Ren woke to see the reality he had sought after.
His eyes fluttered open, heavy and raw, as if they'd been forced shut for years. The first thing he saw was Lucius.
Lucius stood in the center of the ruined hall, his long brown hair hanging beyond his shoulders. He held Shin by the neck with one hand — casual, almost lazy — as though Shin weighed nothing. Shin was on his knees, eyes rolled completely white, mouth slack and leaking red. Dried blood streaked his face and chest in dark, cracked lines. His sword lay discarded a few meters away under the dim torchlight.
Ren's breath stopped.
Shin had lost. Those white eyes… they weren't death. They were absence. Lucius had put him somewhere else — a dream, a prison, the same kind of nothing Ren had just clawed his way out of.
Lucius turned his head slowly. The face was the same one Ren remembered from the fortress — scarred, sharp, familiar — but the eyes were deeper now, darker.
Ren scrambled to his feet, heart hammering.
Lucius smiled and dropped Shin.
Ren charged.
He threw a punch. Lucius caught his wrist mid-air. Ren was surprised by his speed first, then felt Lucius's grip strength second. Ren jumped and threw a kick that Lucius blocked, but it gave Ren momentum to push free. The moment he landed, Lucius sent him flying with a kick. Ren dragged across the stone floor, got up with a hand on his chest, admitting the pain. Lucius smiled, which irritated Ren. He charged full speed and threw a side kick. Lucius blocked it. Ren jumped and turned mid-air, delivering another kick with the other leg. Lucius grabbed it and used Ren's force against him, throwing him against the wall with full force. Ren hit the wall, cracking it, and dropped. He realized something was wrong as he looked at his hands.
Lucius was already there — impossibly fast.
Ren swung again. Missed. Lucius backhanded him so hard his vision split white. Ren hit the floor face-first, nose crunching, blood flooding his mouth.
He pushed up.
Lucius waited, smiling wider.
Ren lunged again. And again. And again.
Every strike missed. Every dodge was perfect. Every counter landed like judgment.
Ren was thrown again — this time into a pillar. His shoulder tore open on jagged stone. Blood soaked his shirt. He slid down, gasping.
Lucius crouched in front of him, voice calm and amused.
"You really thought you could defeat me?"
Ren coughed blood. "You… weren't like this."
Lucius tilted his head.
"I wasn't, was I? That was all a dream I made. A little stage so I could face Shin alone. You were never supposed to matter."
Ren's stomach dropped.
Lucius continued, almost gentle: "Did you really think you killed me back then? You really thought I would fall that easily? Huh?" He kicked Ren under the chin. "You're just some kid. You really believed those memories. You really believed Shin was your friend. You just met him. It was all an illusion. You didn't leave this fortress, nor did you win. And the loops… I just thought I would make you suffer more for thinking that."
Ren lifted his head, shaking. He screamed and rushed toward him, sending a barrage of punches. None landed. Lucius dodged them all, keeping his smile wide. He stopped and delivered a knee to Ren's abdomen. It caved in and twisted his gut with unbelievable force. The hit sent him toward the ceiling, cracking it, then he fell.
Ren stared toward the ground as he crashed.
He got up, barely able to, holding his arm, unable to move his shoulder. He turned toward the door and tried to run away.
Lucius raised a hand. The hallway stretched impossibly long. Walls multiplied. Ren slammed into a wall that hadn't been there a second ago. He spun — another wall. Illusions. He was trapped in a maze of his own making.
Lucius walked through it like it wasn't there.
Ren turned and sprinted the other way. The floor tilted. He stumbled, fell, got up again. Lucius was behind him. A hand closed on his collar and hurled him back into the open hall.
Ren hit the ground hard. Bruises bloomed across his ribs. His shoulder burned. Blood ran down his arm.
He got up again.
Lucius stood over him, calm.
"You really expeted you had a chance against me?" He swung swiftly, landing a punch stronger than Ren had ever experienced before. His face hit stone, destroying it in the process. His consciousness started to fade away. Vision foggy.
Ren spat blood.
"You… weren't ...this strong..Cough, cough..my strength" he said slowly and painfully, his mind overwhelmed with thoughts.
The loops. The resets. The pain. The deaths.
All fake.
All made by this man.
The fear hit like a blade between the ribs — bigger than anything he'd felt in the loops. Bigger than dying 230 times.
He looked past Lucius.
Shin still knelt, still white-eyed, still bleeding. A statue of defeat.
Ren's strength — the raw power he'd relied on, the thing that made him more than human — suddenly felt thin. Fake. An illusion too.
Lucius smiled wider, sensing it.
Ren's hands shook.
He was about to give up.
Then — a voice.
Small. Distant. Familiar.
"Ren!"
Ren blinked.
A little girl stood at the far end of the hall — the same girl he'd traveled with to the fortress, the one whose father he'd failed to save. But her voice wasn't hers.
It was Tamara's.
Lucius turned, smile faltering for the first time.
The girl took a step forward.
Lucius raised a hand. Shadows twisted around her, stopping her in place.
Ren's mind flooded.
Tamara's words rushed back:
"He builds the victims' dream worlds centered around me... while disguising me as someone they care for..."
Ren looked around — at the hall, at Shin, at Lucius, at the little girl.
He looked in every direction.
And realized.
This was still the dream world.
Ren looked at Tamara, voice hoarse and broken.
"I'm sorry."
She met his eyes, gentle despite everything.
"It's alright. You know what to do."
Ren's gaze shifted to Shin's sword lying a few meters away. His body screamed in protest — shoulder torn open and bleeding freely, ribs cracked from Lucius's earlier kicks, vision blurring at the edges. He staggered forward, each step sending white-hot pain through his side. Blood soaked his shirt, warm and sticky, dripping down his arm. His legs trembled. He nearly fell twice.
He reached the sword, fingers shaking as he grasped the hilt. The metal was cold against his blood-slick palm. He unsheathed it in one desperate motion, the blade scraping free with a sound that made his head throb.
He raised it to his throat, pressing the edge against his skin.
The blade shimmered.
It changed.
The steel softened, twisted, and became a small, harmless branch — smooth wood, no edge, no weight.
Ren stared at it, eyes wide with horror. He touched it, pressed it, tried to bend it back. It was real. Not illusion. He tried again. And again. And again. The branch stayed a branch. His hands shook harder. Pain flared in his shoulder with every movement.
Tamara's words rushed back in his mind, soft and final:
"The final layer is the hardest."
Ren looked at his hands — scarred, bloodied, empty — and cursed under his breath. All those times in the loops he had thrown his gauntlets away because the pain of using them had been too much. Now he wished they were here. He looked around wildly for anything — a shard of stone, a broken spear, anything — but there was nothing. Only Lucius's dagger remained.
He made up his mind.
He needed to defeat him.
Ren lunged with everything he had left. Lucius moved like smoke — impossibly fast, impossibly strong. Ren's fist grazed air. Lucius's counter cracked his ribs again, sending fresh agony through his chest. Ren gasped, blood bubbling from his mouth. He tried again. Missed. Lucius backhanded him, splitting his lip. Ren fell to one knee, vision swimming, blood running down his chin.
He forced himself up. Pain burned in his shoulder, his side, his head. He jumped one more time, aiming for Lucius's throat.
Lucius kicked him hard in the chest. The impact lifted Ren off his feet and hurled him across the hall. He landed face-first on the stone floor, nose crunching, blood spraying. The world spun. Darkness flickered at the edges of his vision. He lay there, barely conscious, chest heaving, blood pooling under his cheek.
Lucius wasted time talking, voice calm and mocking.
Ren's hand crept to his own throat.
Lucius noticed the movement. Suspicion flashed across his face. He ran forward, kicked Ren over onto his back.
Ren was already grabbing his own neck.
He ripped it forcefully.
Blood erupted in a hot spray. The pain was blinding — white-hot, all-consuming — then gone.
Lucius yelled "No!" and stood frozen, as if time had stopped.
Tamara — freed from the illusions that had chained her — walked toward Ren. He was drowning in his own blood, choking, gasping, eyes wide and terrified.
She sat by his side, cradling his head.
"It's alright," she whispered. "It's alright."
Ren opened his mouth. No words came out — only wet gurgles and blood.
She leaned closer.
"I know. I know. I've seen your memories. I know what you did," she said. She looked back at Lucius — frozen, scarred and burned. Deep down she couldn't believe that her other child would turn out like that. She looked back at Ren and said:
"I forgive you. It wasn't your fault."
While she burst into tears.
Tears fell from Ren's eyes as he lifted a trembling, blood-slick hand. He touched her face, wiping her tears and leaving red streaks across her cheek.
Lucius — frozen in time — began to disintegrate. The entire hall crumbled into dust around them, dissolving into white light.
Tamara smiled one last time through her tears.
"Goodbye, Ren." as she disintegrated along .
......
Silence spread.
......
Ren opened his eyes.
They were heavy and stuck, as if glued shut. The first thing he saw was the night sky — clear and bright, stars sharp against the black. Tears ran like a river as he remembered Tamara's last words to him. he realized that fragment of her was gone for good . yet his promise to her remained .
He felt something around him — a tree vine, thick and alive, wrapped around his torso like a root. he realized that he was hanging up in the air.
He looked down further.
Bjorn was fighting corpses with his hammer — the dead puppets Tamara had mentioned — running at him, swinging in wide, brutal arcs, bodies crumpling under each blow.
Ren looked back.
The massive tree from Tamara's memories loomed over everything — ancient, towering, roots twisting like veins across the ground.
And on top of a branch stood Tamara's cursed child and Lucius's younger brother, Orrin — still looking the same after over 20 years, like he had never aged a day.