Jack fell to one knee.
The voice echoed inside his bones, not in words but in knowing—a deep, buried familiarity that no memory could explain. The Blade of Echoes burned in his hand, not with fire, but with recognition. The voice had called him a vessel. A bearer.
"You carry my breath."
"What did you hear?" Nyssa crouched beside him, hand on his shoulder.
Jack couldn't speak. Not yet. The words weren't his to give—they had been spoken through him.
Kael stepped forward, his sword raised toward the approaching Hollowed. "We're out of time. Jack—if something's waking inside you, now's the moment to face it."
But Jack didn't move. He was somewhere else.
—A white void.
—A hall of thrones, shattered.
—A single eye, opening in the dark.
"Do you know who I am?" the voice whispered, now softer, coiled around his mind like smoke.
Jack gasped. "You're the Devourer."
"I was."
"But I have been called by many names."
"Before your kind gave me form, I was the Watcher."
The vision rippled.
Images flashed: a planet cracking from within, gods torn apart by light and shadow, a woman with silver eyes reaching into flame—Isolde, no—someone before her. A fragment of a war never recorded in any tome.
"You chose me," Jack said, reeling. "You've been inside me since the Blade. Since Aevareth."
"You chose yourself, Jack. I only opened the gate."
And suddenly—
He was back.
On his feet.
The Hollowed were closing in—dozens, then hundreds, pouring from the shadows like a tide. Marek was roaring, blades in both hands. Nyssa stood in a fighting stance, back to Jack. Kael's sword glowed brighter than ever, defiant. And Lola—
She had drawn nothing.
Instead, her skin glowed with the sigils of the Old Flame—runes once forgotten, dancing in spirals up her arms and neck. Her voice cracked like thunder.
"Ashai or'venthal!"
The words splintered the air. A wall of light erupted from her hands and slammed into the first wave of Hollowed, disintegrating them into shadow and smoke.
Marek turned. "Since when do you throw sunfire?"
"I don't," Lola said. "But she did."
"Who's she?" Jack asked.
Lola didn't answer.
Because she was no longer looking at him.
She was looking past him.
And so was Kael.
And Nyssa.
A figure stood at the edge of the Maw, on a column of jagged stone that hadn't been there moments ago.
She wore no armor.
Her skin was like obsidian veined with starlight, and her eyes bled twin halos of gold. Her voice came without sound, but all heard it.
"I am the First Flame."
Lola dropped to one knee.
Kael followed.
Nyssa stood, but only just.
Jack stared.
"You're... you were part of the Sundering."
"I was the Sundering," the woman said.
She stepped forward—not walking, but gliding, as if the world bent to make way for her.
"I shattered the Veil. I forged the Blade. I bound the Watcher into the Devourer—and cast him into the Hollow."
Jack's throat dried. "Why?"
"Because he loved you," she said.
Silence.
Even the Hollowed paused.
"He watched the first world bloom," she continued, "and he wept. He wanted to protect it. But you feared him. So you made him a god of endings."
Jack whispered, "You're saying we made the Devourer?"
"No," the First Flame said, looking at him with something between sorrow and awe. "I did. To save you."
The Blade of Echoes trembled in Jack's hand.
"I don't understand. Why now? Why return?"
"Because," the First Flame said, stepping to the edge of the Maw, "you have completed the weapon. And soon, he will wake—not as Devourer, not as Watcher…"
She turned toward Jack.
"...but as you."
And then—
The sky exploded.
A crack raced across the heavens.
The tear widened—unleashing a scream of light and shadow that split the horizon.
From the Maw's depths, something began to rise.
Not a beast.
Not a god.
Not yet.
But a shape.
A figure with no face.
Only a voice.
"LET IT BE UNDONE."
The same words Jack heard in the Mirror Hall.
His own voice.
But older.
Wiser.
Broken.
Jack staggered.
Because in that moment, he understood.
He wasn't just the vessel.
He was the one who had ended the world before.
And the Devourer wasn't something inside him.
He had been the Devourer.