He wasn’t a boy. He was a doll. A perfect, living automaton crafted by the original Jack Vessalius—the hero who sealed the Abyss a century ago. Jack, desperate and grieving, had not been able to save the girl he loved, the first Alice. So he had done the unthinkable. He had wound back the gears of time, broken the original Alice into pieces, and used her soul as a core to create a new child—Oz. A perfect, immortal vessel. A living key to the Abyss.

With a single, elegant swing of her scythe, she cut the chain binding his ankle to the floor of the Abyss. Pain, white-hot and glorious, flooded back into his limbs. He was real again. He was solid. And as the Abyss screamed in protest, she pulled him through the door.

“Maybe I was never meant to exist,” he said, his voice steady. “But I’m here. And I’m not a key. I’m not a doll. I’m Oz. And I’ll decide my own ending.”

“Oz,” the Duke whispered, as if saying goodbye to a nightmare, “you should have never existed.”

Alice stared at him, her stormy eyes wide. “You’re not real?” she whispered. “Then what are we fighting for?”

Until a key turned in the lock.

“I am Alice,” she stated, tilting her head like a curious bird. “The B-Rabbit. And you… you smell of the Tragedy.”