Training that morning was brutal.
I'd pushed them harder than usual—maybe because I was processing the Earth dream, maybe because I was angry at myself for forgetting, maybe because I needed to hurt something and couldn't hurt myself without Sarah noticing.
By 7 AM, both Celeste and Sarah were on the ground, gasping.
"Again," I said.
"I can't," Celeste wheezed. "My legs are literally not responding to my brain."
"Then use your arms."
"Those stopped working twenty minutes ago."
"Then crawl."
Sarah looked up at me, sweat dripping down her face. "Marcus. I think we need a break."
"Demons don't give breaks."
"We're not fighting demons right now. We're fighting you. And you're being an asshole."
I opened my mouth to argue, then stopped.
She was right.
I was taking out my frustration on them.
"Fine," I said, sitting down hard on the grass. "Break. Twenty minutes."
They both collapsed completely, spread-eagled on the ground like murder victims.
"I'm dead," Celeste announced. "This is what death feels like."
"You're not dead. Trust me, I'd know."
"How comforting."
Sarah rolled onto her side to look at me. "What's wrong? And don't say nothing. You've been pushing us twice as hard as yesterday."
"Just processing some things."
"Earth things?"
Celeste's eyes snapped open. "Earth? What's Earth?"
"Long story," I said quickly.
"I have twenty minutes."
Sarah sat up. "Marcus is actually from another world. Died there, got reincarnated here. Very dramatic, very traumatic, very much not something we discuss during training."
"WHAT?!"
"I said it was a long story."
Celeste stared at me. "You're from another world. A world without magic."
"Yes."
"And you died there."
"Yes."
"And then you were reborn here, where you proceeded to die 127 more times."
"Yes."
"Your life is absolutely insane."
"I'm aware."
She lay back down. "I need a minute to process this existential revelation."
"Take your time. We have eighteen minutes left."
"I hate you so much right now."
A voice interrupted from the tree line: "Oh good, you're all together. Saves me the trouble of tracking you down separately."
Raven emerged, looking far too awake and cheerful for 7 AM. She was carrying a large bag that clinked ominously.
"What do you want?" I asked, immediately suspicious.
"To conduct an experiment!" She set the bag down with a heavy thud. "I've been researching regression curses, and I think I found something interesting."
"Define interesting."
"Well, you know how you regress to age sixteen every time you die?"
"Intimately familiar with that, yes."
"And you know how your power accumulates across loops, stacking until you're essentially a walking apocalypse in a teenage body?"
"Your point?"
She pulled out what looked like a crystal sphere the size of a bowling ball. "What if we could extract a small portion of that accumulated power? Not enough to weaken you significantly, but enough to study. Maybe even enough to figure out the source of your curse."
"That sounds incredibly dangerous."
"It is! Which is why it's so exciting." She held up the sphere. "This is a Soul Mirror. Very rare, very expensive, very illegal to own without a license. It can temporarily separate a fragment of your essence for analysis."
"Where did you get that?"
"My family's vault. We're curse specialists, remember? We have all sorts of forbidden artifacts."
"And you want to use this on me."
"Only if you consent! I'm unethical, not a monster." She grinned, dark and knowing. "But think about it—127 loops of accumulated trauma and power, all compressed into your soul. If we can extract and examine even a tiny piece, we might find the anchor point. The thing that keeps pulling you back."
I looked at Sarah and Celeste. "Thoughts?"
"Sounds insane," Sarah said.
"Definitely dangerous," Celeste added.
"But potentially useful," I finished. "Alright. Let's try it."
"Really?" Raven's eyes lit up. "Just like that?"
"I've died 127 times. What's one more experimental soul extraction?"
"That's the spirit! Traumatized acceptance is my favorite kind of consent."
She set up the sphere on a flat rock, then pulled out various other items from her bag—chalk, candles, what looked suspiciously like bones.
"Are those human bones?" Sarah asked, horrified.
"Chicken bones. I'm not that unethical." Raven drew a circle around me with the chalk. "Sit in the center. Don't move once I start."
I sat cross-legged in the circle while she arranged candles at specific points.
"This is either going to work brilliantly or explode spectacularly," she said cheerfully. "Either way, we'll learn something."
"Very reassuring."
"I'm a curse specialist. Reassurance isn't in my vocabulary."
She began chanting in a language I didn't recognize—something old, pre-Empire. The candles lit themselves with purple flame. The sphere began to glow.
I felt it immediately—a pulling sensation, like something was trying to reach inside my chest and yank out my core.
"This is extremely uncomfortable," I said through gritted teeth.
"That means it's working!"
The pulling intensified. Inside my mind, I felt my three knights stirring, alarmed.
"Master, what is this?" Mordain's voice was sharp.
"Experimental soul extraction. Try not to panic."
"TRY NOT TO PANIC?!"
The sphere blazed bright, and suddenly—
*Pain.*
Not physical. Worse. Soul-deep. Like someone had reached into the most fundamental part of my existence and twisted.
Memories flashed—
*Loop 1: Dying to bandits, confused and terrified*
*Loop 23: Watching my mother's funeral, knowing I'd failed again*
*Loop 45: Training eighteen hours a day until my hands bled*
*Loop 89: Standing in the ruins of Valenhall, surrounded by bodies I'd killed*
*Loop 96: Holding Sarah while she bled out from a wound meant for me*
*Loop 112: Aria's last words, begging me to find happiness*
*Earth: Jake and Mira screaming my name as I died on a Portland street*
The sphere cracked.
Then shattered.
The explosion threw everyone back. I was slammed into the ground, seeing stars.
"Ow," I heard Raven say from somewhere to my left. "That was... not supposed to happen."
I sat up slowly, checking for damage. Nothing broken. But I felt... different. Lighter? No, that wasn't right. Empty? Closer.
"What the hell was that?" Sarah rushed over, helping me stand.
"I think..." Raven stood, brushing glass shards off her clothes. "I think his soul is too dense. The sphere couldn't handle the compression. It's like trying to bottle the ocean."
"So the experiment failed?"
"Not entirely." She picked up a piece of the shattered sphere. Inside the glass was a small, swirling darkness. "We got a fragment. Tiny, but enough."
She held it up to the light. In the darkness, I saw shapes—memories, power, pain, all compressed into something the size of a marble.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"Chaos. Pure, concentrated chaos. Your soul isn't just accumulated power, Marcus. It's fractured. Splintered across 127 different timelines. Every death leaves a crack, and those cracks have been building up until..." She looked at me, her dark eyes serious. "Until you're barely holding yourself together."
"I could have told you that."
"Yes, but now we have proof. And more importantly—" She examined the fragment closer. "I can see the anchor point. It's not in this world."
Everyone froze.
"What do you mean, not in this world?" Celeste asked.
"The curse that makes him regress. Its source isn't in Aethermoor. It's..." She squinted. "It's dimensional. External. Like someone or something from outside this reality is pulling the strings."
Cold dread settled in my stomach. "The entity. The one who gave me a choice when I died on Earth."
"Possibly. Or something else entirely. But whatever it is, it's not native to this dimension." She tucked the fragment into a protective case. "I need more time to analyze this. Maybe a few days. But Marcus—"
"What?"
"You need to be careful. If your soul fractures any more, you might not come back from the next regression. You might just... shatter. Permanently."
"How many more loops do I have?"
"Hard to say. Twenty? Thirty? Maybe less if you die particularly traumatically." She shouldered her bag. "Try not to die while I'm researching. It would really complicate my data collection."
"I'll do my best."
She left, taking her forbidden artifacts and terrible bedside manner with her.
Sarah grabbed my arm. "Are you okay?"
"Define okay."
"Are you going to shatter into soul fragments and cease to exist?"
"Not today, probably."
"Marcus—"
"I'm fine." I pulled away gently. "Twenty to thirty loops. That's..." I did the math. "Two hundred forty to three hundred sixty years of subjective time if I live to the usual endpoint each loop. I've already lived over fifteen hundred years subjectively. What's a few hundred more?"
"That's not fine! That's existential horror!"
"Welcome to my life. Population: me, three soul fragments, and a growing sense of inevitable doom."
Celeste, who'd been quiet, spoke up: "We need a break."
"We just had a break."
"No. A real break. Not training. Not soul extractions. Not discussing dimensional curse anchors." She stood, brushing grass off her uniform. "We're going into the city. Tonight. All of us. We're going to be normal teenagers for a few hours."
"I don't do normal."
"You're going to learn." She looked at Sarah. "Back me up here."
Sarah nodded immediately. "She's right. You need a break from being the traumatized regressor. We all need a break from... this." She gestured vaguely at the training ground, the broken sphere, the general atmosphere of impending doom.
"I have training schedules to plan—"
"The training can wait one night," Sarah said firmly. "Marcus. When's the last time you did something just for fun?"
I genuinely couldn't remember.
"See? That's not healthy. Tonight. Seven PM. We're going to the Night Market in the Middle District. And you're coming, even if I have to drag you."
"You can't drag me. I'm significantly stronger."
"I'm a princess. I'll make it a royal decree."
"That's not how royal decrees work."
"I'll invent a new way. Come on, Marcus. One night. A few hours. Try to be seventeen instead of fifteen hundred."
I looked at their faces—Sarah determined, Celeste hopeful, both of them clearly worried about me.
"Fine," I said finally. "One night. But if we get attacked by demons because you wanted to play normal, I'm saying I told you so."
"Deal!"