Death wasn't painful anymore.
Just… familiar.
Luji opened his eyes under the withered ash tree — the same place where every regression began. The sky above was painted in sickly violet clouds, stars static and dead. He didn't gasp. He didn't scream. He just breathed — like he had done it ninety-nine times before.
His fingers curled around his weapon: a blackened dagger, humming faintly with his cursed magic. The glow was duller now, corrupted from years of killing the wrong person.
Her.
Elseria.
The Heroine. Chosen by the light. Loved by the gods. Blessed by prophecy.
And the one he had sworn to kill.
Or so he thought.
Until Regression 99 — the cycle that changed everything.
Luji sat up slowly, replaying the final moments in his mind. Her blade had run him through again, but before the world went black, the illusion cracked.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The world had glitched.
The trees had turned to numbers. Her voice distorted, repeating his name like a corrupted file. And in the frozen frame of time, a figure appeared.
Draped in robes of static. No face. No eyes. Just a voice.
> "You think this is about her? Fool. You're just another line of code."
The voice had laughed — cold, metallic, inhuman.
> "Kill her again, if you want. It changes nothing.
The cycle exists because I wrote it.
You want freedom? Then come find me, Luji."
> "Kill the Developer."
That was the last thing he heard before dying — before waking here, again, under the ash tree of beginnings.
Now, he knew.
Elseria wasn't the enemy.
She never was.
---
He stood up, his cloak fluttering in the cold wind, dark magic swirling like smoke from his fingertips. For 99 lifetimes, he had hated her. Blamed her. Killed her.
And every time, she ended up stronger — more righteous, more broken.
Maybe she wasn't a pawn like he thought.
Maybe she was trapped, just like him.
Luji clenched his jaw.
Regression 100.
The final run.
This time, he wouldn't be her assassin.
This time, he'd hunt the one who wrote the rules.
The Developer.
---
He descended the hill, moving like shadow through the woods toward the capital. Tonight, Elseria would be at the Silverwood Chapel, giving her blessing to the soldiers.
But this time, Luji wouldn't kill her.
This time, he needed her alive. Because if he was going to face the Developer — the god of this broken world — he'd need help.
And deep down, a thought struck him like lightning.
What if she already knew?
What if she remembered too?
---
To be continued.
---