The air inside the safehouse turned electric every light flickered, every screen went blank. Lucien didn't need to check the monitors to know what had happened.
The tethers were burning.
He stood silently in the hallway, staring at the silver locket Hana now clutched protectively in her hand. It hadn't burned. Not yet.
She looked at him, fear etched across her face. "Lucien… what's happening?"
Lucien stepped forward, eyes grave. "Kael has begun the Purge. He's destroying every link I left in this world to remember you. Once they're gone, the cycles won't collapse they'll be erased entirely."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," he said, his voice hollow, "we'll never find each other again."
Somewhere in Jeju Island – Ruins of an Abandoned Monastery
Kael moved through the ash-streaked stone halls, boots echoing across the broken floor. Fire smoldered in the symbols carved into the walls markings Lucien had made lifetimes ago. Names. Memories. Maps to Hana.
And now they burned.
Beside him walked the Oracle, her eyes veiled in crimson silk. Though she was chained by spirit-binding glyphs, her mind saw clearly across timelines.
"Two remain," she whispered.
Kael glanced at her. "Where?"
"One in Rome. One… in her."
Kael stopped.
"In her?"
The Oracle nodded. "The final tether is not an object, it's a memory. Locked inside the girl. Sealed during the Zero Cycle."
Kael's face hardened. "Then it's time I retrieve it myself."
Rome – The Forgotten Museum of Time
Meanwhile, in a subterranean chamber beneath the old city, an old man in a wool coat polished a dusty timepiece. His hands trembled slightly, but not from age, from recognition. As the pulse from Kael's purge spread across the world, the pocket watch in his hand ticked for the first time in 147 years.
He stared at it, lips parting.
"She's awake."
He opened a locked drawer and pulled out a velvet pouch. Inside: a glass ring filled with silver threads another tether, hidden since the 1800s.
The man stood slowly, picked up a rotary phone, and made a call to a number only one person in the world would still recognize.
Seoul Safehouse – Moments Later
Lucien's phone rang. It shouldn't have. All lines were dead. All tech, neutralized.
But this one call came through.
He answered it slowly. "…Giovanni?"
"I thought I'd never hear your voice again," the man said, voice rough but emotional. "I still have it. The ring."
Lucien's eyes darkened. "I thought I destroyed it."
"You tried," Giovanni replied. "But not all things that break stay dead."
Lucien turned to Hana. "There's one last chance. We go to Rome. Now."
Three Hours Later – Private Jet Over the Adriatic Sea
Hana stared out the window, the night clouds bathed in the silver glow of the moon. Her heart raced. Not from fear, but from something deeper. Something ancient. Something awakening.
Lucien sat across from her, going over a map of tether locations from past cycles. Most were already redacted by flame marks.
"Why Rome?" Hana asked softly.
Lucien looked up. "Because that was the city where I first died for you."
Flashback – Rome, 1894
A younger Lucien stood in the rain outside the Basilica di Santa Maria. Soldiers in black stormed the building behind him. In his arms, a woman identical to Hana, wounded but defiant.
"I won't let them take you again," he whispered.
She placed the glass ring in his hand. "Hide this where even you can't find it. And if you ever return let it lead you back to me."
Then the gunshots rang out.
Lucien's body fell, the ring sliding across the stone floor… vanishing into a crack as blood spilled over the steps.
Present – Rome, Museo dei Silenzi
The jet landed under the cover of night. Giovanni, now gray-haired but sharp-eyed, led Lucien and Hana through underground catacombs to a hidden archive where the past refused to be forgotten.
He placed the ring on the table between them.
It shimmered faintly as Hana touched it and her breath caught.
Visions.
A dance beneath candlelight. A war-torn palace. A wedding in a cherry blossom field. Every life they'd lived… every vow they'd ever broken.
Lucien grabbed her hand. "Do you remember now?"
She nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks. "All of them."
And as the ring pulsed between them, something snapped into place.
Her memory had been the final tether.
Kael knew.
And he was already coming.
Elsewhere – Sky Over the Mediterranean
Kael stood on a private airship streaking through the clouds, one hand gripping the black-steel edge of the deck. Storms roared around him, yet he remained unmoved.
"She's awakened," he murmured to himself. "Then so must I."
He opened a scroll and whispered a dark invocation in a forgotten tongue.
From the shadows behind him, a form emerged neither man nor beast. A sentient remnant of a failed cycle. It moved like oil and ash.
Kael pointed to the distance.
"Go to Rome. Tear the memories from her mind. And if Lucien stands in your way, end him."
Rome – Just Before Midnight
Hana stood in the courtyard of the museum, the ring now around her neck. Her memories pulsed like lightning inside her chest. Faces. Names. Promises. Regrets.
Lucien stood beside her, watching the stars.
"We don't have much time," he said.
"I know."
"But we have this moment."
And for the first time, they kissed not as strangers reunited by fate, but as lovers defying it.
A wind stirred the courtyard.
The sky darkened.
Something arrived.
Not Kael. Not yet.
But the shadow he had sent.
It moved like a snake made of fire and shadow, coiling through the marble arches, drawn by the ring's light.
Lucien drew his blade. "Get behind me."
Hana didn't move.
"I remember now," she said, eyes glowing.
The shadow struck!
And Hana raised her hand.
A blast of silver light shot from her palm, striking the creature mid-air and sending it crashing into the colonnade.
Lucien stared, stunned. "…That wasn't me."
"No," she whispered. "It was me. From before."
Kael's Chamber
Far away, Kael's eyes snapped open.
"She's unlocked her powers."
He stood, drawing his blade for the first time in a century.
"Then the war truly begins."