Allison paused on the midnight street corner, staring at the writhing thorn-covered gears in the shadows. By moonlight, the patterns emerging on the gears' surface bore an uncanny resemblance to the runes that had once appeared on her skin. A faint glow seeped between the teeth, as if weaving some kind of temporal coordinate. She reached out to touch it, and the gear suddenly embedded itself into her palm. Vines erupted from the core of her heart, coiling along her arm to form the outline of a new pocket watch.
"Grandmother's warning... it was never just a curse."
She recalled the watch's eerie habit of drinking blood, and the struggling female faces in the mirrored family tree. The thorn pocket watch began to spin backward, its hands pointing to a strange combination of numbers—"1347.07.20". The stench of a plague-stricken village hit her, but this time, a voice echoed from the temporal rift:
"Traitor of the Winston line, you stole our sacrifice."
Allison was dragged into the rift, crashing into the center of the plague village's ruins. Unlike her previous crossings, the corpses here wore modern metal jewelry, and alchemical potion vials littered the ground, creating a clash of eras. In the distance, a group of robed figures were placing infants into lead coffins. Their faces were hidden behind thorn masks, yet their voices matched the one Francis had used.
"The dregs of Lancaster have bred a new host." The lead masked figure raised a poisoned rose ring—identical to the one that had killed her father. "But you took the Thorn Crown, severing our path to immortality."
Allison's thorn armor itself, and white flames erupted from her heart's core. She realized this was no historical replay, but a trap woven from the lingering power of the curse. The potions hurled by the robed figures exploded midair, unleashing both plague and electronic interference waves as the rift began to collapse.
"You're not Francis," she snarled, slicing through the attack with her vines. "Just puppets made from family blood."
The masked figures howled, merging into a spectral image of Francis—but lacking a soul's core. "You're wrong! We are the heirs—four centuries ago, the Lancaster-Winston pact wasn't just about breeding rivals. It was to forge an immortal army using infants' temporal abilities!"
The pocket watch's gears suddenly locked in reverse, and Allison's temporal awareness surged. She saw countless versions of herself across parallel timelines: ancestors on medieval altars, their spines torn out; future laboratories where endless "Allisons" struggled in cloning tanks, their bloodlines replicated; even her grandmother's final moments, where sorrow in her eyes had masked cold calculation.
"So the curse's truth is this—you've been using our women as temporal vessels..." She tore open her armor, and her heart's core erupted with a beam bright enough to,incinerating the puppet Francises. But a new whisper rose from the depths of the ruins: "You can't kill us. The Thorn Crown's flames will only awaken the true master."
As the rift closed, a shard of lead coffin appeared in Allison's hand, inscribed with "Lancaster-Winston Experiment #07". She returned to modern-day New York, where the old mansion's rooftop had become a lab ruin. Her grandmother's silver pocket watch glowed amid the debris—its face displayed the date "2025-07-20", matching the number from the rift.
"Today... Sunday," she murmured, suddenly realizing her grandmother had died seven years ago on this very day. Thorn vines pierced the watch, revealing a hidden family tree inside its gears: beside each Winston woman's name was a temporal experiment number.
Her phone rang, an unfamiliar encrypted number. When she answered, her grandmother's voice emerged through static: "Allison, you've come this far. But the true source of the curse lies beyond the temporal gate—I need you to cross to 1943 Berlin and destroy Lancaster's last alchemical ritual."
"Why tell me now?" she demanded, vines tightening around the watch. "You've been using us as this whole time?"
"To break the cycle," her grandmother's voice faded. "But the guardian beyond the gate... is a fusion of all past rivals, carrying every killing memory across time. You must wear the Thorn Crown and become the true queen."
Allison crushed the lead shard, and the thorn gears in her palm. She looked to the night sky, where the moon glowed crimson again, as if answering an ancient call. A temporal rift yawned at her feet, and the Crown's flames burned in her eyes.
"This time, I'll rewrite the ending across all timelines."