(And still, it rose. Memory isn't what dies—it's what waits.)
The world didn't collapse—it peeled.
Like layers of skin being stripped from a god's corpse, Ilyor shredded itself in silence. No earthquakes. No screaming. Just pieces of time floating upward like dust in reverse.
Kai and Elio stood in the eye of the unraveling.
"You chose," the Mirror-God said, her voice echoing from every falling brick, every burning sky. "Now it remembers what it was."
Elio clutched Kai's arm. "Is this the end?"
"No," Kai whispered. "It's the truth."
The ground beneath them liquified. Not water. Not lava. Memory made molten.
And then—they dropped.
They fell through timelines like trapdoors.
In one, they were children in the woods, hiding from something with red eyes.In another, they were in wedding robes, smiling at a future they'd never reach.In another—Elio was holding a dagger to Kai's throat.
"You always choose them," he hissed. "You never choose me."
They landed hard.
The sky above them was black and gold—like ink spilled across fire. The earth beneath their feet was bone-white.No Ilyor. No Mirror-God.Just a field of graves stretching endlessly.
Each grave had a name.Each name was theirs.
Kai. Elio.Elio. Kai.Over and over.
A monument stood in the center. It wasn't carved. It had grown—twisted and tall, like a tree made of guilt.
Kai approached it, trembling.
"I know this place," he murmured. "This is where we swore it."
Elio frowned. "Swore what?"
Kai touched the monument—and suddenly they both remembered.
The original loop.
The very first deal.
The gods had been dying. Time had been folding in on itself. So Kai and Elio—powerful, young, stupid—made a vow.
"Let us live again. As many times as it takes. Let us love again. Until we get it right."
But they didn't read the fine print.
Each loop demanded a toll.
One would forget. One would bleed. One would walk alone.One would fall in love.And one would kill.
They had taken all the roles.Every time.
And every time—they failed.
"I don't want to do this anymore," Kai whispered.
Elio knelt beside a grave with his own name on it.
"It doesn't matter what we want," he said. "We wrote the loop in blood."
Kai nodded slowly.
"Then we'll unwrite it the same way."
A wind blew across the graveyard, sharp as knives.
The Mirror-God's voice returned—distant this time, fraying like old thread:
"To end the loop, you must break what made it."
Kai turned to Elio. "The promise."
Elio stood. "Then we go to the place where we wrote it."
Kai's hands glowed faintly with mirror-light. "Back to the first timeline."
Elio stepped forward. "Can we even get there?"
Kai looked up at the shifting sky.
"We don't get there," he said. "We become it."
As they stood before the monument—the one they carved with their own blood—the sky rippled like heat rising off the back of a dying god.
The wind twisted again. But this time... it spoke.
Not in words. In memories.
Kai heard laughter.A girl's voice.A promise whispered in the rain."Elio, if you ever forget me... I'll burn the stars to remind you."
He staggered.
"I know that voice," he whispered. "But I can't remember her face."
Elio looked at him sharply. "Silver eyes?"
Kai nodded.
"That's the name the Archive took from me."
Suddenly, a shape emerged from the distance.Not running. Not walking. Floating.
A child. Wrapped in mirrorlight.
Her eyes? Silver.
But her mouth bled ink.
"You broke me," she said softly.
Elio stepped back. "What is this?"
The girl raised a finger to her lips. "Shh. I'm the memory you sacrificed to keep loving him."
Kai fell to his knees.
"You chose him," she said, pointing to Elio. "So they erased me."
"I didn't mean to—"
"But you did," she whispered. "You always do."
She opened her hands—and every erased timeline fell out like dust.
Palaces. Forests. Graveyards.A wedding in a burning city.A daughter with her father's eyes.
All of them...
Gone.
Elio reached for Kai—but his hand went through him.
"Kai?"
"I... I can't move," Kai whispered.
The silver-eyed girl smiled gently. "He's sinking. The loop wants him back. It always does."
Then the Mirror-God returned, but she looked older. Tired.
"You didn't just curse yourselves," she said. "You cursed everyone who ever loved you."
The wind turned red.
The monument cracked open.
Inside it?
Another Kai.Frozen. Eyes wide. A dagger in his heart. Holding a locket.
It had Elio's name inside.
Elio stared in horror. "That... wasn't me."
Kai's voice was hollow. "It was. Just not this version."
The Mirror-God lifted her arms.
"This loop is bloated with grief," she said. "And still you beg to love again."
She turned her back.
"But go ahead. Try."
The world split.
And they fell again.
They fell through themselves.
Through versions of Kai and Elio that had never kissed.Versions that had killed each other before they ever spoke.A timeline where Elio died as a child.Another where Kai never existed.
Every loop cracked like a mirror against stone—shards slicing into their skin as they fell. But it wasn't blood they bled.
It was names.
Forgotten ones.
Erased ones.
And when they finally hit ground—it was black glass.
Beneath it: flames.
And the flames were whispering.
"You were gods before you begged to be lovers."
Kai gasped as he looked down into the glass.
He didn't see his reflection.
He saw the first war.
The one no one spoke of.
The one they started.
Back then, they hadn't been Kai and Elio.
They'd been Az'kael and Vyreth.
Divine. Feared. Worshipped by thousands.And when the other gods tried to cage time, they rebelled.
They broke it open.
Unleashed the first loop.
It was never love that cursed them.
It was power.
Kai fell to his knees, gripping the edges of the glass.
"We did this," he breathed. "We lit the first match."
Elio crouched beside him, voice trembling. "We weren't punished by fate... We are fate."
Suddenly, the black glass cracked.
A third version of them emerged from beneath—neither Kai nor Elio.No names. Just fire and teeth.
It stared at them both with rage and grief twisted together.
"You loved me once," it said. "Then you rewrote me into nothing."
Kai backed away. "What are you?"
The figure smiled. "I'm the version of you that chose peace instead of love. I'm what you could've been if you hadn't made it all about each other."
Elio raised his hand—and it passed through the figure like smoke.
A laugh echoed.
"You'll never stop looping... because you only love yourselves in each other."
Then it vanished.
Kai didn't move for a long time.
Neither did Elio.
Only when the sky began to bleed white, like paper being erased, did Kai whisper:
"We started the fire."
Elio closed his eyes. "Then maybe we're the only ones who can put it out."
The Mirror-God's voice returned, faint as a dying star:
"Find the place where your names were first spoken."
"There, and only there... can you end the loop."
And just like that—
The loop spat them out.
Back in the present.
Azrael City.Empty streets.A funeral procession of ghosts walking backwards.
Kai clutched Elio's hand.
"Elio?"
Elio nodded. "I remember it all."
A pause.
"Even the name we lost."
Kai turned sharply. "What was it?"
Elio exhaled. "Her name was Serai. And we promised we'd never forget her."
A tremble passed through the city.
The sky flickered.
The loop wasn't happy.
It remembered Serai too.