The sky cracked like glass.
Again.
Kaelen stood atop the shattered peak of Mount Shenzai, the last place on the continent untouched by the encroaching void. Above him, the stars trembled, flickering like dying embers in a hearth long forgotten. Below, oceans had turned to ash, forests to bone, and cities to echoes.
The 99th end was upon them.
Around him, the wind howled—not with air, but with memory. He didn't flinch as the world screamed. He didn't blink as the crimson rift in the sky yawned wider, devouring the sun. He didn't pray, because he'd long since forgotten how.
Instead, Kaelen sighed.
"Again," he whispered.
And the world ended.
He expected the familiar rush—the disembodied slide through time, the descent into nothing, the blinking return to the past.
Only…
It didn't come.
Instead, Kaelen opened his eyes and found himself staring at a wooden ceiling. The air was warm, slightly musty, and filled with the scent of hay and cooking porridge.
Then came the shock.
His body—it was small. Weak. Soft. Fingers once calloused by centuries of battle were now short and unscarred.
He bolted upright.
His legs tangled in rough blankets as he looked down at himself.
Ten.
He was ten years old again.
"No," he muttered, hands trembling "This… this isn't right."
He scrambled to the old mirror nailed to the wall of the cottage. The face that stared back at him was round, wide-eyed, and innocent. The reflection of a child.
Of his childhood.
A thousand emotions surged at once—confusion, anger, fear, and a buried tenderness he hadn't felt in decades.
This wasn't the world rewinding. It was him.
Outside, the morning sun painted the village of Linmere gold. The river still ran crystal clear, birds chirped in the pines, and the townsfolk bustled through their routines, blissfully unaware of the cycle Kaelen had endured for nearly a hundred lifetimes.
He saw the old farmer Brago haul hay to the barn—alive again. He saw his childhood friend Mira chasing chickens, laughing as if death never touched her. He saw the elder's tower, still whole, not crumbled into ruin as he remembered.
Tears welled in his eyes unbidden.
They were all here, All of them.
Alive.
But Kaelen knew better.
He stepped onto the grass, feeling its softness between bare toes. He clenched his fists and focused. Power—true power—responded like a distant echo.
Yes. His memories were intact.
He hadn't just been reborn—he'd carried everything with him.
Ninety-nine lifetimes of experience.
Forbidden techniques. Forgotten cultivation methods. Secrets lost in the river of time.
He was Kaelen Vire, the Ghost of the Final Sky, Slayer of Titans, Walker of the Ninth Path.
In the body of a child.
And this time, something was different.
The world didn't feel like a reset.
It felt… new.
He wandered into the forest where no villagers dared go—the boundary to the ancient mountains. His mind swirled with questions.
Why had he rewound this time?
Who—or what—was behind the resets?
Was this truly the 100th cycle, or had the cycle ended?
He dropped to one knee and placed a hand on the earth.
Silence.
Then… a whisper. A tug in the void. A presence—faint, watching, distant but aware.
It wasn't the System.
It wasn't fate.
It was something older.
Kaelen's eyes snapped open.
He was not alone anymore.
He returned to the village just as dusk fell. Shadows stretched long. The warmth of the day had waned, but a darker chill crept up his spine—not from cold, but from recognition.
Someone was watching him.
Not in the physical sense.
Someone remembered.
His gaze swept the villagers. Faces he knew, expressions he had memorized over countless loops. But one boy—a stranger, younger than him by a year—tilted his head.
And smiled.
Not the smile of a child.
But the smile of someone who had seen this before.
Kaelen froze.
For the first time in ninety-nine loops, someone else remembered.
Back in his room, Kaelen sat cross-legged on the floor. His body was young, but his mind—his soul—burned with cultivation power.
He began to breathe.
Inhale. Exhale. He reached inward, past the fragile walls of his meridians.
The first cycle, he'd taken ten years to open his core.
This time, he opened it in ten breaths.
A rush of golden light flooded his inner world. His qi stirred, wild and fresh, like a dragon waking from hibernation.
His veins pulsed with potential.
The Path was open.
But it wasn't the same Path he had walked before.
It was deeper.
Twisted.
Time-stained.
And something else stirred within it.
Something… watching.
He opened his eyes.
His cultivation had begun anew—but the rules had changed.
So had the stakes.
And Kaelen vowed, for the first time in a hundred lives—
"I will break the cycle. I will find who started this. And I will end it."
Night fell quickly in Linmere.
Kaelen sat beneath the twisted roots of the ancient Heartpine tree at the village's edge, watching stars flicker into being above. They didn't shine the same way they used to. No—the constellations had shifted. Even the stars were new.
"I'm not in the same world," he whispered.
The soil, the wind, the pull of ambient qi—it all felt familiar but… evolved. More refined. As though the heavens had recalibrated.
And that meant only one thing.
This world wasn't a copy of his past. It was a successor. A continuation. The real timeline, perhaps—the one the loops had hidden from him.
He shivered, not from the cold, but from the implications.
Then came the voice.
"You're early," it said.
Kaelen turned, every sense primed for battle—but the speaker was a girl. Thirteen, maybe. Draped in moss-colored robes, eyes sharp with intelligence far beyond her years.
"Who are you?" Kaelen asked.
"The question isn't who I am," she said, stepping closer "It's who you are—here. Now, In this timeline."
She knew.
His eyes narrowed "You remember."
"Not exactly, But I was taught to expect you. Trained for the moment the man who survived ninety-nine ends would return."
Kaelen's heartbeat slowed "By who?"
Her gaze lifted to the stars.
"You'll find them when you reach the Ember Vein."
She turned to go "There's more than one of you now, Kaelen. This time, you're not the only piece on the board."
And just like that, she vanished into the trees.
Kaelen stared after her, stunned.
The game had changed.
That night, as he drifted into meditation, visions came unbidden—shards of memory and prophecy tangled together.
He saw a white tower floating above a sea of sand.
He saw a cloaked figure slicing time like threads from a loom.
He saw a girl made of fire, weeping into a black crown.
And at the center of it all… a throne made of mirrors.
Each mirror reflected a different version of him.
Some were kings.
Others, monsters.
Kaelen's fists clenched.
He would not become a reflection.
He would become the one who broke the glass.
When dawn came, Kaelen rose with a single word in mind—begin.
And so he did.
But fate had already begun moving pieces of its own…