(You thought the loop was yours. But someone else has been bleeding for it, too.)
The wind carried ash from a fire that hadn't started yet.
Kai stood on the roof of the foundry, shirt loose, collar stained with ink. His eyes trailed the constellations, searching for patterns that no longer obeyed old laws.
Behind him, Elio muttered to himself, flipping through the cracked mirror pages of the god-quill journal they'd stolen from the ruins.
Nothing made sense anymore.
Not time.
Not memory.
Not even love—though it clung to them with stubborn, bruised fingers.
A flicker on the horizon.
Not lightning. Not flame.
A person walking calmly through a field that devoured echoes.
Elio spotted it too. "We have company."
Kai narrowed his eyes. "No footsteps. No shadow lag. That's a Time-Burned."
"Worse," Elio whispered. "It's a Loop-Hunter."
The name tasted like metal in Kai's mouth.
They descended the stairs of their safehouse in silence. The sigils Elio had etched into the walls pulsed once, dimming—frightened.
Outside, the figure stood just at the edge of reality. Like they were still being rendered.
A woman, maybe. Or a man.
Their shape flickered like memory on rewind. Their coat was stitched with timestamps and half-torn prophecies.
Their face was scarred down the center—from forehead to chin—as if *the loop itself had bitten them.
"I come in recursion," the figure said, voice flat. "You wrote an ending that shouldn't exist."
Kai stepped forward, chin raised. "We wrote our own ending."
"You rewrote the threadwork of eight timelines," the hunter replied. "That's not rebellion. That's entropy."
The Loop-Hunter raised a small, glass compass. Inside it, a single drop of ink spun furiously. Not magnetic—but emotional.
"You fractured something sacred," they said. "A loop is balance. You... chose chaos. That cannot stand."
Elio stepped forward, fists clenched. "We chose each other."
"That's exactly the crime."
A stillness fell. The hunter's coat rustled, and a dagger of black crystal slid into their hand—etched with burning names.
They threw it.
It didn't hit Kai.
It stopped mid-air and split reality open like fabric. Through the tear: flashes of lives Kai didn't remember living. Ones where he was the villain. Ones where Elio never forgave him. Ones where he broke the mirror first.
"You're not here to fix the loop," Kai breathed. "You're here to punish us."
The Loop-Hunter nodded. "Correction is pain."
Elio raised his hand. The sigils burned gold. A shield formed.
The hunter whispered a word: "Loop fire."
The shield shattered.
They ran.
Back through alleys that warped around them, back through old memories turned weapons. The street preacher screamed at the sky again, only now his voice was the god's.
"ONE MUST FORGET. ONE MUST BURN. ONE MUST BE ERASED."
They reached the river of glass behind the cathedral—its waters holding reflections that didn't belong to them.
Kai saw a version of himself drowning a child.
Elio saw a version of himself standing over Kai's corpse.
"Don't look," Kai whispered. "They're not us anymore."
"But they were."
They hid beneath the bridge, breath ragged, fingers bloodied from spell-scratching runes onto stone.
"She's still out there," Elio muttered. "She can feel our presence."
Kai closed his eyes. "No. She's not tracking us. She's tracking the story."
They paused.
"Then we need to stop writing," Elio whispered.
"Or we need to write something she can't predict."
Silence.
Then: a plan began to burn behind Kai's eyes.
Far above, in a reality split from threads of silk and screams, the Loop-Hunter stood before a council of empty thrones.
She knelt. Whispered her report.
"They have breached the Archive. They have rewritten divinity. The loop bends."
No response. Only the sound of paper burning in slow motion.
Then—a voice, ancient as god blood.
"Then let them burn with it."
Back in Azrael, Kai dreamt of a forest he'd never seen—tall trees with clocks hanging from their branches, vines made of golden thread. And in the center, a girl with silver eyes, humming a lullaby he'd never heard.
"It's already rewriting you," she whispered.
He woke gasping.
And saw Elio scribbling a new spell onto the wall.
"Protection?" Kai asked.
Elio didn't look up. "No. Memory reinforcement."
Kai nodded slowly. Then glanced toward the window.
The hunter was still out there.
Waiting.
And the loop—somewhere far deeper than they understood—was beginning to snarl.
---
Morning came, pale and strange. The world felt like it was tipping sideways.
Elio brewed a tea made from thornleaves and inkroot—a concoction meant to sharpen memory and cloak thoughts.
Kai sipped it in silence, fingers trembling.
"Do you think the loop can be rewritten permanently?" he asked.
Elio paused. "I think... we're proof it can."
Just then, a soft knock echoed from the old foundry door—too gentle for the hunter.
Kai and Elio exchanged a glance.
Elio opened it.
A child stood there. No older than seven. Hair like fog. Eyes... silver.
The same girl from Kai's dream.
She held out a single, glowing thread.
"You dropped this," she said.
Kai took it, hands shaking. "Who are you?"
The girl tilted her head. "I'm the one you forgot to write."
Then she vanished.
And the thread began to hum.
---
That night, Kai couldn't sleep. The hum from the thread intensified every time he closed his eyes. It wasn't just energy—it was speech, coded and pulsing.
He sat up and stared at the thread. It now floated above his palm, spinning slowly.
"It's trying to tell me something," he muttered.
Elio, half-asleep, groaned. "Then listen."
So Kai did. He pressed the thread to his temple.
And a memory not his own flooded his vision.
A laboratory in a future that never came. Steel walls. Blue fire. A child with silver eyes—chained. Crying. Screaming his name.
Not "Kai."
"Kaleth."
Another name. Another version.
He jerked back, sweat pouring from his skin.
Elio sat up now, fully awake. "What happened?"
Kai looked at him, horrified. "We didn't just forget her. We erased her."
Elio looked toward the thread, which now glowed red.
"Then we owe her a rewrite," he whispered.
Kai nodded. "And this time... we don't look away."