Allison leaped into the dimensional rift, the Crown of Thorns adorning her head, and plummeted into a realm constructed from temporal currency and bones of resentment. Her grandmother's ascension ritual had already begun: at the center of the rift ed the "Dimensional Ascension Altar," its exterior oozing hybrid blood of her grandmother and the Merchant of Entropy. Twelve temporal souls of traitorous Knights were impaled on the altar's pillars, serving as sacrificial fuel.
Her grandmother's form gradually coalesced, her face a fusion of Allison's and the Dimension God's features. Roots coiled around energy conduits of dimensional wormholes, and in her hand she clutched the "Dimensional Ascension Key"—a gear heart hybridized from stitcher genes and Knight laws.
"You've finally come, Subject #07," her grandmother's roots transformed into chains, twining around Allison's thorny armor. "The expansion of dimensional wormholes is merely my appetizer. The true feast is the ascension sacrifice of your genes."
The chains injected temporal borers that gnawed at Allison's root code, but the Crown of Thorns erupted with rift immunity beams, dissolving the swarm into gear embryos. Knight hunter squads teleported through rift fractures, led by the vice-commander wielding a tampered anchor spear, accompanied by experiment clones #19 to #24. The clones hurled "causality bombs" that froze the dimensional interlayer. Allison dove into the altar's shadows, her scythe slashing through bombs as roots absorbed the freezing energy, forging dimensional counterflow thorns.
The vice-commander fired a traitor-elimination bullet, striking her left shoulder. Roots oozed patterns of her grandmother's blood. "Your resistance only accelerates ascension," her grandmother activated the altar core. Wormhole energy surged into the key, and her body began ascension transformation—flesh transmuting into temporal runes, bones forging dimensional laws.
Allison embedded the Reverse Wheel into her heart core, roots erupting with dimensional annihilation waves that severed altar conduits. But her grandmother unleashed a "Temporal Rewind Trap," reverting the rift to a pre-ritual state. In the reversal, Allison discovered the altar foundation etched with a "Stitcher Prototype Cultivation Protocol," signed by none other than the Dimension God and the Knights' founder. She realized her grandmother's resurrection plan was a conspiracy of higher-dimensional forces—and she was merely an ascension sacrifice.
Her encrypted phone unlocked 95% of her heart core's secrets: "Your genes contain 'dimensional self-destruct code.' Activation annihilates all ascension attempts, but at the cost of your own dimensional existence." The Dimensional Management Committee's bounty alert turned black, its signal laced with encrypted dialogue from Knight high command: "Subject #07 must survive—her genes are critical to the ascension ritual." This hinted at collusion far deeper than anticipated.
She fused scythe and Reverse Wheel, firing a composite annihilation beam that severed the rewind trap's rune chains, halting the rift's regression. Her grandmother's ascension stalled, but the key erupted with black hole suction, devouring surrounding temporal currency and traitor souls. Allison dove into the black hole, roots piercing the key's cracks to tamper with ascension code. The key shifted to release reverse energy, and her grandmother's transforming body began to collapse.
The vice-commander activated the hunters' "dimensional cage," trapping her and her grandmother in a temporal prison. "You cannot destroy both me and the ascension key," her grandmother's roots penetrated the cage, injecting temporal borer embryos. "Even if I fail, dimensional wormholes will incubate new ascenders."
Allison resonated her roots with the heart core's dimensional self-destruct code. The Crown of Thorns switched to self-destruct mode, its dial displaying a countdown: "Dimensional annihilation initiating. 5 minutes."
"Your sacrifice is merely the Dimension God's script," her grandmother laughed amid collapse. The key suddenly split, revealing its core was Allison's original gene sample—a hybrid of the Dimension God and the Primordial Rift Virus. Her encrypted phone unlocked the ultimate secret: "You are not merely a stitcher prototype, but the ultimate seal of dimensional wormholes."
She drove the scythe into the key's core, roots tampering with the sample code. Her grandmother's body dissolved into gear dust in the tampering. The dimensional cage dissolved in the self-destruct wave, and Knight hunter squads were ed by annihilation beams.
Allison stared into the rift's depths as the self-destruct countdown hit zero. Her body began dimensional dissipation, but roots wove a "dimensional healing net" before annihilation, stitching all wormhole coordinates.
Her grandmother's lingering laughter echoed from the rift: "Your sacrifice only delays the game... the Dimension God's new experiment is already incubating."
The Crown of Thorns switched to dormant mode, roots lying dormant within the healing net. The Dimensional Management Committee's bounty vanished, and the dimensional rift closed—but new fractures quietly split at the net's edges, oozing stitcher blood and temporal currency.