Midnight chimes echo through the church as Alison clenches her pocket watch, alchemical symbols rippling across its silver surface. Before the dizziness of her third time jump fades, she's engulfed by the acrid stench of sulfur—standing in a medieval alchemical laboratory. Copper distillers cast twisted shadows in candlelight, glass jars lining the walls brimming with deformed creatures in formaldehyde.
"As I expected, you came."
A low male voice emerges from the shadows. Alison spins, pupils contracting—Sebastian Lancaster leans against the workbench, his black robe stained with dark red smears. He twirls a ring set with a black gemstone in his fingers—the very one missing from her grandmother's heirloom box.
"So you stole the temporal device." Her words grind through clenched teeth, a dagger hidden in her cuff primed to strike. Sebastian chuckles, tracing runes on the ring's surface. "Winston family secrets are far dirtier than you imagine. Your grandmother was merely a puppet of Lancaster blood."
The lab temperature plummets as distillers behind Sebastian begin to boil, purple steam billowing. Alison realizes he's concocting a lethal potion—she must strike fast. She hurls the dagger, but he bats it aside with the ring, metal clanging against stone walls.
"Did you think such tricks could kill me?" Sebastian advances, a silver mechanical arm—distinctive of alchemists—emerging from under his robe. "Five hundred years ago, my ancestors mastered time manipulation. Every era you time-traveled through fell under our surveillance."
Alison retreats to the corner, her back hitting a cold alchemical diagram. Sebastian's breath—mingling sulfur and blood—closes in as she notices his left eye glowing eerily red: a gemstone embedded in the socket, resonating with the ring's runes.
"Eye of the Voyeur..." she murmurs, reading the diagram's text. This is the legendary alchemical artifact that tracks temporal trajectories. Sebastian's fingers brush her carotid artery, his mechanical arm joints clicking. "Tell me—what did you take from the plague village? The contents of that iron box... they can rewrite the Lancaster curse."
Agony erupts from her wrist—Sebastian clamps down on her temporal watch, its gears spinning backward. She feels consciousness wrenched away, memory shards piercing her mind like glass: medieval witch trials, the contract her grandmother was forced to sign, the truth of her father's death...
"Stop!" she snarls, thrashing, only to find herself imprisoned by an invisible force field. Sebastian's gem eye flares red, siphoning her temporal energy. "You're nothing but a vessel for family continuation. Hand over the iron box, or I'll transform you into a true Lancaster puppet..."
As energy extraction nears its breaking point, a hourglass in the lab corner suddenly topples. Seizing the fleeting opening, Alison smashes her high heel into his mechanical elbow joint. Sebastian staggers back, and she wrenches the watch free, its dial bursting with silver light—she forces a random jump, but through the time-travel pain, she glimpses a shocking truth: Sebastian's neck bears the same family birthmark as hers.
The instant the temporal vortex closes, Alison crashes into a modern mansion's bathroom, marble floors biting cold. Shaking, she touches her neck birthmark as Sebastian's final words ring in her ears: "The revenge you seek is merely a closed loop of the family curse..."