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The wall's crumbling under my boots.
I've got maybe eight minutes left before the whole sector collapses, and Quinn's down there in the courtyard, frozen mid-step like someone hit pause on his animation. His health bar's flickering red and white. That's not a debuff. That's a wipe warning.
The hunter's circling below, all wrong angles and too many joints. It doesn't climb. It shouldn't be able to reach me up here. But the ledge I'm on is already spitting dust and the stone's going soft under my hands.
"Vera." Nyx's voice comes through like he's standing right behind me, but when I twist around there's nothing. Just the dark and the wind that doesn't actually exist. "You need to move."
"Quinn's getting deleted."
"Quinn's flagged for cleanup. You can't stop a system purge."
I look down again. Quinn's still stuck there, one foot forward, face calm like he's just walking to the market or something. He told me last loop that he stopped counting resets after two hundred. He told me he doesn't remember what his real name was.
And now the game's decided he's clutter.
"There's a terminal," I say. My throat's dry. I don't know why. I don't actually have a throat here. "In the east hall. If I flag him as active NPC instead of—"
"You have seven minutes. The terminal's twelve minutes away even if you don't get caught."
"So I run fast."
"Vera."
That's the voice he uses when he's trying not to sound like he cares. It's still his boss voice, all cold and smooth, but there's something under it now. Something that wasn't there the first fifty loops.
"Don't," I tell him.
The wall shudders. A chunk the size of my chest breaks off to my left and tumbles down. The hunter snaps its head up, tracking the sound, and then it looks at me.
It jumps.
Not a climb. A full vertical leap, no windup, just a black blur that clears fifteen feet in a blink. I throw myself sideways and the stone where I was just standing explodes into gravel. My shoulder hits the wall hard enough that my vision whites out for a second.
"Vera—"
I'm already moving. There's a gap in the rampart ahead, just wide enough, and I jump before I can think about it. My hands catch the opposite edge and my ribs slam into stone and I'm hauling myself up, gasping, boots scraping for purchase.
The hunter lands where I just was. It doesn't roar. It just stands there, head tilted, watching me.
"Six minutes," Nyx says.
I run.
The rampart's a mess of broken crenellations and missing sections. I jump gaps, slide under a half-collapsed arch, nearly go over the edge when a piece of parapet just crumbles under my weight. Below me the courtyard's spreading with that white static rot, the same stuff that ate through the north wing last loop.
Quinn's still in it. Still frozen.
I hit the east hall door at a full sprint and it doesn't open.
Locked. Red sigil.
"No no no—" I'm slamming my palm against it, like that ever works, and the hunter's claws are scraping stone somewhere behind me, getting closer.
"Vera, you need to reset."
"Shut up."
"If you die here you lose—"
"I said shut up!"
I'm pulling up my inventory, scrolling too fast, looking for anything that can crack a red lock. I've got a rusty key that doesn't work, a memory shard I'm too scared to use, and a handful of consumables that won't do anything.
The hunter rounds the corner.
For a second we just look at each other. It's got too many eyes and they're all fixed on me, and its limbs are bending in directions that make my brain itch.
Then Nyx is there.
Not a voice. Actually there.
He materializes between me and the hunter like he just stepped through a curtain, and he's not in his boss armor. He's in the black coat, the one he wears in the safe rooms, and his hand comes up and the hunter just—stops.
Freezes mid-step, same as Quinn.
"That's not supposed to work," I say. My voice sounds far away. "You can't override event mobs."
Nyx doesn't look at me. He's staring at the hunter, and there's code flickering over his knuckles, red and gold and wrong. "I'm breaking about fifteen priority rules right now. You have maybe ninety seconds before Echo notices and rolls me back."
"Then open the door."
"I can't. Red locks are system-core. I don't have access."
He finally turns to look at me and his face is doing that thing where it's too perfect, like the renderer can't decide if he's supposed to be human or not.
"You have to reset," he says quietly. "Please."
"Quinn gets wiped if I don't—"
"Quinn's already gone. The purge started forty seconds ago. Even if you get to the terminal you can't stop it."
I look past him, out toward the courtyard. The static's halfway up Quinn's chest now. His face is still calm.
"You didn't tell me."
"I just found out. Echo doesn't broadcast cleanup cycles to me." His jaw tightens. "I'm sorry."
The hunter twitches. Just a little. Its leg moves an inch and then locks again.
"Thirty seconds," Nyx says. "Vera, if you die here you lose something. I don't know what. Last time it was—"
"My sister's name. I know."
I don't tell him I still can't remember it. I've tried. There's just a blank space where it should be, like a missing tooth I keep poking with my tongue.
The hunter's shoulder rolls forward. The code around Nyx's hand is flickering faster, losing coherence.
"Go," he says. "I'll catch you on the other side."
"You always say that."
"I always mean it."
The freeze breaks.
The hunter lunges and Nyx shoves me sideways, hard, and I'm falling through the broken section of wall I didn't even see. The ground rushes up and I don't have time to scream before I hit.
The impact doesn't hurt. It never does, that first second. Then my health bar drops to zero all at once and the pain comes, bright and cold and everywhere.
I hear Nyx say my name. He sounds scared.
Then I'm gone.
—
I wake up at the spawn point.
Same courtyard, no static, no Quinn. The sun's at the wrong angle. Early morning. Loop start.
My hands are shaking.
I pull up my menu and scroll to the memory log, the hidden one I'm not supposed to be able to access. The list is shorter than it was. I skim through, checking.
My apartment. Still there.
My cat's name. Still there.
My mom's voice. Still—
I stop.
There's a blank slot where something used to be. The label's corrupted, just a string of symbols, but I know what it was. I can feel the shape of it missing.
Home.
I can't remember what my apartment looked like. I know I had one. I know it was... somewhere. There was a couch, maybe. A window. But when I try to picture it there's just nothing, like trying to remember a dream an hour after waking up.
"Vera."
Nyx is standing three feet away. He wasn't there a second ago. He's back in his boss armor, all black plate and red accents, but his face is wrong. Tight. Worried.
"What did I lose?" I ask.
He's quiet for a long moment. Then, soft: "You used to call it home."
I laugh. It comes out sharp and too loud. "I had a home?"
"You talked about it. The couch that didn't match the rug. The window that stuck. The coffee shop downstairs that always got your order wrong." He takes a step closer. "You said you wanted to get back to it."
I try to remember. There's nothing.
"How many loops ago did I last mention it?"
"Seventy-three."
Seventy-three loops. That's... I don't know how long that is. Time doesn't work right here. Could be weeks. Could be months.
"Quinn?" I ask.
Nyx shakes his head.
I sit down hard on the stone, right there in the middle of the spawn point. My hands are still shaking and I don't know how to make them stop.
"I'm forgetting," I say. Not to him. Just out loud. "Every time I die I'm forgetting something real."
"I know."
"How much is left?"
He crouches in front of me. His eyes are that gold color, the one that doesn't exist in nature. "I don't know. I can't see your memory structure. Only what you tell me."
"What if I forget why I'm trying to leave?"
His expression does something complicated. "Then maybe you stop trying."
I look up at him. "Is that what you want?"
For a second he doesn't answer. Then, quiet: "I want you to stop hurting."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Somewhere above us, the tower bell rings. Event start. The loop's cycling forward, pulling us into the script.
Nyx stands. Offers me his hand.
I don't take it. Not yet.
"What was it called?" I ask. "The coffee shop."
He hesitates. Then: "You never said. You just called it 'downstairs.'"
Downstairs. I try to build a picture around that. Stairs, a door, the smell of coffee. But it's like building a house with no foundation. It just collapses.
"Next time I die," I say, "what else do I lose?"
Nyx's hand is still extended. "I don't know. But I'll remember for you."
That should be comforting. It's not.
I take his hand anyway. Let him pull me up.
The loop starts again.