Final morning. Wen changes into black ceremonial outer robes over his usual ivory clothes, preparing the betrayal performance.

Wen completes his staging with plain, functional objects: cracked pendant, dark poison, hidden dagger.

The sect gathers on the bronze star altar. Lu Qingsong presides; Ning searches the crowd for Wen. The sealed Calamity Eye is high above, darker now.

Wen arrives in black ceremonial robes. Ning sees him and briefly believes he came to stand with her.

Wen begins the betrayal publicly, using a voice sharp enough to carry across the altar.

Wen exposes Ning's loop secret with cruelly selected true details. The crowd recoils; Ning cannot deny fast enough.

Wen reaches Ning and commits an intimate cruelty: he crushes her mother's brass bell hairpin in his hand.

Lu orders Wen seized. Wen positions himself so Shen's intervention will become the killing stroke.

Shen's sword pierces Wen. At the same instant, the sealed Calamity Eye begins to open above the altar.

Wen collapses into Ning's arms. She reaches instinctively to save him. He wounds the part of her that would reset the world.

The pilot stops at the unresolved instant. Wen bleeds out in Ning's arms. Her face holds bright hatred. Above them, the Calamity Eye hangs open but unmoving, as if waiting to see whether time will turn.