The silver radiance dissipated, and Raine collapsed beside the Mother Tree sapling like a puppet with its strings cut. The right half of his body had fully crystallized, a translucent black-gold sheen spreading across his skin. On his chest, the tricolored sigil flickered chaotically between emerald, violet-gold, and dark crimson.
Above, the projection of the Gear-Moon convulsed. Cracks widened across its surface, and from them seeped streams of silver-white fluid—like the blood of a dying behemoth raining down upon the land.
"Gamma! Medical team!" Ravenna's scream tore through the battlefield's chaos. Her violet-gold energy unfurled like a spider's web, trying desperately to stabilize Raine's raging energy cycle, but the backlash split open the skin between her thumb and forefinger.
The young alchemist stumbled forward, her silver-blue bionic eye projecting a flood of hopeless data. "Energy overload… crystallization irreversible… unless—"
"Unless what?!" Ravenna's nails dug into her palm. Her blood dripped onto Raine's crystalline skin, and it hissed on contact like acid.
Gamma had no chance to answer. The ground convulsed, swelling into a grotesque metallic tumor. From the earth's veins surged Silverbranch—no longer elven in the slightest, but a monstrosity woven of gears and tendrils. Twelve severed heads, once high-ranking hierophants of the Holy Covenant, dangled like trophies around her neck.
"How touching." Her voice carried a chorus of a hundred tones at once. "But did you truly think you could change anything?"
At her words, the Gear-Moon above began to collapse faster. Massive shards plummeted toward the Elven Forest, reshaping mid-fall into war machines. Worst of all, from the central rift extended a titanic hand of pure energy, its palm inscribed with the same sigils etched upon the Gate itself.
"The Weaver awakens…" Nythaya collapsed to her knees, emerald energy pouring uncontrollably from her into the colossal hand. "It's siphoning the power of all Wardens!"
Ironbeard's steam hammer pulverized three lunging mech-spiders. "Dwarven demolition squad! Focus fire on that iron hag!"
But Silverbranch merely flicked a tendril. Silver fluid surged from the ley-lines, encasing the dwarves into lifeless statues of metal. Elondir's elven arrows turned traitor mid-flight, piercing the throats of his own druids instead.
"Pointless, relics," Silverbranch sneered, a tendril burrowing into the soil. All around, the Elven Forest shuddered, its roots and trunks converting to glistening steel. "The Mother has already brushed the Web of Fate. Every act of resistance only hastens the end."
Raine's body convulsed violently. The crystalline regions sprouted tiny gears that rotated in perfect sync with the motions of the giant hand above. Ravenna's violet-gold energies were forcibly repelled; Gamma attempted to inject stabilizers, but the needle could not pierce the crystalline shell.
"Big brother Raine… he's… trying to link to the Weaver…" the alchemist whispered, her eye catching faint brainwave patterns. "He's making himself the medium!"
Silverbranch's laughter screeched like grinding iron. "Foolish! What mortal vessel could endure a god's will?" Her tendril lashed toward Raine. "Let me end this—"
The strike never landed. A violet-gold dagger severed the tendril mid-thrust, Ravenna materializing like a phantom. This time, her assault carried a savagery beyond reason—her wrist-blade did not slash, it detonated. She ignited a third of her own core energy, the explosion obliterating Silverbranch's upper body into molten fragments.
But the fragments never touched the ground. They reformed midair, knitting back together into her sneering face.
"Useless, thief-girl." Silverbranch's voice dripped contempt. "Here, in the Mother's domain, she grants me deathless form."
Ravenna's mechanical eye flickered, shifting into a deep crimson mode. "Then let's change the domain."
She tore open her collar, revealing a violet-gold tattoo etched below her collarbone—the emerald leaf Raine had left her. With a savage thrust, she drove her fingers into the sigil. Blood and energy fused into a strange lilac hue, sketching a complex alchemical array across the air.
"Gamma! Old Nick's Final Protocol!"
The alchemist girl understood instantly. Her silver-blue eye projected a holographic keyboard, fingers dancing furiously across the void as her lips wove ancient Elvish chants that even Elondir could not decipher. At the last syllable, the Mother Tree sapling convulsed violently—it began to grow in reverse. Its roots speared down into the ley-lines like jagged spikes, while its crown unfurled into a pillar of light that pierced the heavens.
"What are you doing?!" For the first time, fear twisted Silverbranch's face. Her liquid-metal form wavered. "Stop! That sapling is connected to—"
"—to every tainted node of the ley-lines," Ravenna spat blood as she spoke, her lips curling into a defiant smile. "Old Nick foresaw this day."
The lilac alchemical array merged with the sapling's pillar, resonating at a frequency Silverbranch could not comprehend. Her body writhed like dough kneaded by invisible hands, gears separating from flesh. Worse still, the colossal hand in the sky faltered, the sigils on its palm flickering erratically.
"No! This is… Hermes Alchemy?!" Silverbranch's scream fractured into static. "That school was annihilated ages ago!"
Gamma's eye hemorrhaged two streams of blood. "The flesh died… but knowledge… endures…"
The Elven Forest collapsed—not into machinery, but into something purer. Trees dissolved into motes of light, stones sublimated into rivers of energy, even the very air unraveled back into its primal essence. Silverbranch thrashed, but could only watch as her existence was purified—broken down to the barest elements.
"Madmen!" Her voice distorted, unraveling. "If you do this… you'll all—ahhh—!"
Her final shriek was consumed by the array. Silverbranch's being scattered into atoms, but the price was severe: the Mother Tree sapling began to wither, far too young to endure such a reversal of power.
Raine's crystallization abruptly halted. He forced himself upright, his mechanical eye locking onto the colossal hand above. "Ravenna… help me up…"
She caught him at once, flooding him with violet-gold energy despite the tearing in her veins. Raine's trembling hand lifted toward the heavens. The sigil on his chest projected three interwoven beams—emerald for the Seed of Life, violet-gold for the Seed of Machine, black-gold for the Corrupted Dragon's Heart. When the tricolored light struck the giant hand, the impossible occurred:
The sigils on its palm rewrote themselves—from Here sleeps the Final Sin: Arrogance into Here rests the Final Watcher: Hope.
The hand convulsed, resisting the rewrite. Crystals surged across Raine's body, his left eye twisting into a whirring gear. He turned to Ravenna, his voice edged with metallic resonance. "Send me up."
"You're insane!" She clung to him, desperation in her eyes. "Going up now is suicide!"
"It's not death… it's a vow kept…" His fingers brushed the emerald leaf tattooed beneath her collarbone. "The duty of the Locksmith…"
The sky split into countless fissures. Shards of the Gear-Moon rained down like a storm, each trailing a crimson wake. One massive fragment slammed into the heart of the encampment, the shockwave flinging soldiers in every direction.
Raine tore free of Ravenna's grasp amidst the chaos, dragging his half-crystallized body toward the blazing crater.
"RAINE!" Her scream was swallowed by the chain of detonations that followed.
The impact site of the largest fragment warped into a vortex, like a miniature black hole.Raine stood at the edge, casting one final glance behind him—Ravenna held back by Gamma and Ironbeard; Nyssa shielding the Mother Tree's remains with the last of her emerald power; Elondir rallying the surviving elves beneath a fragile barrier…
Then he leapt into the distortion.
The world lost all color in an instant. Raine felt his body dismantle into particles, then reassemble within chaos. When he "opened his eyes" again, he stood in a place beyond words—a superposition of all possibilities. Countless timelines flashed before him like a carousel: some showing the Council's victory and an age of machinery, some revealing the full awakening of the Weaver and the end of days, and in a few… he saw himself seated upon the Council's throne.
"At last, we meet, Locksmith."
The voice came from everywhere at once. Raine turned—and beheld the Weaver's true form. Not a monstrous abomination, but a luminous Elven woman woven from light and shadow. Twelve pairs of arms radiated from her like the spokes of a sundial, each finger tethered to threads of light that wove a lattice across all of reality.
"You… are not the Weaver." Raine's mechanized voice rasped. "You are the First Watcher."
Her smile was steeped in sorrow. "Both. When the Twelve Old Gods sealed the Original Sin, a warden was required—one who would willingly merge with the prison." She plucked a thread; it shivered like a lament. "I chose that path."
Crystals crept toward Raine's heart. "The Council never knew the truth?"
"They knew a fragment." Another strand resonated, showing him memories of his Council-self. "Arrogance bends the mind of any who touch it, convincing them they are righteous."
Suddenly the space quaked violently. Shockwaves from outside magnified a thousandfold here—Ravenna's forbidden alchemy was battering the Gear-Moon, heedless of the backlash.
"Time runs short." The Watcher's form wavered. "Locksmith, you must choose—"
She revealed three timelines: one where Raine fully crystallized, becoming the new Seal; another where the prison was released but controlled by a successor; and a third, the most radical—shattering the entire seal, forcing Sin and world to clash.
Raine's mechanical eye parsed the variables… and found a hidden fourth thread. "What is that?"
The Watcher faltered. "My selfishness. One chance in ten thousand—to rebuild the system, preserve the Seal, and spare the Warden. But it requires two things: a true twin soul… and—"
"—and one willing to bear the name of Sin." Raine finished. "Like the corrupted First Watcher."
Silence cloaked the strange space. Outside, explosions thundered closer; Ravenna's violet-gold power already pierced the veils of dimension.
"Are you certain?" Her twelve arms drew the threads together. "No one has ever walked that path."
Raine gazed at the faint line. It showed Ravenna weeping over his half-crystallized body; the Elven Forest burned to ash yet sprouting new shoots; the Gear-Moon reshaped into an ordinary, unscarred satellite.
"I am certain."
When his crystallized hand touched hers, the entire realm shattered like glass. Reality surged back—ashes where the Forest had been, the Mother Tree reduced to a charred stump, yet a stubborn emerald spark flickering at its core. Survivors gathered around the fading distortion, their faces caught between despair and fragile hope.
Above, the Gear-Moon reassembled—but this time as plain stone. The colossal hand sealed its fractures, and before vanishing, its palm flared with one final inscription:
Here sleeps the Last Watcher—where Hope and Arrogance are one.
Raine was cast out of the distortion. His crystallization halted, though his right half remained black-gold forever. Ravenna caught him as their energies intertwined, violet and black-green weaving a cocoon that cleansed the corruption around them.
"You… idiot…" Her tears struck his crystalline skin, evaporating into violet mist. "Who said you could… decide alone…"
Gamma's eye chimed urgently. "Wait! The Mother Tree's root!"
All eyes turned to the stump. From its dead surface, a fresh green shoot pushed through the crystalline crust. More astonishing—its veins glowed with the same black-gold as Raine's right arm.
Nyssa's trembling fingers brushed it. "This is…"
"A new balance." Raine's voice had regained its human timbre, tinged only with a faint mechanical echo. "The Sin remains sealed… but no Watcher need be sacrificed." He met Ravenna's tearful gaze. "All it takes… are two stubborn fools."
On the distant horizon, dawn broke through the smoke. The Gear-Moon—no, the Silver Moon—hung serene in the brightening sky, its scars gone. In unseen dimensions, ancient chains had fallen away, and new bonds had just been born.
Gamma burst into laughter. "Look! The ley-lines are stabilizing!"
Elondir's beard fluttered in the breeze. "The Forest will return. Perhaps in a century, perhaps a thousand years…"
"Dwarves are patient folk." Ironbeard thumped his breastplate, scattering loose scrap. "But first—" He pointed at the retreating remnants of the machine legions. "Who's coming with me to finish those tin cans?"
Raine tried to rise, but his altered body failed him. Ravenna scooped him onto her back, binding them together with webs of violet-gold light.
"No slacking, useless gardener." Her voice cracked between sobs. "You owe me a new Elven Forest… and a lifetime of mead."
Behind them, the lone green sprout swayed. Deep in its roots, a cocoon of violet and black-green slumbered—harboring two entwined fragments of consciousness: one, the Watcher who bore the Sin; the other, the thief who never surrendered his pride.