Above the ruins, moonlight pierces the collapsed Winston Manor, illuminating Sebastian's remaining mechanical arm. The hand wearing an alchemical ring slowly lifts the pocket watch shard left after Alison turned to dust. Red light seeps from the crack in his gemstone left eye, weaving a eerie rune network in the darkness.
"The ashes of a vessel... were never the end."
A hoarse voice sounds from the depths of the ruins. A woman clad in armor blending modern technology and alchemy steps out, her left eye also inlaid with a glowing red gemstone. The black blood runes on her neck mirror the chains Alison wore in their final battle, and a dim time core is set at the center of her breastplate—shards of her father's time core.
"Isabelle Lancaster, the seventh-generation vessel. Your sacrifice is merely the next chapter of the family pact." The newcomer touches the pocket watch shard with a scalpel, which suddenly erupts in time dust. "Sebastian Lancaster, twenty-seventh-generation heir, welcome back."
The interface between the mechanical arm and the woman's armor begins to fuse, time dust forming a vortex at the contact point. Fragments of Sebastian's consciousness gradually reorganize, as tattered pieces of his black robe reshape in the dust cloud: "The core rules of the pact never change: when a host perishes, power transfers. And a new vessel... has been born."
The ruins tremble violently as a mechanical hum like a baby's cry rises from underground. The woman opens her breastplate, revealing a chest structure identical to Alison's mirrored corpse—a premature time core soaking in liquid mercury, connected by an umbilical-like structure to the alchemical array hub deep in the ruins.
"We spent five hundred years cultivating this new carrier," she strokes the immature core. "From your first time jump, the curse invaded your eggs. Now, the eighth-generation vessel is hatching."
Sebastian's consciousness fully merges with the new body, his gemstone eye flaring red: "The aftershocks of dual-core collapse are reshaping time rifts. We must seize this chance to re-anchor the family's dominion. A vessel's ashes... will become nourishment for rebirth."
Suddenly, the roar of engines breaks through the snow outside the ruins. A squad of soldiers in futuristic armor descends, led by a modern clone of Alison's grandmother—aged in face, but with the same gemstone left eye as Sebastian.
"Traitor of Lancaster!" The clone grandmother raises a particle cannon. "The Time Administration has tracked you to this dimension. Surrender the core shards!"
Three forces clash in the ruins, alchemical runes and futuristic energy waves colliding amid collapse aftershocks. Sebastian's armor melts soldiers' gear with mercury, but the clone grandmother's particle cannon precisely hits the time core shard, whose bursting energy reveals a blue light within—fragments of Alison's mechanical heart still beating.
"She isn't fully annihilated..." Sebastian roars, leaping into the nearest time rift. The clone grandmother follows, liquid mercury and particle streams detonating in the rift to form a new dimensional storm.
After the ruins fall silent, the eighth-generation vessel's premature chest suddenly flickers as the umbilical structure begins autonomously consuming the pocket watch and mechanical heart shards. Its cry shifts to the click of meshing gears, black blood runes spreading from beneath the skin, pupils gradually dyed Sebastian's scarlet...