Garen's breath came in short, ragged gasps, his chest aching as if the very air were too heavy to inhale. He lay upon the cold, cracked earth of the World Between, the same place he had awakened countless times before. The golden trees whispered above him, their leaves caught in an eternal, trembling dance, as if mocking his endless fate. But there was something different this time. This time, he knew.
His fingers brushed against the dirt, feeling the sharpness of the gravel and the decay beneath him. His eyes scanned the sky—that same violet hue hanging ominously above—and the distant glow of the Aetherstone casting a wan, sorrowful light over the landscape. Again, he thought, but the bitterness was now tempered by something else: resolve.
With a groan, he rose to his feet, feeling the weight of his body and the heaviness of the armor that once again encased him. It was familiar—the sharpness of the steel against his skin, the weight of the sword at his hip. Everything here felt as it always had. But this time, it wasn't the world that had changed. It was him.
Garen stared at his hands, at the calluses and scars that lined his skin—the marks of a thousand failed lives. A thousand cycles of hope and despair. Each time, he had fought valiantly. Each time, he had fallen. And each time, the world reset, its wounds healing just enough to give the illusion of peace.
But now, for the first time, he felt the pull of his fate not as a victim, but as a master.
"I remember," he muttered, the words tasting foreign on his tongue even as they felt undeniably true. I remember it all.
The flicker of the Aetherstone, the blinding surge of light that had once brought peace and order to the World Between—it had shattered, and with it, the lives of all who walked in its wake. But Garen knew. He knew who had been behind it, and he knew the fates of the key figures: the rulers, the fallen empress, the warlords of the fractured realms. Each had a role to play in this tragedy. He had seen their deaths, their betrayals, their weaknesses. And he had seen his own failures. The cycle always ended in ruin. And yet, each death was not the end. It was the beginning of a new chance.
He cast his gaze toward the horizon, where the distant fog swallowed the land whole. The Fogged Pass. He had crossed it so many times, had seen the same enemy waiting in the dark—The Beast of the Fog, a terrifying shadow of twisted, gnashing teeth. He had fought it. And he had died. Over and over.
But this time, he was no fool. The weight of his new knowledge settled deep within him. He had learned the weaknesses of every monster, the timing of every ambush, and the locations of hidden treasures and traps. The mistakes of his past lives had not been in vain. He knew the way.
And yet, even with all this knowledge, even with all his experience, something gnawed at him. There were limits to what he could remember. The end of the cycle always seemed just out of reach. Every time he thought he had found a way forward, a way to change the future, it slipped from his grasp like sand through his fingers.
He had once believed that the only way to break the cycle was to reach the heart of the Aetherstone itself, to restore what was lost and claim the title of Aetherlord. But after a thousand deaths, he knew better. The Aetherstone was not the key to his salvation. It was the prison. The path to the throne was only another road to the same damnation.
"There's more," he whispered, as if the words could unlock something deeper within him. "I've missed something."