Rating: MA 15+
Sabaku woke.
This shouldn't have been possible. He remembered dissolving—consciousness fragmenting across the glass sea, body converting to pure light, the final moments of choosing transformation over violence. He remembered dying. Completely. Finally.
Yet here he was. Breathing. Thinking. Existing.
He sat up slowly, every movement feeling wrong—like operating a machine he'd forgotten how to use. His body was flesh again, solid, no longer translucent. The glow was gone. The sun-core's heat had receded to a faint warmth, dormant but present.
He looked at his hands. They were young hands. A child's hands. His hands, from before everything.
The landscape around him was unfamiliar—not the glass sea, not the battlefield. Sand dunes stretched endlessly, but these were different. Ancient. Untouched by recent events, as if he'd been moved far from where he'd made his sacrifice.
"You persist," a voice said.
Sabaku turned. A figure sat nearby—robed in linen that had faded to near-transparency with age, face hidden beneath a hood. But the voice was familiar. The Architect from the necropolis? No—older, more organic. Human, not mechanical.
"Who are you?" Sabaku asked, though some part of him already knew the answer.
The figure pulled back its hood, revealing a face that was his face. Older—perhaps sixty—bearing scars from a lifetime of desert living. But unmistakably his features. White hair. The crescent scar beneath the left eye. Eyes that had seen too much.
"I am you," the old person said. "Or rather, I was you. Three cycles ago. Before the current iteration. Before Sabaku Ō. Before Aru." He smiled sadly. "Though I wore different names then. Different bodies. Same soul, making same mistakes."
Sabaku's mind reeled. "That's impossible. I died. I chose to die. The sun accepted my sacrifice—"
"And it did. For now. For this cycle." The old person gestured broadly at the desert. "But the cycle isn't linear. It's loop. And souls caught in it don't escape through single sacrifice. They repeat. Learn. Or fail to learn, and repeat anyway."
He stood with visible effort, joints protesting age. "Come. There's something you need to see. Something every version of you has eventually seen, though none remembered it in their next iteration."
They walked. The old person moved with the certainty of someone who'd traversed these dunes countless times. Sabaku followed, questions multiplying but words failing. The sun tracked overhead—neither close nor distant, just... present. Watching with that familiar attention.
After what might have been hours or days—time felt negotiable here—they reached something impossible: a library.
It rose from the sand like a memory gaining solidity. Not ruins—actively preserved, maintained by forces Sabaku couldn't identify. The structure was vast, architecture blending Egyptian monumentalism with something more abstract, as if the building itself existed partially outside physical space.
"The Archive of Souls," the old person said. "Where the desert keeps its deepest records. Not just memory of events, but memory of consciousness. Every soul that's passed through this place. Every iteration. Every choice that led to repetition."
They entered through doors that opened soundlessly. Inside, the scale became overwhelming—shelves stretching into impossible distance, scrolls and tablets and books in languages Sabaku recognized and many he didn't. And floating among the shelves: lights. Consciousness made visible, souls catalogued and preserved.
The old person led him to a specific section, pulling a scroll that glowed faintly at his touch. "Your section. Our section. Every life we've lived, recorded."
He unrolled it on a reading table that appeared when needed. The text was written in constantly shifting script—adapting to whatever language the reader understood. Sabaku leaned over it and felt his breath catch.
Names. Dates spanning millennia. Lives lived and lost across impossible timespan.
Iteration 1: Khemu-Ra, servant child in ancient Egypt, 2400 BCEFled his duties to the temple, seeking solitude in the desert. Refused to serve the priests, believing their rituals hollow. Died alone in the sand, cursing humanity's need for community. His isolation left temple vulnerable to raiders. Forty-seven children killed in his absence.
Sabaku's hands shook as he read. This was him. He remembered—faintly, like dream bleeding through—running from responsibility, choosing solitude over service.
Iteration 2: Marcus, orphan in Rome, 412 CEObsessed with Egypt's mystery, collected scrolls and stories of the old gods. When Rome fell, fled rather than help defend, believing ancient wisdom more valuable than present crisis. Thousands died in streets he abandoned. His scrolls burned with the city.
The memories came sharper now. He'd chosen books over people. Preservation of the past over protection of the present.
Iteration 3: Ahmed, scholar in Baghdad, 1258 CEStudied reincarnation, convinced previous lives haunted him. Ignored family, ignored students, pursuing obsession with cycles of return. When the Mongols came, he hid in libraries while the city burned. His family called for him. He didn't answer. They died believing he'd already fled.
Sabaku felt sick. Each iteration, same pattern. Running from humanity. Choosing isolation, choosing obsession, choosing anything except staying and fighting and caring.
Iteration 4: Takeshi, orphan in Edo, 1657 CEFascinated by foreign lands, dreamed of deserts he'd never seen. When the Great Fire consumed the orphanage, he escaped but didn't return to help. Survived while others burned. Lived haunted by their screams, eventually walking into the sea carrying stones.
The list continued. Dozens of iterations across centuries, across cultures. Each time, the same soul. Each time, running from connection. Each time, abandoning others to pursue private obsessions.
And each time—Sabaku saw this with growing horror—his abandonment created cascades. Children dying because he wasn't there to help. Communities collapsing because he chose solitude over solidarity. Small neglects leading to massive consequences.
Iteration 47: Sabaku Ō, orphan in Tokyo, 2024 CEObsessed with ancient Egypt, rejected present humanity. Died in orphanage massacre, final wish to escape to somewhere more meaningful. Reborn in post-Collapse desert as Aru, forced to confront consequences of millennia of similar choices.
The old person—the previous iteration—watched Sabaku's face. "Now you understand. You weren't chosen. You were punished. Sentenced to repeat until you learned."
"Learned what?" Sabaku's voice broke.
"That running doesn't work. That isolation kills. That every time we choose desert over humanity, we doom both." The old persons finger traced the scroll. "Each iteration gets one chance to break the cycle. One moment where we can choose differently. I failed mine. Chose transcendence over presence, became the Architect you met—mechanical, immortal, alone. Counting forever."
Sabaku remembered the mechanical guardian in the inverted pyramid, its patient counting, its acceptance of purposeless purpose. That had been him. A previous him, choosing metal immortality over human connection.
"And the version before me?" Sabaku asked.
"Became a Duneborn. Merged with sand rather than maintain boundaries between self and other. Lost identity in collective, thought that was solution—no self to abandon, no self to fail." The old person expression was haunted. "But that wasn't breaking the cycle either. Just different way of running."
Sabaku looked at the scroll, seeing his iterations branching into different futures. Some became priests, feeding others to their sun-god. Some became scholars, dying alone in libraries. Some became warriors, seeking death in battle. All running. All failing to break free.
"Why don't we remember?" he asked. "Why start each life blank?"
"Because memory is punishment, not gift." The old person rolled the scroll carefully. "Could you live knowing you'd failed forty-seven times? Could you make different choice burdened by that knowledge? The cycle wipes itself clean each iteration, hoping blank slate allows genuine change."
"But I did change," Sabaku protested. "I chose sacrifice. I saved humanity from the sun—"
"For now. For this cycle." The old person led him deeper into the archive, to a chamber where crystal spheres floated—each containing swirling light. "But look. See what comes next."
He touched one sphere, and images played within: the glass sea, centuries after Sabaku's sacrifice. The sun approaching again, the pause ending. Humanity having rebuilt, having forgotten the kid who glowed. And a new iteration beginning—another orphan, another obsession, another flight from connection.
"The cycle continues," the old person said. "Your sacrifice bought time. That matters. But it didn't break the pattern. Didn't solve the fundamental problem."
"Which is?"
"That you keep seeing humanity as thing to escape rather than thing to join." The old persons hand touched Sabaku's shoulder. "Every iteration, you frame it as 'them' versus 'you.' The gray world versus the interesting one. The mundane present versus the meaningful past. And every time, that division dooms everything."
Sabaku pulled away, pacing the chamber. "So what was I supposed to do? Stay in Tokyo? Accept gray walls and institutional meals? Die forgotten like everyone else?"
"Maybe. Or maybe find meaning in the gray. Discover that institutional meals shared with Yuki and Haruto mattered more than pyramid dreams." The old persons voice was gentle. "Maybe learn that the desert and Tokyo weren't opposites—both were human spaces, both contained suffering and beauty, both deserved presence rather than escape."
"Nahara understood this," Sabaku whispered, remembering. "She told me the desert doesn't care what we were, only what we become. She stayed present. Even when dying."
"Yes. She broke her cycle." The old person led him to another scroll—Nahara's record. Far shorter than Sabaku's. Only three iterations. "First life: orphan in settlement, died young in raid. Second: rebuilt with mechanical parts, survived decades. Third: met you, chose to help despite knowing it would kill her. Cycle complete. Soul released. That's why she became lotus—transformation without return."
Sabaku stared at her brief record. Three lives to his forty-seven. Because she'd learned what he couldn't—how to stay.
"So I'm trapped forever?" Despair welled up. "Forty-seven chances and I still haven't learned?"
"Not forever. Nothing is forever." The old person pulled one final scroll—this one blank except for a single line at the top: Iteration 48: Pending.
"You get one more," he said. "The cycle allows forty-nine attempts. Seven times seven. Sacred number. Last chance. After that..." He gestured to a section of the archive shrouded in darkness. "After that, souls that can't learn become fuel. Permanent. No more returns. Just energy absorbed into the desert's maintenance."
"When?"
"You're in it now." The old person smiled sadly. "This isn't between. This isn't rest. You woke up still alive because the cycle isn't done with you. Your sacrifice was real, your choice mattered, but it was also test. And you're still being tested."
The library began to fade, walls becoming translucent. "Find your way back to the glass sea. To the memorial. To the moment frozen in crystal. And choose what happens next. Break the cycle by staying—really staying, no escape, no obsession, just presence—or repeat again. Forty-eighth time. Running toward forty-ninth."
"Wait!" Sabaku reached for him. "How do I break it? What exactly do I—"
"I can't tell you." The old person was dissolving, becoming light. "If I could tell you, it wouldn't be choice. It would be instruction. And instruction doesn't break cycles. Only genuine choosing does."
"Please—"
"I'm sorry." The old persons final words came from everywhere and nowhere. "For all of it. For failing. For leaving you this burden. But maybe you'll be smarter. Maybe forty-eight is the magic number. Maybe—"
Then he was gone. The library was gone. And Sabaku stood alone in the desert, the scroll still clutched in his hand—now blank except for that single terrible line:
Iteration 48: Pending.
The sun rose on the horizon—not the too-close sun of the post-Collapse world, but Earth's original sun. Distance proper. Temperature normal. As if the pause Sabaku had bought had reset reality to earlier configuration.
He looked at his shadow. Single now. Aru's presence was gone—fully integrated or released, Sabaku couldn't tell which. He was just himself. Just the soul that had failed forty-seven times. Given one more chance.
Around him, the desert stretched in all directions. Empty. Waiting. No armies. No Nahara. No Tefra. Just sand and sky and the eternal question: Stay or run? Connect or isolate? Choose humanity, with all its gray walls and institutional mediocrity? Or choose desert, with all its terrible beauty and meaningful solitude? Iteration 48 awaited his answer. And this time, there would be no iteration 49 to save him if he chose wrong.
TO BE CONTINUED…