The last thing Liam Carter knew was the sterile, antiseptic smell of a hospital room, the distant, electronic dirge of a flatlining heart monitor that was probably his own, and the crushing, empty weight of a life spent waiting to die. He'd had forty-seven years. Most of them grey. A spreadsheet architect for a mid-tier logistics firm, his world had been one of cells, formulas, and quiet desperation. The cancer was a brutal, final audit—a rogue cell that refused to follow the formula. It had eaten him from the inside, a silent, spreading error in the code of his body.
He didn't see a light. There was no parade of memories. Just a slow, cold leaching of sensation, like a monitor powering down. The pain receded, replaced by a vast, silent static.
Then, noise.
It slammed into him—a roaring, jeering, living tsunami of sound. It wasn't the hushed whispers of a hospice. It was raw, throaty, and violent. The sterile smell of antiseptic was replaced by a thick, gagging cocktail: unwashed bodies, animal dung, rotting vegetables, and the coppery, stomach-turning scent of fresh blood.
*What… where…?*
His eyes, which he was sure had closed forever, flew open. Blinding, dusty sunlight replaced clinical fluorescence. He wasn't lying down. He was on his knees, rough, wet cobblestones biting into his skin through thin, coarse fabric. His hands were wrenched behind his back, bound by chafing, oily rope. A wave of dizziness, alien and thick, washed over him—not the weakness of chemo, but a hollow, gnawing emptiness in his gut. Hunger. Real, acute hunger.
"—last words, dog? Or will you meet the Shepherd with the same coward's silence you lived with?"
The voice was a guttural bark, close and thick with contempt. Liam jerked his head up.
He was in a square. A medieval, filthy, teeming square. Timber-framed buildings with sagging thatch leaned over a packed crowd of hundreds. Peasants in mud-spattered wool, their faces hard and lean, shouted and jeered. A woman threw a rotten turnip that splattered against his chest. The stench was eye-watering.
Before him, standing on a raised wooden platform stained a deep, suspicious black, was a mountain of a man. He wore a stained leather jerkin, his arms thick as ham hocks crossed over a barrel chest. In his hands, resting casually on a burly shoulder, was a massive, two-handed axe. The edge gleamed wickedly in the sun. This was no ceremonial prop. This was a tool for butchering wood and, evidently, men.
*Executioner.*
The word detonated in Liam's mind, cold and absolute. Panic, sharper and more immediate than any cancer pain, lanced through him. He tried to speak, to scream *"This is a mistake!"* but all that emerged was a dry, ragged croak. His throat was parched, his tongue a swollen lump.
"Ha! Nothing to say for yourself, Elian?" the executioner boomed, turning to address the crowd. "This thieving rat stole from the Lady's own chambers! A silver looking-glass, handed down from her blessed grandmother! He'd sell his own mother's soul for a cup of ale!"
The crowd roared its approval. Boos, curses, a volley of more garbage.
*Elian? Who the hell is Elian?*
Memories that were not his own flickered at the edge of his consciousness—a fragmented, pathetic montage. A cold attic room. The gnawing ache of constant hunger. Shivering in threadbare clothes. Hauling water, scrubbing floors, being cuffed for a slow step. A desperate, starving boy seeing a glint of silver on a dressing table. A moment of insane, hopeless temptation. Then, the rough hands of guards, the dark of a dungeon, the terrifying, formal words of a magistrate.
He was in another's body. A condemned boy's body.
"I didn't…" Liam finally managed to rasp, the voice young, terrified, and utterly foreign to his own ears. "I didn't take it…"
"Liar!" A new voice, sharp and cold as ice cut through the din.
To the side, on a shaded dais draped with dark blue cloth, sat a woman. Lady Annette. She was perhaps twenty-five, with hair the color of winter wheat braided severely beneath a net of silver. Her face was beautiful but sharp, all angles and pale, unblemished skin. Her eyes, a frigid blue, regarded him not with anger, but with a distant, bored disgust, as one would regard a bug that had dared to crawl across a clean floor. She wore a gown of deep violet, its elegance a brutal contrast to the squalor around her.
"The evidence was found beneath your pallet, boy," she stated, her voice not raised, yet it carried. "Your guilt is plain. You shame my household with your base ingratitude. Justice will be served."
This was no trial. This was theatre. And he was the sacrificial lamb.
A man in a homespun brown robe, a priest of the Shepherd, stepped forward, muttering a swift, perfunctory blessing. He made a sign in the air, then scurried away, not meeting Liam's eyes.
The executioner—Borin, the name surfaced from Elian's fragments—spat on the blackened boards. "Time to meet your maker, thief."
Strong, calloused hands grabbed Liam's shoulders from behind, forcing him forward. His knees scrabbled on the slick wood. Before him was a wide, deeply gouged chopping block. The dark stains there were not wood grain. His stomach heaved.
*No. No, no, no. This isn't happening. I just died. I'm supposed to be done! This is… this is wrong!*
The panic exploded into pure, animal terror. He thrashed, a weak, pitiful struggle against the guards' iron grips. The crowd's roar reached a fever pitch, loving the spectacle. He was dragged, his cheek slammed against the cold, damp, stinking wood. The grain pressed into his skin. He could see the sawdust below, mixed with darker, clumped matter. He could smell the iron-rich stench of old blood.
Borin's shadow fell over him, blotting out the sun. Liam twisted his head, one eye pressed to the block, the other staring up at the giant. The man's face was set in a look of professional concentration. No hatred, no pleasure. Just a job. He raised the axe, muscles in his arms and back coiling like great ropes.
"FOR THE LADY'S JUSTICE!" Borin bellowed.
The axe reached its zenith, a dark shape against the bright sky. The world seemed to slow. Liam saw every chip in the haft, every pit on the blade. He heard the crowd's intake of breath as one monstrous organism. He saw Lady Annette's cold, satisfied blink. He felt the rough hemp of the rope on his wrists, the chill of the wood, the frantic, thunderous hammering of a young, terrified heart that was, somehow, now his own.
*I don't want to die again.*
The axe fell.
It was not clean.
There was a terrible *THUNK*, a visceral, wet impact that vibrated through the wood into his skull. Agony—white, searing, and unimaginable—blossomed in his neck. Not a clean cut, but a brutal, crushing chop. He didn't die instantly. For a half-second that stretched into an eternity, he was aware. Aware of the wrongness, the separation, the hot flood. He heard a gurgling, wet scream that was his. He saw the world tilt, his vision swimming with the crimson spray arcing across the platform.
Darkness rushed in, but in that final, fragmented sliver of consciousness, a sound echoed in the prison of his mind. Not a voice, but a sound—a raw, digital screech, like a corrupted data-stream, a skipping record fused with tearing metal and shattering glass.
**[SYSTEM ERROR…]**
**[HOST MATRIX… UNSTABLE…]**
**[SOUL SIGNATURE… MISMATCH…]**
**[FORCED INTEGRATION…]**
**[…ERROR… ERROR…]**
**[PRIMORDIAL ARTIFACT DETECTED… HEART OF… CHR…o̷̚ͅn̷̥̈́o̷̰͋s̴̡̽…]**
**[ARTIFACT ACTIVATED. LOOP PARAMETERS… GLITCHED… INITIATED.]**
**[RESET IN 3…]**
The numbers blurred, stuttered.
**[2̸͚͠…̵̘̊ 1̵͍̾…̶̼̈́]**
***
The last thing Liam knew was the wet, splitting agony of an axe in his neck.
Then, he was on his knees.
The roar of the crowd hit him again. The stench of the square. The rough cobbles. The bindings on his wrists. The hollow, young-man's hunger.
He gasped, a full, lung-searing inhale. His neck was whole. Uncut.
"—last words, dog? Or will you meet the Shepherd with the same coward's silence you lived with?"
Borin's voice. The same cadence. The same contempt.
Liam's mind, the mind of a forty-seven-year-old spreadsheet architect who had just been decapitated, short-circuited. A full-body tremor, worse than any chemo chill, wracked Elian's slight frame. He stared up at Borin, at the axe on his shoulder, his eyes wide with a horror that was now layered, compounded. The memory of the pain was fresh, vivid, *physical*. The feeling of his spine being sundered.
"Wha…?" he breathed, the sound lost in the crowd's noise.
It had happened. He had died. He had felt it. And now… he was back. Seconds before.
A dream. A final, cruel neural flicker. A dying hallucination.
The rotten turnip hit him in the chest again. The same turnip. The same splatter pattern on the filthy tunic.
*No.*
"I didn't take it!" he screamed, the panic lending Elian's voice a piercing, ragged edge. It was the same protest he'd made before. Last time.
Lady Annette's cold eyes flicked to him. "Liar." The same word. The same bored disgust.
The priest stepped forward, muttered the same blessing, made the same sign.
The guards' hands grabbed his shoulders.
*No. No, no, no, no.*
He fought harder this time. He kicked, he bucked, he threw his weight. He was a man facing a second execution, armed with the knowledge of the first. "It's a loop! A time loop! Can't you see?!" he screamed, not at Borin, but at the crowd, at the Lady, at the priest. "I just died! I was just here!"
His words were swallowed by the jeers. The guards, stronger, more practiced, wrestled him forward. His cheek hit the block. The same cold grain. The same smell.
Borin's shadow. The raised axe. The professional look.
"FOR THE LADY'S JUSTICE!"
*This isn't real. This can't be real.*
The axe fell.
*THUNK.*
The same imperfect, brutal chop. The same white-hot agony, a dreadful echo made fresh. The same gurgle. The same crimson spray against the inside of his eyelids as darkness took him.
The same digital screech in his mind.
**[LOOP 2 CONFIRMED.]**
**[DEATH ANALYSIS… CAUSE: BLUNT FORCE DECAPITATION.]**
**[TEMPORARY SKILL GENERATED: NECK-SENSE (NOVICE).]**
**[DESCRIPTION: INSTINCTIVE AWARENESS OF THREATS AIMED AT THE CERVICAL SPINE. DURATION: 3 LOOPS.]**
**[GHOST LEECH SPAWNED. ENTITY [LEECH-002] DISPERSED.]**
**[RESET IN 5… 4…]**
The count was smoother. Longer.
**[3… 2… 1…]**
***
Knees on cobbles. Crowd roar. Stench. Hunger.
Borin's voice. "—last words, dog?"
Liam—no, he was Elian now, he was both, a fractured consciousness in a stolen body—sucked in a shuddering breath. The tremor was still there, but beneath it, something else sparked. A terrible, dawning clarity.
The *Neck-Sense (Novice)* felt like a new layer of instinct. He could *feel* the focus of Borin's gaze on his neck, like a target painted on his vertebrae. He could sense the potential line of the axe's swing in the air. It was a faint, prickling awareness, but it was there. A skill. Born from his death.
A glitched system. A loop.
He was in a time loop, resetting just before his execution. And he had gotten a… skill from dying.
The absurdity of it almost made him laugh, a hysterical bubble in his ravaged throat. He was a QA tester for his own torture.
This time, he didn't protest his innocence. He stared at Lady Annette, his eyes no longer wide with just terror, but with a frantic, calculating intensity. *Why?* he tried to project. *Who really took it? Who gains?*
She met his gaze, a faint, almost imperceptible flicker of something—annoyance?—in her icy eyes before she looked away, nodding to Borin. The same script.
He didn't fight the guards. He went limp, forcing them to drag his dead weight. It bought him half a second. As they shoved him toward the block, he scanned the crowd desperately, looking for anything, anyone different. A face showing pity instead of bloodlust. A figure slipping away.
He saw a man in a grey cloak, hood pulled low, standing at the edge of the square near an alley. The man wasn't jeering. He was watching, still as a stone. As Elian's head was forced down, their eyes met for a split second. The hooded man's lips tightened, and he turned, melting into the alley shadow.
*Who—?*
The axe fell.
He tried to use the *Neck-Sense*. He felt the killing line, tried to twist. It was futile. The guards held him fast.
*THUNK.*
Agony. Darkness.
**[LOOP 3 CONFIRMED.]**
**[DEATH ANALYSIS… CAUSE: BLUNT FORCE DECAPITATION. HOST ATTEMPTED EVASION.]**
**[SKILL [NECK-SENSE (NOVICE)] CONSUMED.]**
**[TEMPORARY SKILL GENERATED: EXECUTIONER'S INTENT (NOVICE).]**
**[DESCRIPTION: SENSE THE PHYSICAL COMMITMENT PRECEDING A KILLING BLOW. DURATION: 2 LOOPS.]**
**[GHOST LEECH SPAWNED. ENTITY [LEECH-003] DISPERSED.]**
**[RESET IN 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…]**
***
He was back. The loop point was firming up: about two minutes before the axe fell.
*Executioner's Intent.*
He could feel it as Borin spoke his line. A subtle tightening in the giant's shoulders, a minute shift in his stance when he decided to move from speech to action. It was like reading a predator's tell.
This time, Elian spoke the moment Borin finished. His voice was quieter, hoarse, but aimed at the Lady.
"He's using you," Elian croaked, staring at Annette. "The real thief. He's laughing at you. Your justice is a joke to him."
A ripple went through the crowd. This wasn't the script. Lady Annette's cold composure cracked for a full second. Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinning. "Silence the wretch," she snapped, her voice sharp.
Borin moved, but Elian felt the *Intent* a fraction before the guards did. He threw himself backward as the guards lunged. He wasn't strong enough to break free, but the sudden movement caused a stumble. He ended up on his side on the platform, kicking at the guards.
Chaos. The crowd roared, loving the unexpected drama.
He saw Borin's face change from professional to annoyed. The axe came up, not for the ceremonial chop, but for a swift, downward stab to pin him.
Elian rolled. The axehead slammed into the wood where his leg had been, splintering the plank.
A guard's boot caught him in the ribs. Agony, different but familiar. He curled up, gasping. They dragged him to the block again, more brutally. His *Neck-Sense* was gone, but the *Executioner's Intent* screamed at him. Borin was angry now. The next blow wouldn't be just duty. It would be personal.
The axe rose. Elian saw the fury in the man's eyes. He felt the intense, focused commitment to the swing.
It was a cleaner blow this time. A practiced executioner's stroke, driven by anger.
The world went red, then black.
**[LOOP 4 CONFIRMED.]**
**[DEATH ANALYSIS… CAUSE: CLEAN DECAPITATION. HOST INCITED AGGRESSION.]**
**[SKILL [EXECUTIONER'S INTENT (NOVICE)] CONSUMED.]**
**[TEMPORARY SKILL GENERATED: CROWD'S BLOODLUST SENSE (NOVICE).]**
**[DESCRIPTION: GAUGE THE COLLECTIVE EMOTIONAL INTENSITY OF A HOSTILE CROWD. DURATION: 4 LOOPS.]**
**[GHOST LEECH SPAWNED. ENTITY [LEECH-004] DISPERSED.]**
**[ACCUMULATED LEECH ENERGY MINIMAL. WORLD LUCK DRAIN: NEGLIGIBLE.]**
**[RESET IN 5 MINUTES, 30 SECONDS.]**
***
The reset time had extended. He had bought thirty seconds.
And he had a new sense. As he knelt, he could *feel* the crowd's emotion like a heat on his skin. It wasn't just noise; it was a pulsing, hungry wave of malice and vicarious thrill. It crested when Borin spoke, dipped slightly during his own desperate pleas, and spiked wildly during the struggle.
He was learning. He was a scientist in a lab of his own repeated murder.
He stopped trying to talk to the Lady. She was a stone. He looked for the hooded man. There. Same spot. Watching.
Elian focused on the *Crowd's Bloodlust Sense*. He waited for Borin's line. As the executioner bellowed "FOR THE LADY'S JUSTICE!" and the crowd's emotional surge hit its peak, Elian did something different.
He laughed.
It was a dry, broken, utterly insane sound, but it cut through the roar. The bloodlust wave stuttered, confused. The crowd's fervor dipped, replaced by a flicker of uncertainty. Even Borin hesitated, the axe pausing at its apex.
"You're all feeding a lie!" Elian shouted into the sudden comparative quiet, his voice carrying. "And your hunger makes you her tools! Sheep cheering for the slaughter of a lamb!"
The bloodlust didn't return to its peak. It morphed into something more complex—anger, yes, but mingled with a prickling of doubt, of unease. He was poisoning the well.
Lady Annette stood up. "Kill him now!" she commanded, her icy composure shattered into sharp, furious shards.
Borin brought the axe down.
But the moment was broken. The swing was rushed. The *Intent* was there, but it was flustered.
Elian, feeling the shift, jerked his head at the last possible microsecond.
The axe struck. Not clean. Not the neck. It bit deep into the junction of his shoulder and collarbone with a sickening crunch of bone and rending flesh.
The pain was apocalyptic. Different, unimaginably worse than the neck wounds. He didn't die instantly. He lay on the platform, bleeding out, drowning in agony, hearing the crowd's shocked murmur, seeing Borin's surprised face, Lady Annette's furious one, and the hooded man in the grey cloak, who had taken a single step forward, his hand half-raised, before stopping.
Darkness, sweet and total, took an agonizing ten seconds to arrive.
**[LOOP 5 CONFIRMED.]**
**[DEATH ANALYSIS… CAUSE: MASSIVE TRAUMATIC HAEMORRHAGE (SHOULDER). HOST MANIPULATED COLLECTIVE EMOTION.]**
**[SKILL [CROWD'S BLOODLUST SENSE (NOVICE)] CONSUMED.]**
**[TEMPORARY SKILL GENERATED: PAIN CONVERSION (NOVICE – PASSIVE).]**
**[DESCRIPTION: A FRACTION OF SUFFERED AGONY IS CONVERTED TO A TEMPORARY BOOST IN MENTAL CLARITY AND FOCUS. DURATION: 1 LOOP.]**
**[GHOST LEECH SPAWNED. ENTITY [LEECH-005] DISPERSED.]**
**[WARNING: ACCUMULATING LEECHES MAY CAUSE LOCALIZED PROBABILITY DISTORTIONS.]**
**[RESET IN 5 MINUTES, 45 SECONDS.]**
***
Agony was now a resource.
The clarity was immediate. The raw, screaming terror of the loops was still there, but it was now channeled, sharpened. His mind felt like a scalpel. He was Liam Carter, systems analyst. He was Elian, the condemned thief. He was the Glitched Host.
He had five minutes and forty-five seconds. His longest loop yet.
He knelt, the *Pain Conversion* skill already humming, turning the phantom anguish of his last death into cold, hard focus.
The script began. Borin's line. The turnip. Lady Annette's "Liar."
This time, Elian didn't look at them. He kept his head slightly bowed, but his eyes were on the hooded man. He tracked him. As the priest gave his blessing, the hooded man shifted. As the guards moved forward, the hooded man's head turned, following not Elian, but Lady Annette, for just a moment. There was a tension there. A connection.
*He's not here for me. He's here for her. Or because of her.*
The guards grabbed him. Elian didn't resist. He let himself be marched to the block. As his head was lowered, he spoke, not loudly, but clearly, aimed at the wood beneath him, knowing sound would carry.
"The looking-glass was in the footman's locker. Jorin's locker. He owes coin to the Black Eels."
He had no idea if this was true. It was a guess, a shot in the dark based on fragmented memories of castle gossip from the dead boy's mind. But it was specific. It named a name. It named a crime syndicate.
The reaction was electric.
The guards' hands tightened convulsively. Borin's *Intent*, which Elian could almost smell now, vanished into confusion. The crowd's noise died to a stunned whisper.
From the dais, a sharp, indrawn breath.
Elian risked a glance. Lady Annette was pale, her eyes wide, not with anger, but with something like shock. And fear. Her gaze shot not to him, but to a tall, thin steward standing behind her right shoulder. The steward's face was a mask, but a muscle in his jaw twitched.
Bingo.
"What lies are these?" Lady Annette's voice was strained.
"Check the locker," Elian said, his mouth against the bloody wood. "Before Jorin flees. Or before the Eels silence him."
Chaos erupted on the dais. The steward was whispering frantically to Annette. She stood, her face a storm of emotions. "Hold!" she commanded, her voice cutting through the square. "Hold the execution!"
Borin lowered his axe, bewildered.
Elian felt a wild, desperate surge of hope. He had done it. He had changed the script.
The steward gestured, and two guards from the Lady's personal detail broke away, heading at a run toward the castle gates.
Time stretched. The crowd murmured, confused but utterly captivated. This was better drama than a simple beheading.
Elian remained on the block, the rough grain against his cheek. He saw the hooded man.The man was staring directly at him now, his hooded face unreadable. Then, slowly, deliberately, he raised a hand and pointed a finger—not at Elian, but at the sky, before drawing it across his own throat in a slow, deliberate line. A warning. A threat.
Then he vanished into the alley.
Before Elian could process it, a commotion came from the castle gate. The two guards were returning, dragging a struggling, weeping man in servant's livery—Jorin. In the lead guard's hand was a cloth bundle. He unwrapped it as he reached the dais. Sunlight flashed on polished silver.The looking-glass.
A massive gasp went up from the crowd. The bloodlust sense, which had been simmering on low, evaporated, replaced by a roaring wave of shock, then outrage, directed at the weeping footman and, subtly, at the Lady for her error.
Lady Annette looked at the mirror, then at Jorin, then at Elian still prone on the block. Her face was a masterpiece of fury and humiliated pride. The truth had saved him, but it had made her look a fool in front of the entire city. In her eyes, that might be a worse crime."It seems," she said, her voice like frozen silk, "a… mistake has been made."
The crowd waited. Borin waited. Elian's heart hammered against his ribs.
She looked down at him, her blue eyes devoid of any gratitude, only a cold, simmering hatred. "Release him."
The guards behind him hesitated, then cut his bonds. Elian pushed himself up, his limbs trembling, rubbing his raw wrists. He stood on shaky legs on the blood-stained platform, facing the woman who had ordered his death five times over."You are pardoned," she said, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. "For the crime of theft. The city's justice thanks you for uncovering the true culprit." It was a pathetic attempt to save face.
The crowd was silent, then a few ragged cheers broke out, but they were unsure, confused.
Elian, guided by the icy clarity of Pain Conversion, knew this wasn't over. He had escaped the axe, but he was now a living embarrassment to a powerful, vindictive noble. And he had attracted the attention of a mysterious hooded watcher connected to the city's underworld.He had survived the loop's immediate trap. But he was still in a trap. A bigger, more complex one.
As he stumbled down the steps of the platform, pushed by a guard, the glitched system screen flickered in the corner of his vision, visible only to him.
[LOOP 5 – EXECUTION AVERTED. PRIMARY SCENARIO DEVIATION: 87%.]
[TEMPORARY SKILL [PAIN CONVERSION] WILL PERSIST FOR DURATION OF CURRENT TIMELINE.]
[GHOST LEECHES [001-005] REMAIN ACTIVE IN LOCAL SPACE-TIME. DRAIN: MINIMAL.]
[SYSTEM STABILIZING… HEART OF CHRONOS SYNC: 0.0001%.]
[NEW OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE NEXT 24 HOURS.]
Elian hit the filthy cobblestones of the square, a free man in a body that was not his, in a world that wanted him dead, armed only with the memory of five horrific deaths and a glitching artifact in his soul that promised infinite more.
He looked up at the unforgiving sun, at the hostile faces, at the high walls of a city that was now his prison and his crucible.
The first loop was over.
The story was just beginning.
And in a dark tavern across the city, a man in a grey cloak pushed back his hood, revealing a face scarred by old burns, and spoke to the shadowed figure opposite him. "The boy on the block. He knew things he shouldn't. He changed the script."
The other figure, sipping dark wine, smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "A glitch in the pattern. How interesting. Keep watching. If he lives the night, bring him to me. The Master of the Black Eels does so enjoy… interesting things."