It was supposed to be just another beginning.
Loop Four.
Callen Ward sat at his desk, staring at the lines on his palm, waiting for the morning bell. Birds chirped. Light spilled through the high windows. Somewhere, Rhoan muttered in his sleep and rolled over.
Everything looked the same.
Felt the same.
But it wasn't.
Because this time, he wasn't the only one who remembered.
He'd seen it in her eyes the day before—the glimmer of confusion, of familiarity. The way Isora Gray had smiled at him, hesitant, thoughtful. Like her soul was trying to open a door it didn't yet understand.
Now, it was time to knock louder.
---
He found her near the campus green, sitting on her usual bench with a book she never really read. She was a creature of habit, even across resets.
Callen approached slowly, feeling a strange mix of fear and hope. His fingers brushed the hidden anchor inside his soul—a pulse of steady warmth.
She looked up as he approached.
Their eyes met.
And this time… she blinked. Frowned.
"…Have we spoken already today?" she asked.
Callen's breath caught.
"No," he said quietly. "Not yet."
Isora stared at him for a long moment. Then at the book in her lap, as if trying to remember why she was there.
"I dreamed about fire," she murmured.
He sat beside her.
"What else?"
She didn't answer at first.
Then, softly: "You were there. You called me a storm. I… don't know why I remember that. It's not real, right?"
He turned toward her, voice barely a whisper. "What if it was?"
She looked at him sharply.
Something in her eyes changed.
> Recognition.
---
By sunset, they sat in the alchemy lab, alone, the doors sealed with three layered wards.
Callen watched her as she traced a finger along the rune-etched pendant he'd given her in Loop Three. Her expression was pale with disbelief.
"I should call a healer," she said. "Or report this. I remember things that couldn't have happened. You—fighting monsters. Rhoan dying. A knight made of glass. But it's wrong. Isn't it?"
"It's all true," he said. "You're remembering pieces of the last loop. I anchored your soul to a fragment of mine."
She shook her head. "That's impossible."
"No," he said. "It's painful. But not impossible."
A long silence.
Then, Isora asked, "How many times?"
Callen's shoulders slumped. "Four that I remember. But Lyssa—the other Fixed—said I've died thirty-eight times."
Isora looked sick.
He reached across the table and took her hand. "You're the first one who's ever remembered anything."
She didn't pull away.
Instead, she whispered, "Then let's make this loop count."
---
The days passed faster this time.
With Isora as a true ally, everything accelerated. She'd always been a prodigy—sharp-minded, fiercely focused—but now that she knew time was repeating, she burned with a new purpose.
They stayed up late casting dual rituals. She taught him her advanced flame channeling techniques, and he gave her access to the notes he'd stolen from the Subvault.
Together, they learned faster than he ever had alone.
Together, they made plans.
---
"Your tether anchor," she said one night. "Could it bond to more than one soul?"
"Maybe," Callen said. "But the risk is high. If it fractures—"
"—we both lose everything," she finished.
They were in the observatory tower. The sky overhead full of stars. The red moon weeks away, but looming in their minds like a guillotine.
Callen leaned on the railing. "We need to test it. I think I can make a lesser anchor. Use my tether as the source and carve new ones."
"And give them to others?" she asked.
He nodded. "Maybe Rhoan. Maybe someone stronger. Maybe even a professor."
She smiled faintly. "I'll start enchanting containment runes in the meantime."
It was the first time either of them had said we instead of I since the loops began.
---
On the ninth night, Isora remembered her own death.
She woke screaming.
Callen rushed to her room—ignored the stares of confused dormmates—and found her curled in a corner, shaking.
"I burned alive," she sobbed. "I tried to protect a kid and my flames—they turned on me. I felt everything. Everything, Callen."
He sat beside her and didn't say anything.
There were no words for that kind of pain.
Only the silence of someone who understood.
---
By the twelfth day, they had created two new soul anchors—small ones, far weaker than Callen's core tether. But enough, perhaps, to preserve slivers of memory.
They chose carefully.
Rhoan was one.
Professor Halem was the second.
"Are you sure?" Isora asked. "He's… dangerous. He knows too much."
Callen nodded. "Which means he might already be Fixed. We have to know."
---
Day Fourteen arrived again.
Red moon. Screams. Cracking wards.
This time, they were ready.
Isora stood atop the eastern tower, staff ablaze, hurling phoenix flame down at the monsters as they poured through the breach points.
Callen guarded the dormitory entrance, slinging spells so fast his wand burned red-hot.
The monsters shrieked. Shadows tore through reality.
But they held.
And then—the knight came again.
This time, Isora saw him first.
"Callen!" she shouted. "He's behind—!"
The knight moved faster than thought.
Callen turned in time to parry the blade—but barely. Sparks flew. His wand cracked. The knight drove forward like a glacier with a sword.
They fought.
Harder. Longer.
Callen cast with his soul, not just his hands. Burned through every layer of his tether. Even Isora joined in, hurling a nova burst that staggered the knight.
It reeled.
Then it laughed.
> "You've learned. Good."
Its voice shook the stones beneath them.
> "But you still don't understand."
Then the knight vanished.
Not retreated.
Not defeated.
Evaporated.
Callen stared at the empty space.
"…That's new."
Isora gasped. "Did we just win?"
Callen wasn't sure.
Because deep inside him, the anchor pulsed—not with warmth, but with fear.
Something had changed.
---
They didn't die that night.
Not Callen. Not Isora. Not even Rhoan.
Instead, when morning came, the school stood battered—but intact.
Callen sat beside Isora on the fountain's edge.
"This is the longest I've lasted," he whispered.
She nodded. "We pushed the loop."
"Maybe it won't reset this time."
But then, behind them—a voice.
Smooth. Male. Familiar.
> "You're both quite interesting."
They spun.
Professor Halem stood there.
His eyes glowing faintly gold.
And then he said it:
> "Thirty-nine loops, and finally someone gets it right."