Pandora Heart Oz -

The chime was a discordant scream of metal, a sound that vibrated in his bones. The air split open, not with fire, but with a thousand red roses—thorns, petals, and all—exploding from the gilded seams of reality. From the rift, crimson hands, long and spindly as a spider’s legs, reached out and seized him. The nobles screamed. His father did not. His father only watched, a strange, terrible relief in his eyes.

“Contractor?” Oz’s voice was a rusted thing. pandora heart oz

“I’ve found you,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. “My lost contractor.” The chime was a discordant scream of metal,

“Oz?” Gil’s voice cracked. “It’s been… ten years.” Alice was a Chain, a monstrous being from the Abyss, but she was also a broken thing. She had no memories. Her only clue was the name “Oz Vessalius” whispered by the very Abyss that had imprisoned him. Their contract was not one of power, but of mutual hunger. Oz would help her find her lost memories, scattered like glass shards across the world. In return, her power—the reality-warping might of the B-Rabbit—would be his chain to swing. The nobles screamed

Oz read the words, and the clock in his chest finally stopped.

The last thing Oz saw before the Abyss swallowed him was Gilbert’s horrified face, reaching for him, and Ada’s tear-streaked cheeks. Then, there was only the click of a pocket watch and a fall into an eternity of black. The Abyss was not a place. It was the absence of one. A crushing, silent pressure where thought was agony and memory was a poison. Oz floated in a sea of broken chains, the whispers of the dead coiling around his ears. He lost count of the hours, the days, the years. He was nothing. A discarded doll in a forgotten attic.