Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Naru was sure he was going to die.

He wasn't even sure how he'd gotten into this situation. Why he'd gotten into this situation. Going back to the village and seeing his pare—seeing Tarin and Mari, of all things? That was wildly out of character for him on its own.

But then he'd run into the Trialgoer. Why the Trialgoer had even shown up in his old, dinky little village was beyond him, though he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. Of course Tarin had found a way to involve himself in the Trial. But to have the Trialgoer show up right then and there?

And the old crow had somehow becomepart of the loop! That... that was unheard of. Wasn't it?

Naru didn't exactly have a complete record of what happened across the Trials. He knew what the Integrators told him and whatever he was allowed to keep in his notes between them. That was about it. He knew, for example, that he'd been getting credits for his participation and help, although he was pretty sure there were diminishing returns as the Trials continued. He knew he'd done a number of odd jobs off-planet in return for a variety of trinkets he was allowed to keep.

But he was pretty sure no one had uncovered a way to keep their memories across loops.

Maybe if he saved enough credits, he'd find a skill that let him keep his memories, but the amount he was getting now was almost negligible. At this rate, it was going to take months for him to snag the next rank S skill.

Not that he was ever going to get that opportunity.

That blade was taking a long time to kill him.

It was the worst part of his primary Reflex skill, he decided. Time of Your Life had looked so good when he selected it—his Integrator had nudged him toward it, told him exactly how it functioned.

The more deadly an attack, the more the skill would speed up his mind and reflexes. An A-rank skill with the potential to give him near-infinite time to process and react to any given attack.

It was an excellent skill on paper.

In practice, it meant that when he was caught in a situation like this—with an attack coming too deadly for him to survive and too fast for him to dodge—all he could do was stare at it and think.

Ruminate.

Reflect.

No, he decided. If anyone had uncovered a way to keep their memories across the loops, he would have known about it, and Hestia's time as a Trialgrounds would have ended a long time ago. Even if most of the Hestian Trialgoers were on board with the Integrators and their plan, there were a few that would be more than willing to help the Trialgoer just so their planet would be released from the loops.

Which meant, what, that his father had managed to accomplish something that none of them had ever done? The thought of it was ridiculous. Even Teluwat, with his ability to manipulate Firmament with his words, couldn't find a way to insert himself into the loops.

Naru carefully ignored the fact that Teluwat was definitely the type of person that would hide the knowledge, even if he'd figured it out.

But Tarin had?

If Ethan was telling the truth, he hadn't exactly done it on purpose. The only reason he was alive at all was because Ethan had gone out of his way to rescue him, and that rescue had somehow included him in the loop. Naru had no idea how to replicate that particular success.

Not that it mattered. He was going to die.

He didn't even know how he felt about it.

There were a lot of things Naru had fucked up in life, if he reflected back on it. It wasn't something he liked to think about a lot, but he had plenty of time to do literally nothing but that right now.

All the time in the world meant nothing when he didn't have any Speed skills that could move him out of the way in time. It meant nothing when he didn't have Durability skills that could tank the enormous blade of Firmament threatening to tear him apart.

And all his Inspirations were focused on offense, more fool him. He could practically hear Tarin in the back of his head scolding him for his choices.

He wondered where he would go when he was dead. Mari believed in the Light in the Sky, but after his exposure to the Integrators and Firmament, Naru wasn't sure anymore that there was any such thing. The closest thing he'd ever encountered to a soul was his Firmament.

Which meant his soul was about to get torn apart. It moved slowly, inexorably toward him. Ethan wouldn't help him—why would he?—and even if he wanted to, the power of this thing was beyond anything he'd ever faced. He hadn't even fought anything like this in his own Trials. Ethan was far stronger than he should have been, but...

Naru snorted. The human would get some credits for his death. He was technically part of it, after all. Whatever idiotic thing he'd done to trigger this, he'd caused Naru's death, in some small way; the Interface would reward him for it. Maybe he'd even planned it out this way, although Naru couldn't imagine how Ethan could have planned it.

No, wait. He could. It made perfect sense—Ethan had simply run the loops again and again, explored this particular Tear and figured out what made it tick. Fought it enough times to figure out how to trigger whatever this monstrosity was, and then coordinated things so that they'd agree to "fight together".

Naru had to admit, it was a clever plan. Devious.

It also meant Ethan definitely wouldn't save him. He was probably strong enough to do it if he really wanted to, but Naru couldn't even see where he was; he seemed to have disappeared after summoning some sort of... armored metal construct? He had no idea what kinds of abilities Ethan had. They all seemed ridiculous.

Funny thing was, he was actually starting to like the human, which annoyed the hell out of him in his own way. Ethan was far too understanding for his own good. Naru wasn't stupid—he was well aware they'd taken a break specifically for him when they were on their way to the Tear. He'd overstrained his Firmament trying to stay ahead. But Ethan and his companions had made an excuse for him. Saved him face.

It was more than Tarin and Mari had ever done for him. Every time he made a mistake, every time he fucked up... right there on display for all the world to see.

He wasn't ready, they told him. They wouldn't give him their Firmament because he was unprepared for that kind of power. Because he'd bullied some other, lesser crow, or something like that.

And then he'd been pulled into the Trials.

With none of the power he needed.

If they'd just trusted him—if they'd listened to his apologies, if they'd just let him have even a fraction of the power they'd promised him—maybe his Trial wouldn't have been such a nightmare. Maybe he wouldn't have had to spend the entire first floor of the tower being pushed around by people taking advantage of him.

He had to claw and fight his way to every single advantage he had. He had to take the dirty route—kill people when they were already weak and starving, to make sure he got the credits he needed to grow stronger. If he'd just had the power to begin with, maybe he wouldn't have had to.

Stolen novel; please report.

Whose fault was it really, that he'd turned out like this?

Naru knew what they all thought of him. Tarin and Mari thought of him as a disappointment. Even the other Trialgoers considered him a weakling—he'd come out of the Trials with the least progress in his Firmament and only a handful of powerful skills to his name. His Inspirations were still strong enough that he could go toe-to-toe with them for a short while if he absolutely had to, but he was by far the weakest of them all, and he hated it.

Stronger than everyone else, though. Stronger than Tarin and Mari. Strong enough that he could've taken over the village by force, if he'd wanted to—make it a part of the Great Cities.

He didn't want to. Part of him wanted to... try. To fit in again.

And then he'd tried to save a crow, and the force of his strength had utterly crushed that crow against the cliff.

And Tarin and Mari had demanded he learn to control himself.

Part of him knew that it was a reasonable demand. They hadn't even blamed him for the death—not as much as they could have. They'd held a funeral for the crow that died, and explained to him that the amount of power he had was as much a curse as it was a blessing; he needed to learn to control it so he wouldn't hurt anyone else...

But all Naru heard was the same criticisms he'd heard all his life.

Control this. Learn to do that. Fit in with everyone else and follow the rules he was now clearly above. It hadn't been like that back in his Trial—once he was strong enough, people listened to him. He made the rules.

So he left. Carusath was the perfect place for him. The Great City respected strength above all—not strength of wit and cunning, not strength of strategy, but raw, destructive strength. The Integrators had offered rule of it to him, and all he needed to do was step up and claim it.

On the first day, he proved himself. Crushed every single one of the draconians that would have disobeyed him, that tried to challenge his rule. They became his guards, the ruling caste of the city.

And the rest of it, he just... didn't care. What did it matter? He'd proved himself right, and his parents wrong: he could rule without any of their rules. Carusath was fine.

Except Ethan had proved it wasn't.

Naru knew, on some level, that he wasn't aware of everything going on in his city. Of course he wasn't—he couldn't be. No leader could be apprised of everything that happened at every moment, except maybe someone like She-Who-Whispers, and she was an exception and a perfectionist of a sort that scared even him. But he hadn't known how bad it had gotten.

Was that true? He stared at the blade coming for him.

No. It wasn't.

Some part of him had known. But the bureaucracy was an insulating layer for him. He didn't need to deal with all the people that wanted to enter or leave Carusath; he would've preferred not to deal with it at all. All the "paperwork" he dealt with? More or less just requests handed to him by the draconians for infrastructure and projects he didn't really care about.

There were fights out in the streets every day. Ethan had even pointed them out. Naru vaguely recalled something about a cleanup crew that worked to clean up messes that resulted from those fights...

And then there was all of this.

If he was alone in the Tear, Naru knew what he would've done. They were all largely combat-oriented challenges. He would've killed the mother and her son as soon as they appeared—they were just Firmament ghosts, anyway, they didn't count as people—and then the guard, too, The Tear would have closed and he would have been granted somewhere between ten to fifty credits, spread across the stat categories, depending on how he performed.

That wasn't what Ethan had done, which surprised him. These were just specters. What did it matter?

Why did Ethan help the mother? Why did watching her make him feel that terrible, twisting sensation in his gut?

That was why he'd attacked—to shut her up. He didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to think about everything that had been happening under his nose. Didn't want to think about the relief in the eyes of the remarkably similar-looking mother and child he'd signed the papers of back in the real guardpost, at the real station, when Ethan made him sign those stupid papers. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Then she'd whipped him away with more force than she should have been capable of, dagger buried in his stomach.

When did he become so weak? Had he always been?

The light in front of him grew brighter. His Reflex skill wouldn't last much longer. This thing would tear through him and his Firmament, and not even the twisted nature of Hestia's time would be able to bring him back. It needed something to work with, after all.

Naru closed his eyes.

And the light... stopped.

So did his skill.

He opened them again. The metal creature Ethan had summoned stood in front of him, holding the deadly blade of Firmament in—in a single hand. What was... when did...

"What?" he croaked out loud. His voice was hoarser than he imagined. Ethan's summon had saved him. How did it even—how was it holding that thing? That thing would've killed even Versa. Even some of the stronger Trialgoers, if he had to guess. The raw Firmament pouring out of it, the way it twisted everything around it, the feeling it gave him deep inside his core, like he was hopelessly outmatched...

The same feeling he'd had when his Firmament touched Ethan's. The feeling he told himself he'd imagined.

The creature spoke. "You okay?" Ethan asked.

That was Ethan?

"Why would you..." Naru felt the question die as he asked. Had he not been lying about not just... killing everyone for points? Did he actually save people? Had he actually saved Tarin?

If he had, then how was he this strong?

The metal creature—Ethan—rolled his eyes, or at least gave off the impression of it. Naru couldn't see much more than a flicker of golden-blue light in the helmet's eye-slits, but he still felt the disdain.

"You're an asshole," Ethan told him bluntly. "But one, you're under my protection."

He threw the blade of Firmament to the side. Discarded it. Like it wasn't a weapon that could kill Trialgoers.

"Two," Ethan said. "I think, as much as they pretend otherwise, Tarin and Mari would miss you."

Naru felt a pang. Would they? They hated him. He hated them.

But he'd gone to them when he didn't know what to do. Because he knew, in some way, that if he really needed the help, they would give it to him. Oh, they would give him all kinds of shit for it, but it wouldn't stop them from helping him.

Naru was a proud crow, but he wasn't so proud he couldn't admit something as basic as that. Not after watching all his preconceptions get torn down like this.

Ethan bent down. Naru felt a surge of Firmament that pushed all the way down into the third layer—third. That was... if skills didn't come into play, Ethan would crush almost all the Trialgoers except maybe the top two. And that wasn't taking into account whatever this transformation was.

Ethan held out his hand.

"Three," he said. "I make sure everyone gets a second chance. The Trials are built to change you into someone the Integrators can control. You can decide otherwise. But you're gonna have to make that choice, not me."

Naru stared.

He took Ethan's hand. Got to his feet, slowly. The monster behind Ethan seemed barely real. Not in front of the human whose presence cracked the Firmament around him.

"I'm not in the loops," Naru said. "I'm not going to remember this. Even if I want to, I..."

His voice trailed off. Did he want to? He'd always said he didn't want to fight the Integrators. That it was impossible.

It didn't feel impossible anymore. This felt impossible. Maybe his calibration of what was impossible had always been off.

"I know," Ethan said. The monster behind him roared, and Ethan glanced up. "I have to deal with this first. Don't die."

"I won't," Naru said numbly. He didn't even know if it was true.

He stared at the blade of Firmament still on the ground. The blade strong enough to cut into his core.

Tarin remembered the loops because a fragment of Ethan's Interface had gotten stuck in his core, if he understood the story correctly.

Naru knew two things.

One, if he remembered the loops, he would be an outcast again. This wasn't something that could be repeated. The other Trialgoers would despise him, despite this being something that they'd been trying to do themselves. The Integrators would never trust him or any of the other Hestian Trialgoers that managed to do this. The loops were part of how they were controlled.

Two, if he let himself forget this, he'd never be anything more than what he was now.

And in front of Ethan, all he was now felt so... petty. Empty.

Naru walked over and picked up the blade. He had no idea what he was about to do.

But he also couldn't remember the last time he'd ever wanted anything as much as this. The last time he'd wanted to change. The last time he'd cared.

No. He did.

When he was a child, he remembered telling Tarin and Mari he wanted to make all the crows in their village as happy as could be. He remembered the smiles they'd given him—bright and warm and unconditional. He remembered the small party they'd had, with only two or three friends, and how at that time in his life it felt like the biggest and most important thing he'd ever been a part of.

He stared at the Firmament blade in his hands. Slowly, his grip tightened.

He'd carve this damn memory into his soul if he had to.