Alone, I felt the story fray at the edges. I wandered, searching for some lost piece—something essential, some memory or emotion that belonged to me but was now out of reach. The narrative wouldn't bend to my will anymore; it fractured, splintered, and all I could do was follow the cracks.
When I heard footsteps—steady, determined—I turned to see Issac. There was something worn in his voice, a kind of quiet desperation. "You're not the only one who's died before," he said. "Come with me."
I saw it then: the crack in his gaze, the way innocence and regret warred in his eyes. For one moment, he looked like a lost boy, far from the hero the script wanted.
"Okay," I said, not even pausing to think.
The world restarted two days later.
I woke in a crater lake, half-submerged, skin blue and hair tangled with weeds. Issac was screaming, shaking me, but the poison gases had done their work. My lungs felt charred. My eyes wouldn't focus. Again.
Memories blurred—flashes of laughter, the taste of ash, Issac's scream. The pain was the only thing that stuck.
We met again at the valley's split, where the earth gaped open and steam hissed from the wound. I coughed, alive but barely.
"How long this time?" I rasped.
"Three days since last reset," Issac muttered. "Found you in the lake again."
"Was it…them?"
He didn't answer.
Even in the wasteland, there were others. Survivors, but more than that. Five in total: Star, Riguel, Celsius, Phoenix, and Felix. Each with gifts that bent the dead world in impossible ways.
Star appeared first. Frail, ethereal, her eyes empty as burnt-out suns. She moved like a rumor, barely there. I wanted to trust her. Issac didn't. She only spoke when questioned, and always answered with a question of her own.
"Do you feel it when you die?" she asked me one night.
I couldn't sleep after that.
Riguel was next. Tall, impossible, always on the horizon, smelling faintly of burnt plastic. No one saw him move—he just existed. When we finally spoke, he smiled too wide.
"I'm here to see if the outcome changes this time."
Outcome of what?
Celsius arrived with a storm, blue lightning dancing in the clouds. She walked barefoot across the crater lake, steam hissing under her steps. When I touched her arm, it sizzled.
"You remember more than you should," Celsius whispered.
Not a compliment. More like an accusation.
Phoenix was loud, charismatic, always laughing. He never said where he slept, never ate, never seemed to breathe. When Issac asked, Phoenix just grinned. "You think I need air?"
Felix was kindness itself—too much so. He knew when people would die, but never warned them. Always one step ahead, always holding something back.
"Why didn't you tell me she'd drown again?" Issac screamed once.
Felix just blinked. "Because this version needed you to see her die."
Each of them played a role. Every death a lesson, every reset a new permutation.
I started keeping track in a charred notebook, scribbling patterns and predictions in the margins. The others knew about the loops. Maybe they caused them. Maybe they were trapped too. Or maybe they were gods, playing.
Maybe we've gotten to a point where the line between gods and survivors has blurred. After going through the same events a hundred times, even the most fragile person figures out a thing or two.
I had a list of all the ways I'd met my end: my own death, Issac's, sometimes Star's, but never Phoenix's. The world was constantly shifting around us, but our group remained solid.
Star sat next to me while I scribbled in my notebook, her knees curled up to her chest. She was gazing at the sunrise, which always seemed to change just enough every morning.
"What if we're not really looping?" she asked, breaking the quiet.
I stopped writing, feeling a chill run through me. "What do you mean?"
"What if it's just you?" she replied, and that thought hung in the air. It rattled around in my head for hours, bouncing off all my other fears.
Issac tried to comfort me, but there was always a slight crack in his voice that he couldn't hide, a tiny sign of his own worry.
Celsius came back from the edge of the world with some unsettling news. She mentioned a crack that was wider than it had ever been, where the air looked weird and time felt strange. "It's getting worse," she said, and this time she wasn't blaming anyone; instead, she seemed genuinely scared.
Meanwhile, I watched Phoenix and Felix engrossed in their chess game atop the splintered remains of an old tree. Their laughter zipped through the air like little birds flying away in a hurry. Every time Phoenix lost, he would flip the board and shout, "Reset!" Felix never complained; he just rearranged the pieces for the next round.
Riguel stood off to the side, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his burnt coat. One evening, he turned to me with a serious gaze and said, "When the pattern breaks, the world will shut down. Be prepared to make a choice." Those words puzzled me. I wasn't even sure I wanted to understand what he meant.
As the days went by, the cracks in our reality grew wider. Some days, I could still remember the warmth of the sun and the fresh scent of rain. Other times, my memories felt like I was watching someone else's life: brief flashes of a world where I hadn't drowned, hadn't died, and hadn't gotten to know Issac and the others. There were days when I wrote those memories in my notebook and others when I just burned the pages.
One night, Felix handed me something cool to the touch. It was a stone, smooth and marked with lines I couldn't interpret. "This might help when you need to make a choice," he said but didn't elaborate, leaving me more confused.
Things sped up after that. I found myself dying in the crater lake, in the valley, and once in Issac's arms. There was even a time I think I died in my sleep. Each time I woke up, I felt more fragile, like pieces of me were coming apart, and I was losing myself in the story.
Finally, we all gathered at the world's edge—there were six of us, and the ground seemed to shake with every breath we took. The fissure at the center throbbed with light and shadow. Riguel looked at me seriously and said, "It's your turn."
I glanced around at Issac, Star, Celsius, Phoenix, and Felix—the pieces on the chessboard, waiting for my move. Clutching the stone in my hand, I stepped forward, and the story itself felt like it was holding its breath, waiting to see if I would decide to end it or write something entirely new.