"Ahhh... my fucking head hurts so much," I groaned, pressing both hands against my temples.
I blinked. Then I blinked again.
The glowing blue System message was floating right in front of my face, exactly where it had been just a minute ago. Or was it a second ago?
[System Alert: Entering Tier 4 Mirror Dimension]
[Scenario: The Symphony of the Sinking Tower]
I stared at it, my brain feeling like it had been put through a blender and poured back into my skull. The drilling pain right behind my eyes was identical. The freezing black water pooling around my ankles was identical. The flickering, sickly-green gas lamp on the wall—identical.
TICK.
...
TOCK.
Even that damn metronome sound was echoing through the floorboards again.
"What the hell," I muttered, my voice sounding raspy in the damp room. I looked down at my hands. They were trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from the sheer physical shock of whatever had just happened to my body.
I remembered the explosion. I remembered the shockwave knocking me into the water, and then that sickening SNAP that literally yanked my spine backward through space. It felt like dying, but reversed. And now I was back here. Back at the start.
I waded over to the heavy oak door. The massive iron gear-lock was sitting there, completely untouched. I looked at the stained-glass window. The black ocean was outside, churning and bubbling, the exact same water level as before. And there on the wall, the heavy iron lever with the Roman numeral I carved into it.
Okay. So it wasn't a hallucination. The Mirror Dimension just reset. Like a poorly coded video game that crashes and sends you back to the last checkpoint.
"Time loop," I whispered to myself. The realization made my stomach drop. I hate time magic. It's messy, it's confusing, and it always gives me a migraine. But more than that, it meant something in this dimension was actively killing me or resetting the clock before I could even figure out the rules.
Well, I wasn't going to just stand around and wait for the explosion this time.
I didn't bother trying the handle. I just placed my palm flat against the center of the heavy iron gear-lock. Royal blue Ether flared around my fingers, lighting up the dim room with a sharp, regal glow.
Focus. Just a millimeter of infinite space.
"Event Horizon," I said.
CRACK.
The spatial distortion crushed the complex gears inward. The iron shrieked and shattered like cheap glass, sending rusted shards flying into the water. I kicked the heavy oak door open. It groaned on its hinges and swung outward, hitting the wall outside with a dull thud.
I stepped out of the VIP box and into the main hallway.
If I thought the room was bad, the corridor was a nightmare. It was a long, curved walkway that clearly overlooked a massive central area, like the upper balconies of a grand theater. The red velvet wallpaper out here was peeling off in long, rotting strips, and the floor was covered in even deeper water. It came almost up to my calves now.
The ticking of the metronome was so much louder out here. It was a heavy, oppressive rhythm. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. And underneath it, that distorted, out-of-tune opera waltz was playing from somewhere above me. It sounded like ghosts trying to remember a song they hadn't heard in a hundred years.
I walked over to the marble railing of the balcony and looked down.
It was a theater. A massive one. But the entire bottom floor—where the stage and the seating should be—was completely submerged in a violently churning whirlpool of black seawater. Giant chunks of debris and broken chairs were swirling around in the dark. If I fell down there, I'd be crushed by the debris or drowned in seconds.
"Where the fuck is Raphael?" I muttered, scanning the upper levels. There were rows of identical doors stretching along the curved hallways. VIP boxes. If I was in room number one, the others had to be out there somewhere.
I started walking down the flooded corridor, my boots sloshing loudly. I needed to find the others. If this was a time loop, we were all stuck in it. And knowing Raphael, he was probably just sitting in his room laughing at the whole situation.
Suddenly, a bright red light swept across the peeling wallpaper about twenty feet in front of me.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Hanging from the arched ceiling of the hallway was a massive, mechanical gargoyle. It was made of tarnished brass and rusted iron. Its eyes were glowing with a harsh, concentrated red light, sweeping back and forth across the corridor like a security camera.
Something about that red light made my instincts scream. My Cenotaph reacted, the Ether in my blood running cold.
I bent down and picked up a fist-sized chunk of rusted iron that had fallen from the ceiling. I tossed it underhand, right into the path of the sweeping red beam.
The moment the rock crossed the light, the gargoyle's jaw unhinged with a mechanical screech.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
Four massive, razor-sharp iron bolts shot out of its mouth at terrifying speed. They slammed into the marble floor exactly where the rock was, shattering the stone and sending water spraying everywhere. If I had walked into that light, those bolts would have pinned me to the floor like a dead bug.
"Right. Traps," I breathed out, wiping a drop of cold water from my face. "An obstacle course."
I took a step back, trying to time the sweeping motion of the red light. It moved slowly, dragging across the floor, then whipping back quickly. I could probably use King's Aura to make myself weightless and dash past it when it looked away.
I tightened my grip, preparing to run.
But before I could even take a breath, a voice echoed from somewhere on the other side of the massive theater.
"I AM THE EMPEROR! OUT OF MY WAY, YOU MECHANICAL TRASH!"
It was King Charles. His voice was booming, echoing over the sound of the rushing water and the ticking metronome. He sounded furious, arrogant, and completely unhinged.
"Your Majesty, wait! The red light—!" another voice yelled. One of his guards.
"Silence! I yield to nothing!" Charles roared.
There was a loud, tearing sound of metal, followed immediately by a deafening barrage of mechanical gunfire. THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
A man screamed. It was a wet, horrible sound of pure agony.
And then... the explosion.
BOOM.
The entire clocktower shook so violently I was thrown against the velvet wall. The shockwave ripped through the hallway, shattering the gas lamps and plunging the corridor into darkness.
The haunting waltz music cut out mid-note.
The water froze in mid-air.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me, I thought.
SNAP.
The sickening force grabbed my spine again. The vertigo slammed into me like a freight train. The world inverted, colors smeared into nothingness, and I was violently yanked backward through the dark. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. It was just pure, agonizing reversal.
And then—
[System Alert: Entering Tier 4 Mirror Dimension]
[Scenario: The Symphony of the Sinking Tower]
"Ahhh... my fucking head hurts so much," I groaned, pressing both hands against my temples.
I opened my eyes.
I was back in the VIP box. The green gas lamp was flickering. The water was at my ankles. The heavy oak door was fully intact, the gear-lock completely unbroken.
TICK.
...
TOCK.
I stared at the lever on the wall with the Roman numeral I.
I slowly lowered my hands. The confusion was gone now. The shock was gone. Only one emotion was left, burning hot and violent in my chest. Pure, unadulterated annoyance.
It wasn't a trap that killed me. It wasn't the dimension resetting on a timer.
It was King Charles. That arrogant, mud-tier fraud was blundering into the gargoyle traps on the other side of the tower, getting himself killed, and dragging all of us back to the start line with him.
"I am going to kill him," I whispered to the empty room, my royal blue Ether flaring so violently that the water around my boots began to boil. "If Raphael doesn't kill him first... I am going to rip his head off myself."
I turned toward the heavy oak door, cracking my knuckles. This was going to be a very, very long loop.