The forest stretched endlessly, an oppressive tangle of gnarled roots and towering trees that seemed to twist unnaturally, as though mocking the very laws of nature. Each step the knights and squires took echoed with the hollow sounds of uncertainty. Hours—or had it been days?—slipped by unnoticed, swallowed whole by the dense, suffocating air. Yet, amidst this growing disquiet, there was something far worse—something far more insidious than the passage of time.
The tree.
It should have been there. A stark, jagged thing, twisted and broken by some ancient force. A fixture of their suffering, marking the path they had walked countless times, a constant in their disorienting journey. But it wasn't there. Not now, not when it should have been.
Rei's footsteps faltered as he scanned their surroundings, his gaze darting in a frenzy, as if expecting the tree to materialize out of thin air. His grip on his sword tightened, the hilt trembling slightly as he turned to the group. "The tree," he growled, his voice raw with confusion and frustration. "It should be right there. Haven't you seen it?"
Ilya, ever calm, glanced up from his steady march, his expression unreadable. His voice was quiet, almost detached. "What tree?"
Rei's agitation surged, his words sharp, almost accusatory. "The jagged fallen tree! We've passed it twice, damn it!"
Ilya's brow furrowed for a brief moment, but he did not break his stride. "We've passed it once," he corrected, his tone laced with an unsettling calm. "It's the first time we've seen it."
A moment of silence followed, thick with confusion. The others exchanged uneasy glances, their faces drawn tight with a creeping suspicion that none of them dared to voice aloud. They had all felt it—the slow, subtle unraveling of reality around them. The oppressive feeling of repetition, the knowledge that something had shifted, distorted, broken. But Ilya seemed untouched by it, completely unaware of the strange tension that gripped the rest of them.
Rei's frustration deepened. He turned to the others, demanding, "What the hell is he talking about? We've passed that cursed place at least twice!"
Ilya's eyes, unblinking, scanned the path ahead. "Like I said, we've passed it once. Nothing more."
The group fell silent, each knight and squire weighing the absurdity of what Ilya was saying. And yet—there was no mistaking it. He wasn't confused. He wasn't playing some cruel joke. He was sure of it. And that certainty, that unshakable belief in his own perception of the world, seemed to infect the air itself, suffocating their rational minds.
Erasmus stood at the back of the group, his gaze fixed on Ilya, though his expression remained neutral, detached. His long fingers idly tapped against his sleeve, an absent gesture that masked the simmering tension beneath the surface. Something wasn't right. He felt it deep in his bones, a gnawing unease that clung to his thoughts like a persistent shadow.
Ilya. There was something about him.
—
The hours stretched on, or was it days again? Time had become a malleable concept in the endless looping part of the forest they had found themselves trapped in. And as they walked, the whispers began to rise—soft at first, just a murmur at the edge of their consciousness, before growing louder, more insistent.
"Did we really loop twice?"
"Maybe Rei's just paranoid."
"But… I swear I remember passing the tree twice. Don't you?"
Doubt rippled through the group like a cold wind, shaking their foundation of reality. It wasn't just the tree anymore. The repetition was undeniable. The loop was growing tighter, more constricting. They were caught in something far darker than they could comprehend. Something had changed. Something was wrong.
And Ilya?
Ilya remained as he always was—calm, unbothered, entirely sure of himself. His certainty was like a rock in a river, unyielding and steadfast, yet its presence only made the waters swirl more violently around it. He did not notice their growing discomfort, nor did he acknowledge the creeping suspicion that had begun to fester within them.
Erasmus, however, did not let the unease pass unnoticed. His mind whirred with questions, his sharp intellect gnawing at the edges of the mystery. He had watched Ilya carefully, his gaze unblinking as the other man spoke, his every word scrutinized, dissected. And it was then—the faintest flicker—that Erasmus saw it.
Ilya's reaction had been too quick. Too rehearsed. He had answered too smoothly, too easily, as if he had already anticipated the question. As if the answer had been prepared long before Erasmus had even spoken.
"Tell me, Ilya," Erasmus asked, his voice light, deceptively so, though his words held an undercurrent of something far darker. "When did we first meet?"
Ilya's gaze shifted, the faintest pause before his lips parted to speak. "On the first day of the trial. Right after we crossed the river."
The answer came quickly—too quickly—and Erasmus did not miss the subtle shift in Ilya's eyes as he said it. The flicker of doubt that had been there, gone in an instant. A calmness, almost too perfect.
Erasmus' gaze flicked to Riven, his brow furrowed slightly. He asked him, almost casually, "And you, Riven? When did Ilya join us?"
Riven, as expected, frowned, his expression uncomprehending. "He was always here," he said, his words thick with disbelief.
Always. The word settled over Erasmus like a weight, and for a moment, his mind stuttered, unsure of itself. Had he always been here?
The rest of the group was too lost in their own disarray to notice the subtle shift in Erasmus' expression, the quick flicker of discomfort behind his eyes. His thoughts churned beneath his composed exterior, tightening in his chest.
He forced the thought away. He could not afford to doubt himself. His perception was never wrong. It couldn't be.
—
The world shattered with a sudden, violent snap. The moment the squire—Jory—strayed too far, the fabric of reality buckled. His body twitched once, as though caught in an invisible snare, and then... it started steaming. At first, it was faint, like the heat rising from a boiling pot. But it grew quickly, as the unnatural speed of Jory's body's looping caused his physical form to destabilize. The distortion of time and space was so violent, so relentless, that his body could not handle the sheer rapidity of the shifting. Flesh and bone reformed, only to tear apart and then reform again at an impossible rate, the friction causing the air around him to heat unnaturally, like the ground itself was trying to process the endless repetition of death.
A series of grotesque, jerking motions began, not from Jory's body, but from the very space he'd inhabited. The very air began to warp and twist around the spot where he had last stood. His form flickered in and out of existence—not just gone, but remade, erased, remade again.
The first hint of Jory's body reappeared—twisted, melted, his limbs bent in unnatural angles as if being folded back upon themselves by an unseen hand. His skin dripped off as if it was a liquid. The next moment, it was gone again, replaced by a flickering shadow, a fragmented replica, one that should have been an afterimage but was now real. Jory's body kept shifting, reappearing in front of itself and then erasing, in a horrifying loop.
It was as if the universe itself had forgotten how to even kill him properly.
Erasmus stood motionless. His breath caught. For a heartbeat, Erasmus felt his thoughts slipping, as if he were being drawn into that same cycle, drowning in the crushing static of a reality that refused to stay still.
The world blurred—for a moment, he couldn't tell whether he was standing in the forest or tangled within the chaotic rift that was Jory's suffering. The shrill ring of time looping over and over began to pull him in, beckoning him to watch it all again—to feel the dissonance of that broken cycle, to lose himself in its maddening repetition.
But no.
Erasmus clenched his fist, grounding himself. The weight of the scale, still in his pocket, pressed against him like a reminder. The world began to solidify around him. He felt the familiar chill, the rush of reality pushing back against the pull. His vision sharpened, his mind refocused.
His eyes tracked the horrifying spectacle, each new iteration more grotesque than the last. Jory's body began to rip apart, each tear and crack of flesh pulling in on itself. His limbs cracked and split, the blood pooling in the air as the body flickered in place, a jagged cascade of flesh and bone that seemed caught between life and death.
Each rip of his body was immediately followed by a brutal loop—a loop that pulled the shredded body back into its previous state, but worse. A piece of him would vanish, and another would replace it—so disjointed, it felt like time itself was being torn apart with Jory at its center. And then… the explosion.
A violent eruption, as if the sheer force of reality couldn't contain the horror any longer. Jory's body burst, organs and blood flying out in every direction, his insides scattering like a sickening rain. And yet, even as the pieces fell away, they looped. The scattered fragments—his limbs, his torn innards—whirled back toward his disintegrating form, only to be torn apart again, the cycle repeating in a maddening, fractal loop.
And yet, none of the others seemed to notice. They walked forward, lost in their confusion, their minds too clouded by the distortion to even register the horror unfolding before them.
Except Erasmus.
He felt the cold chill of a truth creeping in, one that tightened his chest in the most nauseating way. No one else saw it. They couldn't. Jory was gone, but in the same moment, he wasn't. His body was everywhere and nowhere, shifting endlessly in a cruel, distorted mimicry of life.
This wasn't an accident, Erasmus thought, his voice rising like a whisper in his mind. This is something worse. This is… control.
—
The scene before Erasmus unfolded in maddening repetition.
But, Erasmus didn't spare a second glance at Jory. He hadn't cared for him before, and certainly didn't care now. The boy's suffering—his shattered body re-forming over and over—was an insignificant blip in the grand scheme of things. To Erasmus, it was just another glitch in the fabric of reality. Another obstacle to be ignored, a distraction from his true purpose.
The world was falling apart around him, but Erasmus was fixated on the edges of it—the subtle shift of reality, the weight of power that rippled in the air. The rest of the group moved in their own oblivious circles, but Ilya... Ilya remained the same. Detached. Unaware.
The loop wasn't just affecting Jory. It was a distortion in time, but it was something Erasmus couldn't quite place—something far bigger than just one victim. Yet, none of this mattered. It was all part of the design. An error. A step. A choice. Jory's endless agony was a byproduct of the world's instability, nothing more. Erasmus wouldn't intervene. He had no reason to.
Ilya didn't notice, of course. He continued moving forward, his calm face a mask of certainty. It was almost as if he were walking through a world untouched by the same madness that plagued Jory. His oblivion to the pain unfolding beside him was both alarming and irrelevant to Erasmus. There was no need for concern.
If Ilya didn't see the horror, then perhaps he had already accepted it—or had become numb to it.
The others were just players on a board, each one with their own role. Jory was merely another piece falling away, and Erasmus couldn't afford to lose focus on the bigger picture. If they were all trapped in this place, then it would be him—Erasmus—who would find the way out. Not Jory. Not Ilya.
The thought lingered in his mind like a passing cloud. None of this mattered. The torment of one individual, the oblivion of the others—it was all irrelevant. He would transcend it. It was only a matter of time to rise above them, to grasp control of whatever power lay at the core of this chaos. He would break the loop, rewrite its rules, and take judgment into his own hands.
—
Erasmus didn't flinch, didn't react outwardly. But in the depths of his mind, his thoughts churned faster, sharper. This wasn't just some accident. This was deliberate. This was a manipulation of reality itself, and Erasmus would not allow it.
He moved slowly, purposefully, stepping beside Ilya, keeping his voice soft, yet laden with an undertone of something dangerous.
"Tell me something, Ilya," Erasmus said, his voice deceptively light, like a predator circling its prey. "What's the first thing you remember about this trial?"
Ilya met his gaze, his eyes calm, almost too calm. "Crossing the river. Meeting all of you."
Erasmus smiled—a cold, knowing smile. "Really? That's odd, considering I never participated in this trial. I only joined the group halfway through their journey."
Ilya didn't respond, but his gaze faltered, just for a moment. It was enough. Erasmus saw it. The tiniest flicker of uncertainty.
But it was gone before Ilya could even think to react. The calmness returned, the serenity, the certainty that only Ilya seemed to possess.
Yet, for the first time, Erasmus was not so sure.
The loop wasn't just an inconvenience. It wasn't just some cosmic joke. It was a threat. And whatever this thing—this entity—was, it had underestimated one crucial thing:
Erasmus was no one's puppet.
And no one—no one—would rewrite his judgment.