Hours passed. The forest thickened, shadows deepened, and Elias' nerves began to fray. The hairs on his arms stood on end. Then, without warning, the silence shattered.
He blinked the loop-image out of his head. The memory of fire, of Lyra on her knees, of Daren's roar and the impossible rewind, was still there — sharp, branded into him like a warning. This time the memory steadied him rather than unmade him. He had woken here before; he knew what could happen if panic took him.
Elias thought, "Now, is the time when the monsters will surround us."
Suddenly he slipped and fell hard on the rough ground.
Elias thought again in his head "that he would definitely survive so as not to die again."
He pushed himself up slowly. "I'm fine," he said to Lyra, trying for a lightness that didn't come easily. "Really. I'm okay."
Lyra glanced up from where she tended the embers, expression wary. "You look less dead than usual," she said, the edge in her voice softened. Daren only grunted, securing his sword across his back with the easy motion of a man who had done it a hundred times.
They were barely moving when the forest answered them. Not a deep roar or the stuff of nightmares this time, but the precise, urgent sounds of a pack working together: branches snapping in tight rhythm, light-footed pads on leaf litter, a chorus of low snarls that meant hunger and coordination.
The shapes that spilled into the clearing were easier to name than Elias had expected. They were beasts — quick, wiry creatures with matted fur and too many teeth, animal-shaped but warped by whatever blight had taken the world. They moved like a hunting party, closing around them in a practiced ring.
Daren acted first. "Hold your ground!" he said, voice flat with command. He shaped the air with a practiced sweep; wind gathered, sharp and cold. With a single strike he carved a path, the vortex cutting clean through two attackers, the force sending one tumbling into a root. The creatures yelped and shifted, not monstrous miracles but dangerous, animal cunning.
One of them lunged at Lyra — not enormous, but swift and desperate. It clamped a forepaw across her arm in a flash, claws biting for purchase. Lyra grunted and twisted; the animal's teeth found leather, not skin, and for a second it felt like she might be pulled off balance.
Elias' memory tightened his muscles. He had lived once where blind rushing had meant fire and death. He had learned that reflex without thought was a path straight back to the loop. So he did something small and deliberate: he stepped forward, not with the wild flailing of fear, but with a slow, controlled shove that put his shoulder into the beast's ribcage. The movement was precise — a single human force redirected, an interruption in the animal's rhythm.
The creature staggered, bewildered, more surprised than hurt. Lyra snapped free, staggered back, then breathed out sharply in relief. Her eyes found Elias', and there was an instant of something like appraisal there — not admiration exactly, but a recognition that he had not panicked.
Lyra did not hesitate. She drew a controlled flare of fire into her palm — a thin, expert tongue rather than a sweeping burst — and sent it along the creature's flank. The animal yelped, scrambled, and collapsed, smoke rising from its fur. Daren finished off two stragglers with heavy, efficient swings; the remaining beasts retreated into the trees, broken enough to think twice.
For a long beat none of them spoke. Then Daren let out a short, incredulous laugh. "You pick odd moments to be steady," he said, clapping Elias' shoulder with something that almost passed for approval. "Either you're brave, or you've learned the value of not making things worse."
Elias wiped his palms on his trousers, awkward and a little proud. "I… remembered," he admitted. "I saw what would happen. I didn't want to provoke another—one of those endings."
Lyra sheathed her bow and flexed her bruised arm. "You kept your head," she said simply. The words felt small and precious. Daren spat and grinned, the sound like flint striking stone. "And you didn't fall into a fire this time," he added. Elias managed a sheepish smile.
They checked for wounds — Lyra's forearm had a shallow tear in the leather, Daren carried a nick across his bicep — and they set off again, the immediate danger passed but the tension still humming under the skin of the day.
As they walked the forest path narrowed, sunlight flittering through leaves in thin columns. Conversation replaced the hush between their steps, tentative at first, then warming as trust builds around shared survival. Their talk was small at first — what they missed, strange comforts they secretly loved — and it grew into something like companionship.
"I miss simple things," Elias confessed when Lyra asked, deciding honesty was safer than pretence. "A proper bed. Hot water. Noise that wasn't the kind that meant something was about to try to kill you."
Lyra laughed, a clear sound. "Noise is good. A ruin that sings when the moon hits its tiles — that's the kind of thing I'll follow a map into a trap for." Daren grunted. "I miss good meat," he said. "A proper roast. Nothing fancy. Something that fills the belly and leaves you quiet."
They traded stories — Lyra's odd discovery of a ruined library that seemed to hum; Daren's stubborn pride in a fight he should have lost; Elias' small, mundane life before all this, the world of streetlights and coffee and tiny inconveniences that suddenly felt huge. Laughter came, quick and brittle, then softer.
By the time they reached a moss-choked column marking an old trail, Elias felt a fragile kind of ease. The memory of the loop still sat like a stone in his chest, but it no longer pounded his whole body into panic. Knowing what could happen had taught him something: the simplest steadiness, the small decisive acts, could change the shape of an outcome.
Lyra pointed ahead where a battered watchtower leaned against the sky. "If the map is right," she said, "we'll find cover and perhaps something worth our trouble."
Daren nodded. "We'll check it. Keep near. Don't wander."
Elias walked between them, hands more steady than they had been months — or loops — before. The forest breathed its old hunger around them, but the knot of fear loosened into something else: a thin thread of hope. Not that the loops would stop, not that the world would be easy, but that he need not meet oblivion alone.
They moved on, voices low, sharing small stories that knit them into a unit. The beasts had been dangerous and real — no magic miracle, no transformation — just hungry things in a hungry landscape. And Elias, whose death rewound him to the starting line each time, was learning the quiet power of measured steps and steady hands.
For the first time in a long while, he let himself listen to another person's laugh without counting seconds for a clock that might undo it. The forest still waited with teeth, but now there were more than one set of hands to meet it.
That night, when the campfire burned low and the others had drifted into a tired silence, Elias sat awake. The forest was alive with distant sounds — the whistle of wind through trees, the soft scurrying of small creatures that refused to sleep — but around the camp, the world held still.
He stared into the fire, watching how each flame curled upon itself before dying. His reflection trembled across the shifting light, and for a moment he saw not the man who had survived, but the man who kept dying.
"Why me?" he thought. "Why does the world let me return?"
The question had lived with him since that first impossible rewind. Every death had come with the same sensation — the crushing pressure, the silence, then the sound.
A ticking.
Faint, relentless.
Like the beating of a mechanical heart just behind his skull.
Then the world would fold inward, the pain would vanish, and he would wake — back at the same camp, the same morning, the same unfinished breath.
He closed his eyes and saw it again: a massive clock face, suspended in darkness, its hands jerking backward in violent rhythm. Each tick was an accusation, a reminder that time itself bent around him — not out of mercy, but something colder.
He whispered under his breath, barely aware he was speaking.
"Every time I die… that clock turns back. Why? What is it trying to show me?"
Lyra stirred beside the fire but did not wake. Daren's steady breathing was the only sound between them. Elias pressed his hands together, trembling slightly.
He remembered the old world — the flicker of neon signs, the way people moved in straight lines without looking up, the hum of life that never stopped. He had never thought of that world as beautiful until it was gone. Maybe that's why I was sent here, he thought bitterly. To understand what it means to lose everything… over and over again.
He wanted to believe there was a reason — that the rewinds weren't just a cruel loop but a path toward something he had yet to grasp. Yet no voice spoke to him, no god, no system, no hidden message. Only silence, and that endless ticking that returned each time his heart stopped.
Elias drew in a deep breath and looked toward Lyra and Daren, sleeping near the dying embers. They had no idea what burden he carried — that he had watched them die, that he had burned, bled, and returned in the space of a blink.
"Maybe I'm not supposed to understand it yet," he murmured. "Maybe I'm just supposed to keep walking."
He leaned back against the log, the flames painting faint gold lines across his tired face. For the first time, the thought of another loop didn't fill him with panic. It only made him curious — and afraid of what he might discover when the clock next turned.
The night deepened, and somewhere far away, something unseen ticked once more — slow, deliberate, patient.
And Elias knew that time was still watching him.
He slowly lay down on the ground and gradually fell asleep.
The morning mist still hung low, curling lazily between the trees. The faint orange light of dawn crept across the campsite when a calm, deep voice broke the silence.
"Pardon me. I didn't mean to intrude… but it's dangerous to sleep out here."
Elias flinched, jerking awake as if lightning had struck his spine. His heart pounded like war drums — memories of dying, of flames and fangs, flashed in his mind.
He scrambled to his feet, hands trembling.
"Wh-who are y-you!?" he stammered, his voice cracking embarrassingly.
The man before him didn't seem threatening at first glance. He wore a long black cloak, its hem dusted with dirt, the hood shadowing most of his face. Only a pair of ashen-gray eyes peeked through — gentle, yet unreadable.
When the morning light touched him, the faint shimmer of a silver pendant shaped like a serpent biting its own tail glinted from his neck. Something about it made Elias's stomach twist.
The noise woke Daren. Half-asleep, he reached instinctively for his sword.
"What's going on, Elias?"
"There's— there's someone here!" Elias pointed nervously, almost slipping over a loose branch.
The cloaked man raised both hands slowly, smiling disarmingly.
"Peace. I'm not your enemy. My name is Veran. I live nearby — or what's left of me does, I suppose."
His voice was oddly calm, like someone used to being distrusted.
"I saw your fire last night," Veran continued, "and thought it would be polite to check if you were… still alive."
Elias narrowed his eyes, thoughts racing. Still alive? What kind of greeting is that? Every nerve screamed that something was off.
He blurted out before thinking, "Don't lie to me! You—you're planning to kill us in our sleep, aren't you!?"
Lyra, still wrapped in her blanket, groaned and sat up, her golden hair a mess.
"For the love of the stars, Elias, can you shut up for one morning?"
Before he could respond, her fist came flying.
Thud.
Elias hit the dirt, clutching his cheek.
"Wha—what was that for!?"
"For yelling at strangers before breakfast!" she snapped. "Honestly, you act like a scared rabbit!"
Veran chuckled softly. "You've got quite the spirited group."
Lyra glared at him suspiciously, but Daren stepped forward, brushing dust off his cloak.
"I don't sense any malice from him," Daren said, calm as ever. "Maybe we should at least hear him out."
Elias groaned, rubbing the bruise on his face. Great, now I'm the paranoid idiot again… but last time I ignored a bad feeling, I died on fire.
"Fine," he muttered, standing up. "If we all end up dead in a ditch, I'm haunting you, Daren."
Veran smiled, faintly amused. "Fair enough. But if you prefer not to die, perhaps follow me. There's an abandoned watchtower nearby. Safer than this patch of grass."
Lyra and Daren exchanged glances.
Elias hesitated, eyes darting between them and the stranger. Inside, a voice whispered: What if this is another loop? Another test?
But the thought of freezing in the woods again wasn't appealing either.
Finally, he sighed. "Alright… but if this turns into a murder tower, I'm blaming all of you."
Lyra rolled her eyes. "You worry too much."
"I died three times ," Elias muttered under his breath, but nobody heard.
And so, the three of them followed Veran into the mist — the forest whispering around them as if warning of what lay ahead.