The final hours of their vigil passed in a new kind of silence, a quiet that was no longer charged with tension or shared vulnerability, but was filled with a fragile, hesitant, and almost comfortable peace. Lloyd, wrapped in the surprising, and not entirely unwelcome, warmth of Rosa’s cloak, drifted in a state of semi-conscious, exhausted tranquility. Rosa, having performed her single, profound act of uncharacteristic care, had retreated to her watchful position by the window, a silent, silver-haired guardian standing sentinel over the slow, magical birth of their miracle. The world outside the small, glowing alchemy room seemed to hold its breath. The entire Siddik estate was a quiet, sleeping giant, its inhabitants lost in their own dreams, unaware of the profound, world-altering alchemy that was taking place in its quiet, forgotten heart. It was in this deep, pre-dawn stillness, in the quiet, liminal space between the end of one long, dark night and the beginning of a new, and hopefully brighter, day, that the darkness found Lloyd once more. He was not asleep, not truly. But his consciousness, untethered by the sheer, soul-deep exhaustion of his body, began to drift. The familiar, comforting reality of the alchemy room, with its soft, multi-colored glow and the quiet, steady presence of his wife, began to fade, to dissolve, replaced by a different, older, and far more terrifying reality. He was standing in a void. A familiar, endless, and utterly featureless expanse of pure, absolute nothingness. The air was cold, still, and held the metallic, coppery taste of old blood and even older, unforgotten grief. A figure stood before him, a spectral, shadowy silhouette that seemed to be woven from the very fabric of the void itself. It was the same figure that had haunted his dreams, the same ghost that had been a silent, unwelcome passenger in his soul since his awakening in this new world. But this time, it was different. The figure was not a vague, indistinct shadow. It was not a featureless man of crimson rage or sorrowful blue. This time, the shadows seemed to coalesce, to take on form, to solidify into a shape that was both alien and heartbreakingly, terrifyingly familiar. He was staring at himself. Not the man he was now, the twenty-year-old lord with a mind of a hundred-year-old soldier. Not the ghost of the man he had been on Earth, the brilliant, ruthless, and ultimately weary general. He was staring at the ghost of the original Lloyd Ferrum. The twenty-five-year-old man he had been, and would have become, in his first, forgotten, and brutally short life. The ghost was a perfect, heartbreakingly familiar reflection of his own younger face. But the eyes… the eyes were all wrong. They were the eyes of a man who had seen too much, who had lost too much, who had fought a long, brutal, and ultimately losing war. They were hollowed out by grief, haunted by a loss so profound it had carved itself into the very lines of his face. They were the eyes of a man who had seen his entire world burn to ash. The ghost looked at him, and in its hollow, haunted eyes, Lloyd saw not hatred, not anger, but a profound, and chillingly ancient, sorrow. And then, the ghost spoke. Its voice was a whisper, a rustle of dry, dead leaves, a sound that seemed to come from a place beyond time, beyond death. “I awoke her from her eternal sleep,” the ghost whispered, and the words were not just a statement; they were a confession, a lament, a tribute to a victory that had been a prelude to a far greater, and far more terrible, defeat. “I gave her a reason to live. I gave her back her mother. Her smile. I thought… I thought it was a new beginning.” The ghost’s face, which had been a mask of stoic, sorrowful resignation, contorted, twisted into a new, and far more terrible, expression. An expression of pure, unadulterated, and freshly remembered agony. The memory was not a distant, faded thing; it was a fresh, open, and still-bleeding wound. “And still…” the ghost choked on the words, its spectral form flickering, destabilizing, as if the pain of the memory was too great for even a ghost to bear. “Still… they murdered me. And then… then, they murdered her.” The words were a hammer blow to Lloyd’s soul. He did not know who they were. He did not know who her was. But the raw, absolute, and undying agony in the ghost’s voice was a thing of terrible, undeniable truth. The apparition’s face, which had been contorted in pain, now shifted again, becoming a mask of pure, desperate, and pleading urgency. “They will return,” the ghost whispered, its voice now a frantic, incoherent hiss. “The curse… the curse will follow. It always follows.” The ghost’s hollow, haunted gaze, which had been looking at a past that only it could see, now snapped forward, locking onto Lloyd’s with an intensity so profound, so absolute, that it seemed to transcend the very boundaries of time and death. It was not just looking at him; it was looking through him, its desperate, incoherent plea a psychic scream that was aimed directly at the core of his very soul. Thıs content belongs to 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵•𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮•𝓷𝓮𝓽 “Stay away from her!” the ghost shrieked, its voice no longer a whisper, but a raw, ragged, and utterly terrified roar. “You must… you must stay away from her!” The warning, the plea, the psychic scream of a damned and broken soul, was the last thing Lloyd heard before the dreamscape, the void, the ghost, his own sanity, shattered into a million pieces. He gasped, his own voice a choked, strangled sound, and he was awake. He was back in the quiet, gently glowing alchemy room, his heart a frantic, hammering drum against his ribs, a cold, deathly sweat plastering his clothes to his skin. The dream, the vision, the nightmare… it was gone. But the ghost’s final, cryptic, and utterly terrifying words echoed in the absolute, profound silence of his own soul. Stay away from her. A warning. A warning from a past he could not remember, about a future that was now hurtling towards him with the speed, and the terrifying, absolute certainty, of a falling star. Lloyd sat bolt upright, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps, his mind a chaotic battlefield where the lingering, spectral horror of the nightmare was at war with the quiet, tangible reality of the alchemy room. The ghost’s final, desperate shriek still echoed in the silent chambers of his soul, a chilling, resonant frequency that he could not shake. The words were a puzzle, a paradox wrapped in a shroud of ancient grief. Who was her? The dying matriarch, Nilufa? The pragmatic, kind-hearted Mina? Or… and this was the thought that sent a fresh, colder wave of dread through him… Rosa? The woman who was, at this very moment, a silent, watchful presence on the other side of the room? He pushed the unsettling, chaotic vision aside with a ruthless act of will. He was a soldier. He could not afford to be spooked by ghosts, even if those ghosts wore his own face. The dream was a product of exhaustion, of stress, of the profound, spiritual trauma of their ordeal on the mountain. It was a phantom. A meaningless echo. It had to be. His focus, with a conscious, deliberate effort, returned to the immediate, the tangible, the mission. He looked at the crystal bowl in the center of the table. And he saw that the world had, while he had been lost in his own personal hell, quietly, and completely, changed. The twenty-four-hour vigil was over. The soft, multi-colored, and pulsing glow that had filled the room was gone. The crystal bowl was now filled with a simple, clear, and faintly shimmering liquid, the color of pure, filtered moonlight. And the pearl… the 5-Color Divine Pearl, which had been a captive, swirling vortex of vibrant, living color, was now a simple, translucent, and utterly lifeless orb of clear, milky quartz. It had expended its essence. It had poured its ancient, divine magic into the cure. Its work was done. “It is done,” Lloyd announced, his voice a low, steady instrument, betraying none of the internal turmoil that was still raging within him. He rose from his chair, his movements once again the slow, deliberate, and efficient motions of a doctor, a healer. He walked to the table, and with a reverence that was both for the miracle he was about to administer and for the profound, personal cost at which it had been won, he began the final preparation. He took a small, exquisitely crafted crystal syringe from his medical kit. It was a tool of his own design, a piece of technology from another world that he had commissioned from the finest glassblower in the Ferrum capital, under the guise of it being a device for a complex, alchemical experiment. He carefully, slowly, drew the purified, faintly glowing liquid from the bowl into the syringe. The liquid was cool, viscous, and seemed to hum with a quiet, contained, and impossibly potent life force.