The first time the sun rose that day, the world ended.The second time, Riven Solas opened his eyes to the acrid smell of ash and ozone, unsure if he had survived—or if he had caused it.
The laboratory lay in ruin. Blackened glass shards jutted like jagged teeth from melted concrete where towers of steel had once soared. The air shimmered with static, threads of light crawling across the ruins like nervous veins. Time had folded here, warped into something sick and alive.
Riven staggered forward, every step echoing inside his skull. The device—his device—lay half-buried beneath a scorched console. Its core pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of a dying god. He remembered pressing the trigger, shouting "Don't!" as someone reached for the override. Her face flashed in his mind: Lira, eyes wide with terror, her hand trembling above the console.
Then light. White. Endless.
He fell to his knees beside the device, his breath ragged. "Lira…" he whispered, the name burning in his throat. No answer. Only the whisper of distorted air.
The prototype had worked. It had moved time—but not as he intended. The world was quiet, except for the faint crackle of static drifting through the ruins. Above him, the sun twitched in the sky, jerking backward for a heartbeat, then forward again. A scar in time.
A vibration hit his wrist. The neural band he'd grafted there flickered to life, projecting a distorted holo-feed. Lines of code scrolled faster than his mind could read, ending with a message:
CYCLE 02 / RE-ENTRY DETECTEDANOMALY: SURVIVOR – SOLAS, RIVEN
Riven froze. Cycle 02? He had only activated the Chrono-Gate once.
His mind raced. If this was the second cycle, then the explosion had already happened before. Someone—or something—had looped him back.
He tore the band from his wrist, but it burned into his skin, refusing to let go. The numbers on its interface began to count backward in uneven pulses.
"Who's doing this?" he shouted, voice cracking. Silence swallowed him whole.
A metallic click echoed behind him. Instinct made him turn, but there was nothing—only shifting air. Yet he felt watched, the weight of unseen eyes pressing down from everywhere.
The ground quivered. Shadows near the fallen pillars bent the wrong way. From them stepped a figure—blurred, fractured, like a reflection in shattered glass. It had his face.
"You shouldn't have come back," the double said.
Riven's pulse crashed against his ribs. "What… what are you?"
The figure smiled faintly. "I'm what you left behind."
Before Riven could react, the double raised its hand. The same neural band glowed there, but its light was blood-red.
A surge of memories—his memories—rushed into his mind like a flood. Images of Lira screaming, of the world burning again and again, each time worse than before. He saw himself begging to reset, promising to fix it, only to destroy everything once more.
Riven fell backward, clutching his temples. "Stop—stop it!"
The double crouched beside him. "You think you're the first? You've done this forty-seven times, Solas. You keep looping the end of the world because you cannot accept the truth."
Riven's voice cracked into a whisper. "What truth?"
The double leaned close, eyes flickering with static. "That you were never betrayed."
The words cut deeper than any wound.
He remembered Lira again—her desperate expression, the warning in her eyes. Don't press it, Riven. It's not ready. But he had. He had accused her of sabotage, of trying to steal his discovery. And in that fury, he had doomed them all.
The double rose, unraveling into lines of data. "Try again if you want. The cycle always resets. But every time you return, a piece of you dies. Eventually, there will be nothing left to rage."
Then it was gone.
Riven sat amid the ruins, trembling. The band on his wrist flickered once more:
CYCLE 03 INITIATING
He screamed as the light consumed him again.
And when the sun rose a third time that day, he was smiling—because now he remembered enough to hate himself properly.