Chapter 2: Looping

 

The first thing I saw was text, hanging in the air. Yet, it vanished too fast for me to read. A voice replaced it.

“Wake up, you lazy sons of whores!”

I lurched upright on instinct, my whole body seizing, my heart hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs from the inside. For a heartbeat I didn’t know where I was, only that I was alive, and that being alive was wrong.

I tried to scream.

My mouth opened.

Nothing came.

My throat was sand. The only sound that escaped was a thin, pathetic rasp, more breath than voice. Air scraped down my windpipe like grit.

Still, the pain was there.

Not in the way a bruise lingers. This was sharper. A phantom agony. My nerves swore I was on fire. My skin remembered melting. For an instant I could smell it again: scorched cloth, burning hair, oil catching flame.

My vision swam. Tears sprang up without permission, turning everything into watery smears. The interior of a tent, the sagging canvas above me, the faint blue glimmer of mage-light somewhere outside.

My hands moved before my thoughts did.

I clawed at my own skin, dragging trembling fingers over my cheeks, my jaw, my throat. I expected to feel blistered flesh. Expected pain so real it would knock me back down.

Instead I felt…

Skin.

“No,” I tried to say.

My hands slid down to my collarbones, my chest beneath the robe. Cloth, intact. No heat. No sticky, burning liquid clinging to me.

But the memory wouldn’t let go. The world turning into white-hot as fire swallowed everything I was.

I squeezed my eyes shut, hard. Behind my eyelids the inferno still raged.

God. God.

I wasn’t religious. I’d never been the kind of man who clasped his hands or whispered prayers into the dark. But whatever part of me had survived dying once, twice, wasn’t interested in pride.

Desperation made its own rituals.

God, please.

The word tasted strange in my head, like a language I’d only ever heard in other people’s mouths.

This was the second time.

Not the second time I’d been afraid.

Not the second time I’d been in danger.

The second time I’d died.

My stomach lurched at the certainty of it, and I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to retch.

The shout outside came again.

But all of that felt far away, muffled, like I was hearing it through water.

Inside my skull, something had changed. It was as if the fire had burned the fog away.

Before, my thoughts had been a tangle. Two lives knotted together, pulling in different directions. One life was sharp with sirens and smoke and the metallic taste of adrenaline. The other was blurred: names I didn’t fully recognize, faces I couldn’t place, rules and customs that felt like they belonged to someone else.

Those blurred edges were cutting clean.

I remembered more.

I remembered Kaspar. A student. An Academy. Three years of training that didn’t match the words coming out of anyone’s mouth. A dungeon-cavern full of tents thrown up like an army of amateurs. A gate covered in living runes.

Beyond that gate, wyverns.

I had died there. I knew it with the same brutal certainty you know the taste of blood after biting your tongue. My body might be unburned now, but my mind carried the scars.

Under Kaspar’s memories, deeper still, the other life surged up.

My first life.

The one that had always felt more mine even when I couldn’t reach it.

A small town, tucked somewhere inside a country so large it made travel feel like a kind of exile. The shape of familiar streets. The weight of winter air. The sound of my own footsteps on pavement as a teenager, angry enough to choke on it.

My father.

A firefighter.

I saw him as clearly as if he were standing in front of me: the tired lines around his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, the way his hands always smelled faintly of smoke even after he washed them. I remembered the day that turned him into a story people told with admiration.

A skyscraper collapsing.

People screaming.

Smoke so thick it hide daylight.

He’d gone in anyway.

Again and again. Dragging strangers out as if his own life was currency he didn’t mind spending. The news called him brave. A hero. A man to be honored.

All I’d felt was abandonment.

Because heroes come home in caskets.

I remembered the fury of it, the childish, corrosive certainty that he’d chosen them over us. That he’d loved the act of saving more than he’d loved his own family. That whatever praise he earned in death wasn’t worth the space he left behind.

I remembered the bile of resentment rising in my throat, the way it had sat in me for years like a stone.

I remembered what softened it. Adulthood. Understanding. The unbearable clarity of realizing that courage isn’t clean. That sacrifice isn’t romantic. That sometimes a man walks into the fire because he can’t live with the idea of not trying.

I became a firefighter too.

Irony of fates, irony of blood.

I’d told myself it was my choice, that it wasn’t about him. I could never quite separate it from the shadow he left behind. The work had a way of stripping you down to essentials: heat, breath, seconds, decisions you could never take back.

Still, I died.

I died doing the thing I’d once hated him for. Saving people who weren’t mine to save.

I had expected something after that. Heaven, hell, nothing. I had expected the story to end, or to begin somewhere else.

It had begun somewhere else.

Here. Underground. In robes that weren’t my style, under a name that didn’t sit right in my mouth.

Kaspar.

Now I was here again.

Back at the same day.

The tent around me creaked softly as someone outside shoved past the canvas.

My hands were still on my skin, gripping my own shoulders like I could anchor myself to this reality by force.

I swallowed, throat scraping, and forced myself to breathe.

I should be burned, I thought, the terror coming cold and sharp. Completely burned.

Yet I wasn’t.

I crawled toward the narrow slit in the front of my tent and peeled it back with two fingers.

Outside, the camp was already stirring. Shadows moved between rows of sagging tents, and the cavern’s distant mage-light turned everything into a smeared palette of blue and soft-black.

The source of the earlier shout stood only a few paces away.

An officer.

He had the posture of someone who had never once needed to repeat himself. Broad shoulders under a rigid coat, a jaw set like carved granite, and eyes that looked through people instead of at them. Medals gleamed across his chest in neat rows.

If I’d been in my old world, I might have guessed his rank. Here, in this place they were just symbols, another language I didn’t understand.

I let the canvas fall back into place and pressed my palms hard against my temples.

I’m still here.

The thought should have been comforting. It wasn’t.

“I’m still in the same place as yesterday,” I whispered, but my voice came out thin, as if speaking too loud might tear the fragile illusion apart. “Or am I?”

Before I could chase that spiral any further, another voice boomed.

“The gate will open in six hours! Present yourselves to your superiors!”

Six hours.

My breath caught in my throat.

That hadn’t happened before. At least, not in the part I remembered. All I could recall was being shoved along with the crowd, the gate already opening, the air already thick with dread. I’d had no time then. No space to think, no chance to prepare, no opportunity to do anything but stumble forward and die.

Now there was a span of hours laid out in front of me like a narrow bridge.

A window.

A way to change something.

I pulled myself back from the slit and turned. The interior of the tent was dim, lit only by the gray-blue seep of light filtering through canvas. The air was close and smelled like old cloth and unwashed bodies.

My robe lay crumpled near the center, exactly where I must have dropped it. It was the same robe I’d been wearing when I died, the one I remembered igniting like paper.

I reached for it slowly, half expecting it to be hot.

It wasn’t.

The fabric was coarse beneath my fingers, sturdy in a cheap, utilitarian way. The kind of cloth meant to last through abuse. And sewn into it, over the chest, where a badge would sit in a uniform, was an emblem stitched in silver thread. The design was intricate, deliberate: curling lines that formed a symbol I couldn’t place.

It looked important.

Which meant it should have meant something to me.

But when I stared at it, searching for recognition, all I got was emptiness.

Beside the robe were other clothes. Muddied, stiff with dried earth. They looked like they’d been worn hard and washed poorly.

Two books sat near the clothes, their covers scuffed, corners bent, the bindings worn as if they’d been thumbed through a hundred times. They weren’t large tomes, more like manuals, the kind you’d carry everywhere.

My hand hovered over them.

A memory flickered. Students chanting, blue rings forming around their arms like living bracelets.

I swallowed.

Maybe the books would tell me what I was supposed to be. What I could do. What I was missing.

I picked up the nearest one. The cover was cracked leather, cool and dry. When I opened it, the pages rasped softly. It was filled edge to edge with writing that wasn’t writing. Symbols curled and hooked and looped in patterns that looked almost beautiful until I tried to make sense of them. Diagrams spread across the pages in careful lines: circles within circles, intersecting triangles, spirals marked with tiny runes.

They should have been instructions.

They might as well have been spiderwebs.

I flipped another page. And another. My eyes scanned faster, desperate for anything familiar. An alphabet, a number, even a repeated symbol I could latch onto.

Nothing.

Just more of the same alien script.

My grip tightened until the book’s spine creaked.

Frustration rose hot and fast, tangling with the fear already lodged in my chest. I snapped the book shut hard enough to sting my palms and tossed it toward the corner. It hit the canvas wall with a dull thud and slumped sideways. The second book followed, along with the muddied clothes, hurled in a sudden burst of helpless anger.

I sat there, breathing too quickly, staring at the scattered mess I’d made like it belonged to someone else.

No weapons.

I looked again, searching. Anywhere a knife or staff might be tucked.

Nothing.

No identification.

Nothing with my name. Nothing that told me what rank I held, what group I belonged to, what “Kaspar” was supposed to do when the world demanded he march toward a gate.

No explanation.

Just a robe, an emblem, and two books I couldn’t read.

“Great,” I said, and the word came out bitter. “What am I supposed to be doing here?”

I didn’t have time to wallow in it.

I was drawing in another shaky breath when the tent flap shifted.

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Just a small movement. Every muscle in my body locked. My gaze snapped to the entrance.

Something, someone, was right outside, pressing close enough that the cloth bowed inward. A hand shoved against the flap.

“Get moving, Kaspar! Get out of here, you useless fool!”

I shoved the tent flap aside.

Outside, the camp was already alive with movement. Boots scuffed over rock. Cloth snapped. Voices barked orders.

The man who’d been shouting stood right in front of my tent as if he’d been waiting for me to so much as breathe wrong.

He was… not what my panic had conjured.

Chubby, for one. Thick around the middle in a way that suggested a desk, a dining table, and years of ordering other people to do the hard work. A heavy mustache dominated his face, bushy enough to cast a shadow over his upper lip, the ends curled upward. His cheeks were flushed, either from the heat or from the effort of yelling.

He wore an officer’s uniform, but unlike the bright, status-announcing colors I’d seen on other officials, his was a flat, utilitarian gray. The only real splash of color was the cape thrown over his shoulders, long and green, the kind that swayed dramatically even when he wasn’t doing anything worthy of drama.

“Sir?” I said, stepping out of the tent and snapping into what I hoped was a convincing posture. Back straight, shoulders square, chin lifted. Muscle memory, maybe.

The trouble was, I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t recognize anyone.

My thoughts still felt like they were sliding around inside my skull, refusing to settle. Names wouldn’t stick. Faces blurred into a haze of half-familiar strangers.

But one thing did cling, small and sharp, like a splinter I couldn’t remove.

Kaspar.

At least when he’d shouted, it had been at me.

At least now I’m sure that my name is Kaspar, I thought, and hated how desperate that tiny certainty felt.

The officer’s eyes narrowed. They were small, piggish, and bright with irritation. It was as if my existence was a personal inconvenience.

“Don’t ‘sir’ me, you worthless brat!” he snapped.

The volume of it was ridiculous, loud enough that a few heads turned from nearby tents.

I swallowed, throat still raw from waking up in terror. “Yes—” I started, but he barrelled on.

“You should already be with the rest of your group,” he barked, jabbing a thick finger toward the narrow “street” between tents. “You lot are supposed to prepare the mana crystals for the ritual.”

Mana crystals.

Ritual.

The words hit my mind like stones dropped into dark water. They made ripples, the dim sense that they were important, but no answers surfaced.

But my mouth moved on its own.

“Yes, sir,” I said, because it was safer than asking questions.

The officer gave a sharp, satisfied huff, as if he’d squeezed the correct response out of me. Without warning, he stomped away from my tent toward the one beside it.

I watched, uneasy, as he planted himself in front of the neighboring canvas like a man about to kick a dog. He drove his boot straight into the supporting pole.

The tent shuddered. The pole snapped sideways with a dry crack, and the whole structure folded in on itself. Canvas collapsed, smothering whatever poor soul had been sleeping inside.

A muffled shout rose up. Half outrage, half panic. Followed by frantic rustling as someone fought their way out of the sudden cloth prison.

“Get moving, you lazy maggots!” the officer roared.

From other tents came groans, curses, hurried scrambling. Flaps were yanked open. Students stumbled out with hair stuck up and eyes still sticky with sleep. Some looked terrified; others wore the blank resignation.

They grabbed their belongings with the speed of prey animals.

I stood there, stiff as a post, watching the officer prowl and shout and destroy small shelters as if it fed him.

One by one, the students were herded toward me, forming a loose cluster in the narrow path between tents. Ten of us in total, myself included.

Ten faces, all variations of exhausted and wary.

Some wore robes like mine, though theirs looked better cared for, their insignias cleaner. One girl’s hands shook as she tied her cloak. A boy with ink-stained fingers blinked rapidly as if trying not to cry.

The officer turned back toward us as if inspecting livestock. His eyes swept across our faces, pausing when someone didn’t stand straight enough, didn’t look attentive enough.

Only when we were all gathered did he finally look pleased.

“For imbeciles meeting me for the first time,” he declared, voice booming as though he were addressing an army instead of a handful of half-awake students, “listen closely, because I don’t repeat myself.”

His gaze pinned us, one by one, lingering just long enough to make my skin crawl.

“And if any of you wastes my time,” he continued, letting the threat hang there like a blade, “I’ll make sure you learn what discipline feels like.”

“I am Blut von Omstr,” the officer announced, chin lifting as if he expected the cavern itself to applaud. “A Smaragdwächter and Third Circle Mage.”

The name landed heavy. Not because it meant anything to me. The ranks and titles still swam in a sea of unfamiliar rules. But the way he said it made the hierarchy obvious even without understanding it.

He turned sharply on his heel, green cape snapping behind him, and started marching through the maze of tents. We fell in after him, ten half-awake students shoved into a line by habit and intimidation. The tent lanes were narrow and uneven, more like trenches cut into a cluttered battlefield than any orderly camp.

As we moved deeper into the dungeon, the air changed.

It grew colder and heavier. The light dimmed, torches thinning out, leaving pockets of shadow. The farther we walked, the more I felt that immense gate in the distance.

We reached a cluster of open-sided tents set apart from the sleeping rows. These weren’t the sloppy student shelters. They were wider, reinforced with thicker poles and rope, arranged with a purposeful spacing that screamed supply line. Men in practical leathers and hard expressions moved between them, hauling crates, checking lists, murmuring to one another in a clipped, efficient cadence.

A logistics point.

Near enough to the gate that I could feel it even when I didn’t look.

Ten large wooden crates waited under one of the tents, each stamped with a symbol I didn’t recognize. Their lids were banded with metal, and faint lines carved into the wood.

Blut strode to the nearest one and rapped his knuckles on the lid like he was knocking on a coffin.

“Gather around.”

We obeyed. Too close, shoulder to shoulder, our robes brushing.

Blut hooked his fingers under the lid and wrenched. The crate complained with a long creak of wood and metal. Then the lid gave, and Blut reached inside.

When his hand emerged, it held a crystal about the size of his palm.

Blue.

It glowed softly, a steady radiance that didn’t flicker like flame. Inside it, mist-like currents swirled as if the crystal had inhaled a piece of the sky. Tiny fissures webbed through it like veins.

“For the first-years who have never seen a mana crystal,” Blut said, voice edged with contempt so thin it was almost polite, “get a good look.”

Blut’s gaze swept across us.

“These crystals amplify a mage’s mana,” he said, holding it up so it caught the torchlight. “They allow for steadier output. Cleaner channeling. Less strain during sustained casting.”

He paused, letting the information settle.

“But don’t think you can use them to gain extra circles,” he warned. “Don’t think you can cast beyond your limits.” His voice dropped slightly, and that somehow made it more dangerous. “They won’t increase your rank. Or compensate for your shortfalls.”

My stomach tightened at those last words, because it felt like he wasn’t speaking to the group anymore.

It felt like he was speaking to me.

Before I could catch my breath, Blut began moving down the line, reaching into the open crate again and again. Each time his hand emerged with another crystal, identical in size but slightly different in its internal patterns.

He didn’t hand them out gently.

He threw them.