The world was cracking.
Not from the weight of armies or the fury of gods—but from memory.
Jack felt it under his skin, in his bones, behind his eyes. Memory as ancient as creation itself—awakening.
He stood at the edge of the scorched plateau, where the shattered horizon bled into stars. Beneath him yawned the Maw, and beyond it, in the far distance, the sky rippled with a strange, pulsing glow. Like a heartbeat. Like a forge.
"The Forge Beneath the Sky," Jack murmured. "That's where it ends."
Lola moved to his side, her skin still inscribed with flickering sigils from the First Flame's touch. "You saw it too."
Jack didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Nyssa stepped up, surveying the strange storm rising in the distance. "You think that's where it all began? The Devourer. The Blade. The Sundering?"
"No," Jack said. "That's where I began."
Marek grunted. "So we're walking into a memory now?"
Kael tightened the grip on his sword. "No. We're walking into truth."
Jack stared out into the pulsing sky. "And if I'm right… it's where the last piece of the Blade's memory waits."
They traveled across an ever-shifting landscape—mountains that blinked in and out of existence, rivers that flowed backward, stars that hung low enough to burn. The world, it seemed, was unraveling with them at the center.
The path to the Forge was not a path at all.
It was a wound.
Reality peeled back in strips the closer they came—until they stood at the edge of an obsidian rift in the land, where molten light poured upward into the sky like fire trying to escape heaven.
Suspended above the chasm was a platform—black stone streaked with veins of white flame. Runes glowed across its surface, ancient and alive.
Jack stepped forward.
The Blade of Echoes pulsed once, twice—then settled into silence.
"I've been here before," he said quietly.
"In another life?" Lola asked.
"No," he whispered. "In this one. Just… not yet."
They crossed the threshold together.
The air thickened. Time wavered.
As Jack placed his foot on the central dais, the world inverted.
He stood alone.
The others were gone.
The Forge was no longer stone and fire—it was sky and memory.
And before him rose a towering figure—a shape made of smoke and light, robed in the stars of dead galaxies. No face. No voice.
Only a presence.
"You are the memory returned," it said at last, in a voice older than existence.
Jack stepped forward. "Are you the Watcher?"
"I am what remains of him. I am the forge. I am the wound you left behind."
Jack's chest tightened. "Then tell me—what was the Sundering?"
"You were," the voice said.
Flashes surged through Jack's mind.
—A throne made of obsidian glass.
—A war of a thousand worlds.
—The First Flame, weeping.
—Jack—no, someone who looked like him—raising the Blade… and breaking reality.
"You made me," Jack whispered. "You turned me into the Devourer."
"No," the voice said gently. "You asked to be."
Silence fell.
And then the dais cracked.
The sky split.
And Jack faced himself.
Not just a reflection.
A twin. A shadow. An echo.
This Jack wore no expression. His skin shimmered with the void. The Blade he held was not the Blade of Echoes—it was the original. Untouched. Pure. And impossibly heavy with judgment.
"You must prove yourself," said the voice.
Jack raised his own Blade.
The shadow struck first.
The duel was not fought in the flesh—but in the soul.
Every swing carved through memory. Every clash echoed with screams from forgotten lives.
Jack fell once—twice.
But he rose again.
Not because he was stronger.
But because he remembered.
He remembered Lola's laughter. Kael's fury. Nyssa's loyalty. Auren's warning. Marek's stubbornness. Isaldora's love.
He remembered who he chose to be.
And with that—
He drove the Blade through the echo.
It did not bleed.
It shattered.
And when the light faded, Jack stood at the center of the Forge alone.
The Blade of Echoes glowed.
Whole.
Changed.
And within it—the final memory.
The others reappeared, blinking as if waking from a dream.
Jack staggered but caught himself.
Nyssa ran to him. "What happened?"
He held up the Blade. "It's complete."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "And what did it show you?"
Jack looked northward—toward the place where the stars were beginning to fall.
"The end."
Lola stepped forward. "Can it be stopped?"
Jack hesitated.
Then said, "No."
Silence.
"But it can be rewritten."
"How?" Marek asked.
Jack's eyes glowed with something fierce and terrifying. "By becoming what I was. And choosing differently."
Nyssa's breath caught. "You're going to become the Devourer again."
Jack nodded. "Just long enough to break the chain."
Kael stepped forward. "Then what happens to you?"
Jack didn't answer.
But the Blade did.
It pulsed once.
And somewhere far away, something ancient stirred in response.
The sky cracked open.
The world was watching.