The lilac mark on wrist was dull, ashen grey. For the first time since entering the Elder Wood, she felt the crushing weight of ordinary mortality. The Alchemist descend the spire's spiral stairs, his copper robes clinking like coins in a dead man's pocket.
"A conductor without a current is just a lightening rod," he sneered, raising the silver fang. The emerald lenses of his mask pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly light. "I've waited lifetimes for a soul as vibrant as yours to prime the Great Engine."
But had forgotten in one thing: she wasn't alone.
Across the square, the Yesterday girl struggled against the electrified copper net. Her form was blurring, becoming a chaotic smear of translucent blue and violet. " The pulse isn't gone!"
The girl closed her eyes. Instead of pulling against the net, she learned into it. She allowed the electricity to flow through her spectrum body, using the mechanical energy to anchor her shifting from into the present.
With a sound like a thunderclap, the Yesterday girl vanished from the net and reappeared directly in front of the protagonist. She looked older, her face lined with the exhaustion of a thousand lived-through moments.
"Take it," the girl whispered, grabbing the protagonist's darkened wrist. "I am the memory of what you were. You are the promise of what we will be."
The girl didn't just give her the power: she gave her time.
The protagonist felt a cold, sharp rush—like diving into the silver river once more. The lilac mark flared to a blinding white. The Yesterday girl began to dissolve into shimmering dust, her sacrifice feeding the Spark that had gone out.
"No!" the protagonist cried, reaching for her, but her fingers passed through empty air.
The Alchemist froze, the green light of his staff flickering in the shadow of the new, white radiance. The villagers, now free from the lilies, watches in awe as the protagonist rose, surrounded by a swirling vortex of chronological echoes.
She wasn't just a girl anymore. She was a strom of every moment she had ever lived, and every moment she was yet to see.