The First Loop

Erasmus had not planned to leave the camp so soon.

His strategy had been simple—stall. Let the others stew in their doubts. Let the paranoia grow. Let them fray at the edges until someone broke. Then, he would move. Then, he would take control.

But when he used Fractured Sight, the plan shifted.

The future splintered before him—not a single thread, but many. In one, they remained in the camp, and the days stretched into endless monotony. Their minds unraveled, their bodies wasted away, and something in the darkness closed in, patient and hungry.

In another, they moved.

And though the path was uncertain, though the forest itself twisted against them, it led toward something. A convergence. A moment of significance.

A choice.

So he changed course. He did not tell them why. He did not tell them what he saw.

—

The forest did not wake with the dawn.

No soft rustling of leaves. No distant calls of unseen creatures. No shift in the air that signaled time was passing at all. Only silence. A thick, oppressive silence that settled over them like a second skin, pressing into their skulls, filling their lungs, making them hyper-aware of every breath, every step, every shift in the trees that might not have been real.

They moved anyway.

Not wandered—moved.

There was intent in their steps, but no destination. That was the unspoken truth gnawing at all of them. They had a direction. They had a goal. But something invisible, unfathomable, wrong gnawed at the edges of it, making every movement feel like dragging themselves through water—like the air itself resisted their progression.

Riven led.

He moved with rigid precision, shoulders squared, jaw clenched so tightly it looked as if he were physically restraining himself from speaking. Not out of fear—no, Riven was past fear. He was in that space beyond it, where anger and denial curdled into something dangerously close to madness.

Rei stayed near the middle of their small group, his sharp gaze darting from tree to tree, scanning for something—anything—that might anchor him to reality. But there was nothing. Just the same skeletal trees stretching into infinity, their twisted branches reaching for a sky that had begun to feel too far away.

And Erasmus?

He walked at the rear. A calculated distance away. Not close enough to be grouped with them, not far enough to be ignored.

Watching.

He already knew they would arrive where they started.

He had seen this moment in the splintered future.

The first loop. The first mistake.

—

Erasmus watched them carefully. Wounded bodies, shaken minds, fraying resolve. This was the moment.

He let the quiet linger, let the weight of it settle into their bones before breaking it with a single, casual question.

"By the way… how many days have you all been in this trial?"

A simple inquiry. Innocent enough on the surface, yet as soon as the words left his lips, the atmosphere shifted.

Rei stiffened. Riven exhaled sharply through his nose, as if the question struck something raw. One of the knights furrowed his brow, staring down at the dirt, trying to calculate. No one answered immediately.

It was a question they should have known the answer to. But now that they were forced to think about it, the passage of time felt… wrong.

Days had blurred together.

How long had it been since the first disappearance? Since the first scream in the night? Since they first realized that some of their companions were simply—gone?

Rei was the first to speak, though there was an edge of frustration in his voice.

"Twenty… five days. Maybe twenty-six. I think."

He rubbed his temple, as if willing the answer to feel solid in his mind. But it didn't. Nothing felt solid anymore.

"Halfway, then," Erasmus mused, his tone almost contemplative. His fingers tapped idly against his knee. "You've all endured so much… and there's still another twenty-five to go."

The words settled into their bones like lead. No one spoke. No one moved.

The unspoken question was already in the air—could they even make it that long?

Erasmus let his fingers linger on the edge of his knee, absently wiping a bit of moisture away. He hadn't noticed it before—there was a warm, wet trickle beneath his nose. His fingers came away stained with blood.

A sharp, almost imperceptible flicker of surprise crossed his face as he wiped it away. He hadn't realized it had come on so suddenly. Perhaps the strain of using Fractured Sight had been more than he'd let on. Perhaps the tension from the other threads of his consciousness had finally started to bleed through.

But then something else gnawed at him—a subtle shift in his awareness. He wasn't just exhausted. Something about the frequency with which he turned to Fractured Sight, that reliance… It felt wrong. He wasn't sure how to articulate it, but the more he used it, the more it consumed him. Was this power manipulating him, pushing him toward an end he could not see?

The thought gnawed at the edges of his mind like a whisper he couldn't quite catch. Something was bending his will, twisting his need to control, making him rely on that fractured glimpse of futures to navigate the world.

The others were too consumed by their own unraveling thoughts to notice.

He dismissed it. There were more pressing matters at hand.

He wiped his nose again, his gaze slipping over the horizon. This wasn't the time to dwell on it.

—

Time passed.

Or perhaps it didn't.

They were losing track. Each step forward felt mechanical, as if they were actors in a play with no audience, repeating lines they couldn't recall. The landscape was unchanged, unchanging.

Then—

Riven stopped.

The suddenness of it startled Rei, who almost walked straight into him.

Erasmus, a few paces behind, slowed with deliberate patience. His gaze narrowed instinctively, focusing on Riven's posture. Every muscle in Riven's frame was locked, rigid, a taut string about to snap. Erasmus studied him carefully—the slightest tremble in his hands, his shallow, jagged breaths.

There was something in the air. A shift. An undeniable tension, building steadily.

Riven's voice broke the silence, low and strained.

"We've been here before."

The words fell like a stone sinking into deep water, sending waves that distorted everything. Erasmus paused. He didn't see it right away—just the trees, their skeletal branches, the oppressive stillness. But then—

He saw it.

A jagged, fallen tree split down the middle, a gash in its bark that glowed faintly, darkly, like burn marks. The ground around it was strangely indented, as if something had been erased, erased from the world itself.

They had passed this place.

Not once.

Twice.

Rei exhaled sharply, frustration pulling his face taut. His hand ran through his hair as if willing himself to think clearly, but everything was slipping away, the pieces no longer fitting together.

"That's not possible."

But it was. They had been moving forward. And yet, they had arrived where they started.

Riven's boots scraped against the underbrush as he stepped forward, slow and deliberate. His breath was too controlled. Too deliberate. It felt wrong, like something was controlling him. He was being drawn toward the edge of the unknown.

Erasmus, watching from a calculated distance, felt the flicker of understanding in the back of his mind. He knew what this was. This was the first loop. The first mistake.

Rei, standing near the middle of the group, clenched his fists, frustration boiling over into sharp words.

"Then what the hell do we do?"

His eyes flicked toward Erasmus, desperation in his gaze, the unsaid accusation hanging in the air—You knew.

Riven didn't answer. He was locked in place, his eyes far away.

Erasmus stepped forward, his movement precise. Deliberate. He placed himself just beyond Riven's peripheral vision, watching him like an experiment in progress. He let the silence stretch out, thick and heavy, before breaking it. His voice was soft, but the words cut through the air like a knife.

"We keep moving."

It wasn't a command. It wasn't an answer. It was a grim certainty.

The air felt still for a moment. Heavy with their doubts. But Erasmus knew. He knew there was no choice. No stopping.

Because whatever had trapped them here—it was watching. And it would not let them rest.