Each attempt had ended the same way—whenever I neared a puddle of brackish water, something struck from beyond my sight. A scythe-like limb, impossibly fast, cutting through flesh and bone as if I were made of parchment. Each time, I tried to react. Each time, I failed.
The worst part wasn't the dying. It wasn't even the waiting to wake up at the start again, with my heartbeat hammering, my mind reeling from phantom pain. No. The worst part was the buzzing.
The unceasing, maddening drone of wings, thousands of them, filling every ruined corridor, every street choked with decay, every broken shadow. No matter where I went, it followed. A constant, oppressive sound that gnawed at the edges of my sanity.
I exhaled, forcing my nerves to settle. This time, I refused to be caught unaware.
I reached for my Arte, drawing paper bullets from my bandoliers. This time, I would not waste them on simple attacks. This time, I would create.
The forms I had shaped before—the bee, the bird—were too rigid, too expected. I had spent so long thinking within the limits of what I knew, but paper was not bound by flesh. It did not have to obey nature’s laws. It could be more.
I withdrew further into the ruins, pressing my back against cold, crumbling stone. A place without water. A place where I could think.
First, a bird. Simple, familiar. Then, I refined it. Strengthened it. I shaped its wings larger, honed its talons sharper. Still, it was not enough.
So I built upon it.
A hive—a nest of folded chambers nestled beneath its wings. A living construct, something that would grow, that would spread. It was not just a bird now. It was a warden, a hunter, a harbinger.
Still, I needed sight.
I closed my eyes and focused, letting the image of my truth guide my hands. The statue from my visions—the weeping angel, nebulas spilling endlessly from its eyes, starlight cascading like an endless judgment. Everything has a price.
I fed that truth into my creation. I poured my mana into the folds of paper, my miasma into its wings. The intricate weave of my will became its body, its purpose. And on those wings, it began the hunt.
But no hunter worked alone.
From within its hollow hive, others began to form. Not birds, but spiders—delicate, precise, their legs razor-thin as they unfurled into existence. One by one, they dispersed, silk-thin threads of paper trailing behind them, constructing a web that only I could see. A network of strings, stretched through shadow, through silence, through still air.
And then—
The buzzing stopped.
The stillness was almost deafening. A silence so sharp it threatened to cut.
The flies had noticed. My web, my hunter—it had disturbed their cycle of carnage, broken the rhythm of their slaughter. They were searching now. Adjusting. Preparing to strike.
Good.
I took a slow breath, steadying my pulse. Every thread in my web trembled at the slightest motion, every vibration feeding back to me. I could feel them moving, flitting through the air, circling above, hesitating just beyond reach.
They were waiting for me to step near the water. For me to make the same mistake I had six times before.
I smiled.
Not this time.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent a single pulse through the web. The bird twitched in response. Its wings flared, paper rustling like the whisper of dry leaves. And then—
It launched.
A blur of motion, a shadow streaking through the ruined city. It wove between broken pillars and shattered rooftops, following the unseen trails of my web. The spiders followed, trailing delicate filaments of reinforced paper, forming a second layer of detection.
And then I heard it—
A crack, a snap, the shudder of something caught.
My pulse quickened.
One of them had touched the threads.
Without hesitation, I twisted my fingers, commanding my bird to turn. A sharp arc, a shift in trajectory—paper wings angled like blades, it plunged into the darkness.
The moment before impact, I finally saw it.
It had never been just one fly.
The monstrosity before me was a hive, a churning amalgamation of carrion flies—wings stitched together, bodies fused, forming a singular mass of chitin and hunger. It had been waiting, lurking, moving unseen through the fragmented cityscape. Each individual insect had been an extension of its greater form, each attack nothing more than a limb of something far larger.
No wonder I had never seen it before.
No wonder I had never stood a chance.
Until now.
The bird struck first, colliding with the mass of wings and limbs. The impact sent a shockwave through my web, strands snapping, tension releasing in a ripple of stored force.
The spiders reacted immediately, detonating their lines, sending shards of sharpened paper raining upon the hive.
The buzzing returned—this time in a frantic, panicked crescendo.
I surged forward.
I had one shot.
With a snap of my fingers, the bird unraveled, its form expanding, twisting, reforming. Its wings became scythes, its body a maw of jagged paper. It did not just strike.
It consumed.
The hive twisted, writhing, its mass pulling apart at unnatural angles. But it was too late.
The predator had become the prey.
The buzzing turned into a shriek.
Then—silence.
For the first time in seven loops, the ruined city was still.
I exhaled, feeling my heartbeat slow. My web remained intact. My spiders still crawled, their threads reinforcing the space around me.
I was no longer blind. No longer prey.
This time, I will move forward.
***
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I awoke. Again.
The ruined city stretched before me, its shattered buildings standing like gravestones beneath a sky choked with smog. The air reeked of decay. The stones beneath me were slick with rot. And the buzzing—that cursed, endless droning—returned in full force.
A sound that had haunted me through seven loops.
A sound that meant I was still trapped.
“WHY?!”
The scream tore from my throat, raw and furious, burning like bile as it echoed through the empty streets. My voice rang against broken walls and crumbling towers, but the city gave no answer. No divine revelation. No explanation.
Only the buzzing remained.
The ceaseless, maddening buzzing.
And then—death.
A blur of motion. A whisper of steel slicing through air.
I had no time to react. No time to move.
The scythe struck true.
A clean cut. Effortless.
I did not feel pain, only a sudden weightlessness as the world twisted, my vision lurching at an unnatural angle.
My final sight was my own body—headless, blood pouring freely, limbs twitching in the growing swarm. The flies descended upon me like a living tide, their blackened forms writhing, feasting, burrowing.
Then, nothing.
***
Okay. Think.
What did we learn from that last attempt?
One: Killing the Chimera Carrion Creature does not end the loop.
Two: It is attracted to brackish water.
Three: It is attracted to those near brackish water.
Four: And most of all—it is attracted to screams.
I sighed, my breath shaky, my body tense. Frustration gnawed at me. Hunger gnawed at me. My own mind felt like a starving beast, circling the problem, desperate for a solution.
I bit down on my fingers, a nervous tic I had developed somewhere between the third and fourth loops. Harder this time—hard enough that my teeth clinked against the cool metal of my ring.
The Evoker.
The enchanted ring I had worn all this time.
The moment my teeth scraped against it, a rush of energy flooded my veins. Raw. Overwhelming. Alien.
And then, it hit me—like a hammer to my gut.
Hunger.
Ravenous. Bottomless.
It twisted inside me, something primal, something monstrous.
My hands trembled. My mouth burned. My stomach clenched.
And before I could stop myself, before I could question it—
I ripped the ring off my finger and devoured it.
Teeth sinking into enchanted metal. Jaw tightening with the force of a madman. It should have been impossible. Should have shattered my teeth. Should have poisoned me, cursed me, killed me.
But instead—
I consumed.
And as I swallowed the remnants of the ring, information surged through me.
Not just knowledge. Power.
Material Composition:
- Carbon Trichloride
- Copper Dioxide
- Carbon Ferrite
Name: Evoker
Treasure Type: Enchanted Item
Original Effect:
- Grants the ability to summon a spirit doll, known as a Bouncer.
- Each Bouncer is a unique manifestation of the summoner’s will, shaped by desire, personality, and choices.
Devoured Effect:
- Your Machina is now Soul-Bound.
- It inherits the personality and qualities of the Bouncer you would have summoned.
I staggered, breath coming in ragged gasps. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my skin.
What was…?
I didn’t finish the thought. I didn’t need to.
I knew the answer.
This hunger inside me—it had always been there. I had ignored it. Feared it. Feared the beast it came from.
The power of the Golden Hydra.
This is what Archimedes meant.
I was on the path of Hunger.
And Knowledge and Artifacts were my diet.
***
The revelation settled into my bones like lead. Pendell was never meant to fall to war. No great armies had come to raze it, no tyrant had sought to claim it. This place had rotted from the inside out.
I exhaled, steadying myself. The buzzing was distant now, my paper constructs doing their work in silence. If I had truly broken free of the reset condition, even slightly, then that meant I had room to experiment. I had room to act.
Carefully, I gathered what scraps of paper remained from my bandolier, reshaping them in my palm. The bird-and-spider constructs were efficient, but slow. I needed something faster. Something precise. I folded the next construct meticulously, the shape taking form as I pressed my will into the fibers. A wasp.
A hunter.
I poured my Arte into it, shaping its stinger from hardened layers of paper, reinforcing its wings for speed. The moment I let go, the wasp flickered with the faintest trace of my miasma before vanishing into the dark. Find me something I can use.
I moved carefully through the ruined city, sticking to the shadows. The streets were clogged with filth and decay, the husks of buildings sagging under their own weight. The corpses had long since melted into indistinguishable masses of rot, the only proof of their former humanity the occasional gleam of bone amidst the sludge. How long had this place been abandoned?
More importantly—what still lurked here?
The buzzing grew louder again, a tremor of sound that rattled in my skull. I pressed against a crumbling wall, watching. The creatures were drawn to the brackish water, that much I knew. But they weren’t just mindless husks. They moved with purpose. With intent. I had assumed before that they were merely scavengers, feasting on the remnants of a doomed city.
But what if they were the cause?
I gritted my teeth. If this loop was different, if I wasn’t being reset upon every kill, then that meant I had a chance. A real chance.
I needed to test it.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent another construct into the air—a moth, this time. A lure. The paper shimmered as it caught a faint draft, wings folding and unfolding as it pulsed with my energy. I guided it towards one of the creatures, watching as the sickly mass of flies shifted in response.
It reacted instantly.
A limb like a scythe lashed out, too fast, too precise. My construct was shredded in an instant, paper fragments dissolving into the wind. I swallowed back my frustration. I still hadn’t seen the thing’s true form, hidden beneath the writhing swarm. But the attack—it had direction. Intelligence.
I needed to see more.
I waited, breath slow and measured. The creature resumed its hunt, drifting between the ruined streets in search of another disturbance. I was already unfolding my next plan.
This time, I didn’t bait it with a simple lure.
I crouched low, pressing my palm against the ground. Paper seeped out from my bandolier, flowing like liquid as it pooled around me. A network of lines, intricate and delicate, taking form beneath my feet. A trap.
I forced myself to be patient, weaving every strand with precision. The structure needed to hold. It needed to work.
Then, I moved.
I stepped out from cover, allowing my footfalls to echo against the crumbling stone. The buzzing stopped. It had noticed me.
The scythe came first. The same bladed limb that had severed my head countless times before. This time, I was ready.
I twisted, the blade missing my throat by inches. The force of the swing alone sent a gust of wind through my hair, a reminder of just how close death was. I didn’t wait. I dove backward, leading it exactly where I wanted.
The moment its mass crossed into my trap, I triggered the web.
The paper snapped taut. Hundreds of delicate strands pulled at once, wrapping around the shifting form in an instant. The buzzing became a shriek, something deeper beneath the swarm howling as my trap bound it in place.
I saw it.
For the first time, I truly saw what I had been fighting.
Beneath the flies, beneath the writhing black mass, was a shape. A hollowed-out husk of a man, limbs elongated into something grotesque. Its face was stretched into a permanent scream, eyes long since rotted away. The flies weren’t just surrounding it. They were part of it.
The creature thrashed, straining against the paper binding it. I needed to finish this.
I drew my knife, channeling everything I had left into it. If this was my chance to break the cycle, I wouldn’t waste it.
The blade sank into its chest.
For a moment, silence.
Then—collapse.
The entire form unraveled, the flies dispersing in a violent explosion of movement. I barely had time to shield myself as the swarm scattered, vanishing into the night.
I waited. Breath held.
No reset.
I was still here.
I let out a slow, shuddering breath. The first real victory I had claimed since this nightmare began. But I couldn’t celebrate. Not yet.
Because something had changed.
The city felt different now, the air thick with something I hadn’t noticed before. The remnants of the creature’s death clung to me, a faint trace of something ancient and hungry.
I glanced down at my hands. They were trembling.
I had killed it. But this loop wasn’t over.
No, I had only drawn attention to myself.
The buzzing returned.
And this time, it wasn’t just one.