Mike's body convulsed on the stone floor of The Hollow.
The raw power from the monster he had consumed twisted inside him, reshaping nerves, burning through bone. Rya stood back, arms crossed, her face unreadable. Sigils flared on the walls around them—red, then gold, then black. The Hollow felt like it breathed, like it knew what was happening.
Mike screamed once, then fell silent.
His eyes opened.
They glowed.
Not just with light, but with something deeper—older. Smoke curled from his fingertips. The monster's gift had fused with him now. No longer rejecting, no longer resisting. It wanted him. And something deep inside wanted it back.
"You've crossed the line," Rya whispered. "You're not just a bearer anymore."
The ground shook.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
From one of the side tunnels, footsteps echoed—heavy, too many to count. Rya stepped forward, drawing her shadow-blade. "Company."
Mike rose, still shaking, but standing.
From the tunnel emerged ten figures.
They wore masks—bone-white, carved with silent screaming mouths. Each moved with unnatural rhythm, their bodies jerking like marionettes pulled by invisible strings. Their weapons looked fused to their limbs—blades, chains, spines of twisted metal.
Loopspawn. But not like the others.
"They're marked," Rya said. "Twisted by the loop itself."
Behind them, two more figures emerged, running to Rya's side. One wore a cracked crimson visor, a gauntlet pulsing with firelight on her arm. The other floated just above the ground, his cloak rustling without wind, eyes blind and white.
"About time," Rya muttered.
"Mike, meet Kael and Juno," she said without turning. "Kael burns. Juno sees."
The Loopspawn moved as one.
Mike didn't wait.
He raised his hand—and fire erupted. Not fire from a torch or a lighter. This was fire that screamed, fire that hungered. It tore through the chamber, catching two of the enemy before they could react. They dropped, twitching, masks cracking.
Mike staggered.
The power inside him bucked.
His skin split for a moment—black smoke leaking from his veins—then sealed again.
"Careful!" Kael shouted. "You lose control, it feeds."
The remaining eight charged.
Rya and her allies moved as one. Mike felt something click. Not like before, when he fought to survive. This was different. This was war.
And for the first time, he wasn't alone
Dust rained from the ceiling. Cracks spread through the walls like veins. Mike's vision pulsed—red, gold, black. His breath came ragged, but not from exhaustion. From power.
Too much power.
Kael stood at his side, blades of ember-lined steel spinning in his hands. Juno floated just behind, her body glowing with sigils, eyes blank with focus.
Across the ruined arena, the ten enemies stood motionless. Not monsters. Not like the others. These wore skin—borrowed or stolen. Human shapes, but twisted. Jaws unhinged too wide. Eyes too dark. Limbs that bent the wrong way.
And they smiled.
The one in front stepped forward, its voice like gravel grinding in a dry throat. "Loop-bearers. Still pretending this fight can be won."
Mike's body tensed, heat radiating from under his skin. His veins glowed faintly now, crawling up his arms like molten tattoos. The transformation hadn't stopped. It wasn't done.
But the enemy didn't wait.
They moved as one. Ten shadows crashing forward.
Kael met them first—his blades a blur of sparks. Juno lifted her hands and the air screamed, gravity bending under her spellwork.
Mike felt the surge inside him, the instinct to join, to rip into the enemy with his new strength. But when he leapt into the fray, something snapped.
His body lit up. Fire erupted from his spine, his arms, his chest. Not just energy. Something alive.
He punched the first enemy. It didn't just fall—it exploded. Flesh turned to ash. Bone to mist.
Mike staggered back, eyes wide. His arms still glowed. The power didn't stop.
He couldn't stop.
Another enemy lunged. He didn't hesitate. His hand met its face—and the creature vanished in a burst of red light.
Too fast. Too strong.
"Mike!" Rya's voice cut through the chaos.
He turned, eyes wild, chest heaving.
"Pull back!" she yelled.
"I can't!" His voice was raw, choked with heat.
Two more enemies rushed him. He roared—and fire surged out in a wave, obliterating the ground around him. Kael dove away just in time. Juno's barrier barely held.
And then… silence.
The dust cleared.
Mike stood alone in a circle of scorched stone. Bodies gone. Enemies gone.
But so were the sigils on the walls.
Rya stared at him, breathless. "You burned the seal."
Mike's power flickered—then vanished.
He dropped to his knees.
Juno stepped forward, pale and shaking. "You didn't just kill them. You erased them."
Mike looked down at his hands. Ash drifted from his fingers.
Kael's voice came low. "That wasn't your power alone. Something else came through."
Rya looked at the cracked ceiling, the blackened air.
"They know where we are now."
Mike didn't speak. He couldn't.
Whatever he'd unleashed—it hadn't just destroyed the enemy.
It had called something worse.
The battlefield smoldered.
Ash drifted like snow through the cratered ruins, the charred remains of the city street still glowing red in places. Glass crunched under Mike's boots as he staggered forward, blood caked on his face, the energy inside him twitching like a live wire.
Ten enemies. All gone. Reduced to smoke, bone, or worse.
And yet, he didn't feel like he'd won.
Rya leaned against a broken wall, clutching her ribs, her breath ragged. Juno sat nearby, eyes scanning the destruction, silent as always. Kael paced in a tight circle, muttering to himself, trying to calm the tremor in his hand.
No one said it, but they all felt the same thing.
Mike had lost control.
The thing inside him—what the monster had left behind—had surged out like wildfire, a violent storm of black fire and broken time. It hadn't stopped until everything in its path was gone. Friend or foe.
He could still see the look in Kael's eyes. Not fear—something deeper. Doubt.
"You felt that, didn't you?" Mike finally said.
Kael didn't stop pacing. "We all did."
Rya didn't look up. "You're changing faster than we expected."
Mike dropped to one knee, pain threading through his chest. "What did I unlock?"
Rya met his gaze. "Not what. Who. That power wasn't yours. It was someone else's. Buried. Waiting. And now… it's awake."
A low hum filled the air. The ground beneath them pulsed once.
Twice.
Then cracked.
A shockwave surged out, knocking them all back. From the center of the ruins, where the last of the monsters had died, a light burst upward—a pillar of shifting red and gold.
Juno stood, eyes wide. "You broke a seal."
Mike's throat tightened. "That wasn't just a battle."
"No," Rya said, her voice low. "It was a summoning."
Figures moved in the distance. Not monsters.
Worse.
Armored forms. Each taller than a man. Their steps left blackened marks on the ground. Their faces hidden behind smooth masks. No eyes. No mouths.
Just hunger.
"Loopwalkers," Rya whispered. "Hunters from before the first reset."
Kael stepped beside her, drawing a blade made of solid wind. "You said those were a myth."
"They were. Until now."
Mike rose, the dark fire already dancing along his fingers. "Then I'll become the thing they fear."
Juno smirked. "You're getting better at this."
But inside, Mike wasn't sure. The power had saved them—but it had almost destroyed him too.
And whatever was coming next... it wouldn't be a fight for survival.
It would be war.
The chamber changed the moment Mike stepped inside.
Stone cracked beneath his boots, not from decay—but from heat. Lava pulsed through jagged veins in the floor like blood, lighting the room in a dull red glow. The air shimmered, thick with smoke and power. The Hollow was gone. This place—this trial—existed somewhere else, somewhere between memory and nightmare.
He felt the souls inside him stir.
The monsters he'd destroyed. The power he'd taken. Each one fought for control in his blood, clawing at the edges of his mind. But they feared something too. Whatever this place was… it silenced them.
A voice echoed around him—not the whispering one. This voice thundered, cold and commanding.
"You have taken what was not meant to be owned. Now you must bear its weight."
Fire split from the floor and took form—human, but not. Its skin was obsidian, cracked and glowing at the seams. Its eyes were molten gold. It didn't speak again.
It charged.
Mike barely dodged, flame slicing the air beside his face. He threw his arm out, energy surging to his hand—but it sputtered, erratic. The souls inside resisted, as if this place stripped away their strength. He couldn't rely on them now.
He had to rely on himself.
Each blow from the fire-being shattered stone, each strike forcing Mike back. His breath came ragged, his body aching, but he kept moving. He remembered what Rya said: You're not fully human anymore.
He let go.
He called on the monsters—not for strength, but for memory.
One had leapt between dimensions. One had howled with sound that broke steel. One had dissolved its enemies with a touch. He didn't summon their power—he became their essence. Shifted with them.
And struck.
The obsidian creature screamed as Mike's fist landed, bursting through its molten chest. Fire erupted around them, engulfing the chamber.
When the smoke cleared, Mike stood alone. The trial was over.
But the voice returned.
"One trial passed. Nine remain."
Mike looked up. The sky above wasn't sky—it was a swirling, endless eye. Watching.
Always watching.
The Hollow was silent.
Mike stood alone now, the ground still scarred from the last battle. The others had gone deeper into the tunnels, but he stayed behind, pulled by the whispers echoing through the stone.
He found it in the chamber beneath the chamber—a hidden place behind a sigil that flickered faintly at his touch. The walls down here were covered in symbols older than language, drawn in something darker than ink.
At the center stood a pedestal, and resting on it, three items: a broken blade, a cracked loopstone, and a single torn page.
He picked it up. The writing wasn't his. But he recognized the names.
Rya. Kael. Juno.
The memory hit him like a wave.
He saw Rya—years younger—standing before a circle of elders, her hands wrapped in blood-soaked cloth. She had been chosen after surviving her first death at twelve. Chosen to hunt the monsters that fed the loop. Chosen to die again and again.
Kael had been her shadow. He volunteered to follow her. They said he was fearless. They didn't know he had already died once too—saving his brother, whose body never returned.
Juno… Juno had no memory of her first death. Only visions. Dreams she couldn't explain. Her powers came differently, not through battle, but through connection. She could feel the loop's pain. Its hunger. Its truth.
They were the last of the first circle. Survivors of the Purge, the night the others turned into something else—corrupted by the loop's temptation, becoming the very things they once fought.
The three had sealed part of it away. It cost them everything.
And they made a vow: no more loop-bearers.
But then Mike happened.
He dropped the page. The whisper returned—not behind him, but beside him now.
"You were never meant to be born into this," it said.
Mike turned.
A figure stood in the dark. Not a monster. Not a man.
The loop, given shape.
And it was watching him.