hissing pleadingly: "Don't! You'll be annihilated!" But Alison had finished the reverse incantation, and time began to flow backward—all Charles avatars, the Shattered God, even her own existence, were sucked into the black hole of the heart symbol. The apartment collapsed to its origin, only her laughter echoing: "I won... because you never truly existed."Epilogue: Temporal RiftAlison fell into a lightless rift, her soul shattering into . But each particle reflected a different self across time—a medieval witch, a WWII spy, a modern avenger. They recombined in the dust, forming her whole again. Charles' final voice echoed from afar: "I will be reborn... in every grain of sand you never touched."
Alison opened her eyes, finding herself lying beside the Time Anchor in the 1942 Berlin bunker. Nazi soldiers still closed in, but a new pocket watch materialized in her palm—forged from mirror dust and cobalt serum, its dial engraved with the collapse trajectory of all Charles avatars. She smiled, aiming the watch at the anchor's core: "The game isn't over yet."