My body was torn into shreds. Hundreds. Thousands. Ribbons of red spiraled through the air, twisting like macabre streamers, a grotesque parody of celebration. They wove themselves into the cyclone of buzzing wings, merging with the writhing storm that had consumed me.

  Faces. So many faces.

  Mothers, brothers, daughters, sisters, sons, fathers. Their features flickered through the black, undying tide, hollowed eyes staring out from the writhing abyss of flies. They weren’t just remnants, not just echoes of the past. They were inside it. Bound to the endless, mindless hunger of the swarm.

  As the cyclone enraptured me, the ribbons of red deepened, darkening into black filaments. My vision blurred, the world collapsing inward as my limbs grew distant, foreign. Each breath was a struggle, shallow and erratic, as though I were breathing through the corpse of something long dead. I was fading.

  The tide of flies shuddered, stained red with my blood.

  Then—nothing.

  Darkness. Silence.

  Another death. Another loop.

  I awoke gasping, my body lurching upright with the force of stolen breath. Cold sweat clung to my skin, but it wasn’t sweat at all—it was blood, my own, the memory of my last death still lingering in my nerves. The sensation of being unmade clung to me like damp rot.

  I pressed a trembling hand to my chest, steadying myself. But the knowledge remained, clear and cold.

  I understood what I was fighting now.

  The bodies in the streets, their bloated forms abandoned in alleyways, crumpled beneath collapsed buildings—they were not merely corpses. They were hives.

  Every fallen human, every animal carcass left to decay, had been claimed. Once enough magic and miasma had seeped into the dead, the carrion flies would come, burrowing into the flesh. And when their numbers grew too vast for a single husk to contain, they would merge, twisting their swarm into a singular, writhing entity. A new puppet. A new predator.

  I had spent loop after loop trying to survive, trying to fight them one by one.

  But there was no “one.”

  There was only the swarm.

  I clenched my fists, pressing them into the dirt beneath me. The truth settled over me like a shroud, heavy and suffocating.

  That’s the answer to the loop, isn’t it?

  I exhaled shakily, looking up at the ruins of Pendell. Its broken skyline loomed over me, skeletal towers crumbling into the remains of homes and marketplaces. The city wasn’t just doomed. It wasn’t just lost.

  I had to burn it.

  Not just to escape this loop. Not just to stop the infection.

  To erase it.

  Because I had seen the end. I had lived it, bled in it, died in it. The Siege of Pendell had not been won by war. It had not fallen to soldiers, to invaders. No plague had hollowed it out.

  It had been razed.

  By fire. By unrelenting, consuming destruction.

  By me.

  The realization shook something deep inside me, a weight pressing against my ribs like a hand wrapped around my lungs. My throat burned, and before I could stop myself, a single tear slipped down my cheek.

  What doomed Pendell was the swarm.

  What gave it its funeral was me.

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand, shoving the emotion down. I could break later. I could grieve later.

  For now—

  I had work to do.

  ***

  Finding my workshop again, I allowed myself a small, victorious smile. Good. Everything was still here. The scattered remnants of my work, the artifacts I had consumed, the tools I had painstakingly assembled—it was all intact. More importantly, the treasures I had devoured in previous loops remained within me, their effects still active.

  I reached out, fingers brushing against the worktable. No matter how many times I died, how many times I was flung back to the start, this remained constant. The hunger that had driven me to consume them, the power I had wrested from their essence—it wasn’t undone.

  I kept what I had taken.

  A breath of relief slipped past my lips, tension easing from my shoulders. That meant—

  Yes. My Machina was still Soul-Bound.

  A grin tugged at the corner of my mouth as I tilted my head skyward, addressing the unseen audience I knew was watching.

  "Take that, Morres. You sick prick. I know you’re out there. Watching. Calculating." I clicked my tongue, shaking my head. "I hope Ranah punches you for trying to deny her fighting style."

  ***

  “Oh man.” The younger woman chuckled, rich and dark, like melted chocolate. “He’s got you good, Morres.”

  She lounged in her seat, arms draped across the back, watching the projection of the boy with sharp, calculating amusement.

  “Although me? Punching you?” She arched a brow, violet eyes glinting with mirth. “We both know you outspeed my body three times over... when you bother to wake yourself from your little dreams.”

  Across from her, Morres barely stirred. Draped in his usual languid posture, he remained half-reclined, fingers lazily tracing circles against the armrest of his chair.

  “Enjoying the show, Ranah?” he murmured, voice carrying its usual lethargic elegance. “Do keep in mind, the only reason I invited you here was because he—” Morres gestured toward the projection of Alexander, “—is aiming for a Puppetry-based trispect. A rare path, using a Spiritual Mechanoid Puppet—or as your decree so poetically rebranded them, a Machina.”

  Ranah's smirk faded slightly. A trispect?

  Her gaze flicked back to the image of Alexander in his workshop. Interesting.

  "A trispect of what?" she asked, though she already suspected the answer.

  Morres exhaled, slow and measured. "You know full damn well, brat," came a third voice, rough and aged, filled with the gravel of long winters and longer battles.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ranah tensed slightly, her expression shifting into something more guarded as the old man leaned forward from the shadows.

  “And don’t you dare lie to her, Dreamweaver,” the elder continued, voice sharp. “She’s not here as a courtesy. She’s here to round out the three factions of our state.”

  Ranah rolled her shoulders, exhaling sharply. “You seriously pulled Temptation into this?” she asked, finally turning to face Morres again. “Okay. That means they were serious. He’s worth burning this many favors to train?”

  Morres shook his head, slow and deliberate, before a ghost of a smile played across his lips.

  "Him?" He scoffed. "No."

  The room fell into stillness.

  Morres' eyes flickered with something deeper—something unreadable—as he murmured,

  "Pandora's Box is the one owing us favors. Not me owing you two.”

  Silence followed. Not the absence of sound, but a heavy, charged silence. One that made even Ranah still.

  ***

  My spiders and birds had changed.

  Their forms were still paper, but they were no longer just delicate origami constructs. No, these were now lined with something far more volatile.

  Gunpowder.

  Layer upon layer, meticulously embedded into their folds. Each avian and arachnid construct carried the potential for destruction within its fragile body. And it wasn’t just them—I had coated the very veins of this dying city in it. Thin, near-invisible lines of black powder traced through streets and alleys, marking a path that would soon be swallowed by fire.

  Pendell was the wickerman, a city doomed to burn.

  And I was it's executioner.

  It felt... wrong.

  Not the act of setting it ablaze, but the realization that this place—this civilization—was more advanced than I had assumed. Magical runework laced nearly every structure, from buildings to bridges, from the cobblestone streets to even the lampposts. This was a place that had embraced progress, using magic not just as a tool but as a foundation for daily life.

  And yet, despite their achievements, they had fallen.

  To what exactly, I still wasn’t sure. A curse? A blight? An Arte gone horribly wrong? Some insidious force had infested this city, stripping it of life and turning it into a breeding ground for horrors.

  But that wasn’t my concern anymore. Judgment belonged to the fates.

  The price of progress? Prejudice. The price of power? Loneliness.

  Pendell had stood alone. No allies, no reinforcements. Only a city abandoned to its fate.

  Only me.

  I was the lone mourner at its funeral. The only one left to give it its last rites.

  I waited, listening. The buzzing was ever-present, an angry, unrelenting drone that gnawed at the edges of my senses. But…

  It wasn’t as bad as before.

  Were they… allergic to gunpowder?

  I frowned, shaking my head. Too many variables, not enough time. Even if I wanted to test a theory, it was too late.

  Because the city was already burning.

  The first explosion rippled through the streets, a chain reaction set in motion by the carefully placed lines of gunpowder and the vats of oil I had tipped into just the right places. The wooden interiors of the buildings—dry, aged, ready—ignited with terrifying speed.

  A golden inferno consumed Pendell.

  The heat was suffocating. The air itself seemed to warp and twist as the fire spread, devouring everything in its path. Roaring. Cracking. Consuming.

  And yet, in the midst of the destruction, there were no screams. No cries for mercy.

  Just the silent, empty streets.

  Just the sound of fire devouring a civilization already lost.

  And then—

  A whisper.

  A shift in the wind.

  A sensation that wasn’t quite sound, wasn’t quite silence.

  I felt it, more than heard it.

  A final, lingering echo.

  A humble thank you.

  ***

  The flickering light of an old lamp illuminated the dark chamber, casting elongated shadows against the carved walls. The air was thick with the scent of parchment and something less tangible—the weight of observation.

  Ranah leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, watching the pages of the book ripple as if alive. The image of Pendell burning was reflected in her sharp golden eyes, and yet, there was no shock. No pity. Only calculation.

  "Well," she said, her voice like dark honey, slow and rich, "he finished the loop."

  "About time." Morres let out a breath that was almost a yawn, rubbing his temple. "This one took him long enough. Thought he was going to keep playing the martyr until the end of time."

  "You do love to make them suffer, Dreamweaver." Temptation’s voice was low, rasping, like an old man humored by a particularly grim joke. He leaned forward, fingers tapping against the table, his expression unreadable beneath the shadow of his hood. "You forced him to burn it, didn’t you?"

  Morres shrugged. "I didn’t force him to do anything."

  "Liar," Ranah said, smirking.

  "Guided is a better word." He gave her a half-hearted smile, rubbing his jaw. "But yes. That was the answer. There was no saving Pendell. No noble solution. No hero’s redemption arc."

  "And yet, he still tried." Temptation’s fingers stilled. "Until the very end."

  There was a pause.

  And then—

  The book slammed shut.

  The air in the room shifted. Something new entered the space.

  At the center of the round table, I was immediately offered a seat.

  My form was unstable, ink still deciding whether to be bound to the page or to bleed out into reality. My breath heavy, my hands clenched.

  I didn’t turn to look at any of them, uncaring of the new faces in the room. All I saw was the book, The Complete History Of Pendell. Its black cover, the history that had trapped and ensared me. The one that had twisted me. Even now, I felt its siren call.

  Not removing my eyes from the book. I asked the three of them a question.

  “How long?” My voice was low. Slow. Deliberate. I forced the words to finally speak. “How long have you and your two guests been watching?”

  Ranah tilted her head, fully unbothered. “The whole time.”

  I exhaled, sharply through my nose. I turned my head to Morres. He had the audacity to look, even sound, bored.

  “So you could have stopped it at any time.”

  “I could have.” Morres admitted with ease, not concealing the truth. “That wouldn’t have been a lesson or test, now wouldn’t it?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Oh. I’m Ranah, that’s Temptation. I know you aren’t going to get introductions from Morres or Tempta there, so I’ll do it for both of them, although you’ve already met the peacock Morres.”

  Ranah’s skin was a tarnished copper. A red patina formed all along it. Her jewelry was various metals and colors I couldn’t even describe. The most mundane thing about her was simply her outfit and hair. Brown hair, and her clothes were just…normal. Sweats, hooded sweater. Sandals. She looked like she was simply jogging if it wasn’t for the absurdity of everything else.

  “Now, onto some questions from me…” Ranah continued. “You knew from the start, didn’t you? That there was no saving Pendell.”

  I shook my head. “Not from the start. I knew I was going into a doomed city, one that was destined to die from a military siege. It said nothing of that. I had hoped. So no. I didn’t know from the start. I learned though.”

  “What did you learn?” Morres asked. His voice, slow and lethargic, with a yawn voice in between you and learn.

  Silence. I paused for a moment. Trying to find the best way to summarize my answer.

  “Hope is worthless without power.”

  At this, Temptation had a loud and sharp laugh. “What else boy?!”

  I turned my gaze to the older gruffer male. He was normal. Truly normal. He appeared to be an old man with a long, white, braided beard, with myriads of scars coating his entire face.

  “That I am weak. And weakness breeds a demon called despair. One that I refuse to allow to ever creep into my heart again.”

  At that answer, the three of them looked at each other, and smiled.

  I looked at the three of them. Really looked at the three of them.

  The dreamweaver, who bound me in this test.

  The amazoness, who watched and waited to see what I would do.

  The old serpent, who had whispered loudly so I would be tempted towards a realization.

  Then there was me.

  I was trapped in a hell of ink, ichor, and time. I had been forced to destroy in order to understand.

  I was simply a boy, barely an adult. I had crawled my way out of a burning city, covered in soot, smoke, and knowledge.

  I exhaled one final time. I had closed my eyes, and when I opened them. I knew what I was feeling.

  Determination.

  “I think,” I said quietly to the three, knowing they’d hear, “it is time for me to write my own damn story.”

  And this time, I refuse to be left behind.