The stairwell behind them dimmed.
No torches flickered. No magic resisted. Just silence, heavy as a tomb—then the heartbeat again, louder now. Closer.
Jackson's hand tightened on the Demon Devourer. Jian stepped to his side, staff humming with light that pulsed unevenly—like it feared what was coming.
Then the stone cracked wide—and it stepped through.
The vessel wasn't massive, nor armored, nor grotesque. It was simple. Wrong.
A man-shaped thing, stitched from tattered robes and shadows that moved like smoke in reverse. Its face shifted constantly—sometimes Jackson's, sometimes Jian's, sometimes Alicia's—but always just a little off. A mockery of what was lost.
It opened its mouth, and a voice spilled out—not spoken, but remembered.
"You came for her.
She came for you.
And all of you… broke time."
Jackson felt something twist inside him. A memory that wasn't his… and yet was.
The vessel tilted its head.
"Before you pass, you must face the truth:
What you are without her."
It raised one long-fingered hand—and the tower vanished.
[Realm of the Hollow Trial – Within the Vessel's Memory]
They stood now in a field of ash. Not death—absence. Jian's staff flickered and dimmed. Jackson's flame guttered.
"No magic," Jian said. Her voice echoed like it didn't belong.
"No lies," the vessel corrected, now floating before them in the sky. "No masks. Only what remains when the light is gone."
And then—
Jackson turned.
A figure stood before him, bound in chains of regret.
It was himself—but from a life he never wanted to see again. A version who had let Alicia die. Who had used the sword until there was nothing left but fire and ash and silence.
That version stepped forward.
"You're not her flame," it said. "You're her ruin."
And it charged.
Jian, too, turned—and saw someone rising from the ash: not a stranger, but her mentor. Alicia. Pale. Hollow-eyed.
But when Jian ran forward, Alicia's mouth opened wide.
"You abandoned me."
The words hit harder than any blow.
This wasn't a fight for survival. This was a trial of remembrance. The vessel wasn't testing their strength.
It was testing their soul.
And unless they could stand not just with Alicia—but without her…
They wouldn't make it out.