As Allison stared at the pocket watch in her New York apartment, twisted spatial-temporal ripples suddenly appeared outside the window. Skyscraper outlines flowed like melting wax statues, and hybrids of medieval torture devices and futuristic machinery surged from street corners. Thorny roots automatically pierced through her palm, weaving into a protective net. She realized this was an infiltration of dimensional rifts—though the Immortality Ritual had been destroyed, the temporal wounds in the universe were still festering.
A shrill alarm blared from her encrypted phone, and coordinates flashed on the screen: "Manhattan East Side, Spatial-Temporal Erosion Level 3." A mechanical voice, laced with human gasps, spoke: "Subject #07, this rift has released your grandmother's unfinished 'temporal parasites.' They are devouring the causal chains of the real world."
She donned her thorny armor, and the crown switched to reconnaissance mode. The watch face displayed the parasites' trajectory—worm-like bodies resembling liquid gears, parasitizing humans to tamper with memories, turning victims into living channels for spatial-temporal cracks.
By the time she reached the East Side, the neighborhood had transformed into a surreal maze: hybrids of plague village corpses and modern zombies roamed, while 18th-century alchemical incantations flickered across neon signs. "Their goal is to create a 'causality-free zone' for dimensional predators to invade," a survivor collapsed in the ruins, his skin oozing gear-like patterns. "I'm Subject #12, a spare experiment of your grandmother's... discarded in this timeline."
A white light erupted from the core of Allison's heart, and her roots pierced into the parasitic horde. She discovered the parasites were not organisms, but code woven from the resentment of her grandmother's failed experiments—their source had to be severed at the root of memory. The crown of thorns split open, revealing the Reversal Wheel. She embedded its cogs into the infected's brains, reversing the tampered memory fragments.
"Your resentment is nullified," she tore open the parasites' code outer shell, and her roots melted into purifying flames. But a new resonance echoed from the depths of the rift. The parasites suddenly merged into a giant mother entity—her grandmother's face flickered at its core, the mechanical voice overlapping with her laughter: "Allison, you ended my experiment, but became my continuation."
The mother entity spewed spatial-temporal wormholes, and real-world buildings were gnawed into gear fragments. Allison leaped into a wormhole, and in the dimensional interlayer, her roots discovered her grandmother's leftover "backup ritual"—countless unactivated parasite embryos, each labeled with the gene numbers of Winston family members. She realized her grandmother had long prepared a countermeasure for the curse's end, using the experiments' resentment to reopen rifts.
"Your destiny is not to stitch, but to destroy," the mother entity lashed out with spatial-temporal nooses. Allison reverse-devoured the nooses' energy, and the Reversal Wheel erupted with a dimensional collapse wave. The mother entity decomposed into swarms of parasites, but each fragment carried a voice clip of her grandmother: "You'll never seal all the rifts..."
She tore off her thorny armor, driving her roots into the backup ritual's core, recompiling the embryo code into "spatial-temporal healing agent." The collapse wave swept across the East Side. As the rift closed, the healing agent seeped into the real world's wounds, and buildings and memories gradually restored. The gear patterns on Survivor #12 faded, his pupils regaining clarity.
"You've become a true stitcher," he murmured, handing her an unactivated parasite embryo. "But your grandmother's laboratories span dimensions. Each could hatch a new mother entity."
The encrypted phone rang again, the signal switching to an unfamiliar female voice: "Allison Winston, the Dimensional Management Committee has monitored your actions. We need you to join the 'Rift Knights,' specializing in repairing universal-level spatial-temporal trauma. The reward... is unlocking the ultimate secret of your heart's core."
The crown of thorns switched to standby mode, and the watch face displayed the knights' emblem—gears entwined with thorns, an unknown star chart embedded in the center. Allison looked at the healing neighborhood, realizing her battle had never truly ended. In the dimensional abyss, her grandmother's laughter still echoed in the folds of the rifts.