Darkness So Profound.

My eyes snapped open, a raw haunted light sparkling within their depths.

Shadows clung to the corner of the room like living phantoms, writhing and twisting at the edges of my vision.

I inhaled sharply,

My chest heaving up and down as if I were suffocating under an ocean of dread. Panic surged through me, cold and relentless, it was accompanied by the bitter taste of realization

A soar taste that burned the back of my throat.

The reset. Again.

I had stopped counting long ago- each cycle blurring into the next. Trust, fleeting hope, and betrayal- they were always the same. Garren's teachery lingered like a thorn in my mind, twisting deeper with every loop.

No matter how hard I fought, I remained a prisoner to this relentless torment, trapped in an endless waltz of my failure.

My hand trembled as I clutched my head, my fingers tangling in my frostbitten hair. A sharp pull grounded me to reality, but the question that gnawed at me still remained.

What am I missing?

Just what?

The thought festered, elusive and taunting, like a fleeting shadow just out of reach. I strained to remember, but the harder I fought, the faster it slipped away- an ephemeral ghost lost to the void.

Pain coiled around my temples like barbed wire, and a ragged cry escaped my lips.

"Aaaargggh!"

Yet,

"Huff-"

Amidst the pounding agony, no answers surfaced.

My mind felt like a crumbling dam withholding back an unrelenting tide.

"What the fuck is going on?" I growled, rage seeping into my voice. "Why can't I remember?"

Why?!

Despair clawed at the edges of my sanity, but even now, I resisted.

I had learned- no, endured- that succumbing to panic will only strengthen the loop's grip on me. I exhaled slowly, my breaths shallow but measured.

"Huff-Hah."

Forcing my mind to stay focused.

My eyes darted to the room around me. Familiar yet foreign. I had revived moments before the battle began- or was it moment after?

Time blurred in this fractured reality of mine. Then, as despair threatened to overwhelm me, understanding flickered in my eyes like dying embers.

The block.

Ba-dump!

It finally dawned on me.

Ba-dump!

My heart stuttered as realization slammed onto me.

"Fuck!" The curse slipped through gritted teeth as I bolted upright, the weight of clarity spurring me into action. I tore through the room's narrow exit, the cobblestones outside slick with rain and...something else. Something wrong.

Tok-

I ran.

Whoosh!

The cold air stung my lungs, each breath an agony, but I pushed on. My movements were erratic, zig-zagging between the narrow alleyways. Shadows loom in the distance and twisted monstrosities lurk in the edges of my vision.

I avoided the red zones, and the fluidity zones with near instinctive precision, my every step fueled by desperation.

I didn't care where I was running to.

All I knew was I had to get away from the Amaraith's range of influence.

The positive mask of the Amaraith was extending far and beyond. It wasn't allowing me to hold onto that thread of memory. And I had bet a hundred Taels that there was a damn good reason for that.

For it to try so desperately to stop me from remembering.

There had to be.

Tok-

My pace quickened, my legs burning as cobblestones blurred beneath my feet. My lungs screamed for relief, muscles teetering on the edge of collapse, but I refused to stop.

Tok-

I couldn't.

Finally, clarity struck me like a hammer to the skull.

The paper.

The one I had clutched during each reset, its significance overshadowed by the Amaraith's manipulations. I had always dismissed it, convinced there were more pressing matters to address. But those thoughts... they weren't mine.

They never had been.

My knees buckled at the weight of the revelation. For so long, I had danced to the Amaraith's tune, its whispers steering me away from the truth. My fists clenched, nails biting into my palm as anger and anguish surged within me.

Tears brimmed in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.

Hu-ah.

The thought of being controlled- of being nothing more than a puppet- was unbearable. Yet,

Ba-dump!

Through the despair, resolve blossomed within me.

Never again.

I steadied myself.

My breaths ragged but measured.

"Huh-ha."

My path was clear now:

Return to the abysmal tower and retrieve the paper. Break the cycle.

But as I moved.

Taking my first step,

Tok-

A tremor quaked through me as the air stilled, and then, it thickened.

The world darkened, shuddered and then, it descended.

A presence unlike any I had ever encountered before- a force ancient and absolute. The verge essence of supremacy. The Amaraith, with all its terrifying prowess, paled in comparison to this incomprehensible entity.

I froze,

Ba-dump!

Every instinct screaming at me to flee, yet my body betrayed me. My lungs ceased to work, the air around me grew heavy and still. The darkness that stretched across the land surged towards me, an overwhelming tide that consumed everything in its path.

Ba-dump!

My heart thundered against my ribs, panic clawing at my chest. And then, it happened.

Disintegration.

My body crumbled, cells dissolving into nothingness as my consciousness splintered into fragmented shards.

The entity's force battered against the walls of my mind, an invasion both brutal and relentless. And yet, something deep within me resisted- an unseen force shielding me from total annihilation.

But it wasn't enough.

Just when I finally found the way,

Just when I finally found the way forward, the cycle claimed me once again.

Despair seeped into me, tears tracing the remnants of my existence.

"Why..." My voice was barely above a whisper but I could feel the rage and despair seeping into them.

"Why can't things go my way... just for once?"

I questioned no one but myself and perhaps the endless void within me.

Tears slowly streamed down the corner of my eyes. Well what remained of me as I floated into the familiar warm and cold embrace.

The world soon turned black completely as my mind got overwhelmed with an endless darkness so profound, it haunted the very corners of my mind.