Darkness stretched without end. No sound. No scent. No warmth. Only the suffocating silence of nothingness.
The only light came from the cracks spreading across Mike's body, thin lines of radiance seeping through flesh as if he himself were breaking apart. The price of using every ability at once—of pushing far beyond his limits.
He knelt in the void, clutching at empty air where Mio had been only moments ago. He had held her… and then she had crumbled like ash, fading from his arms as if she had never existed.
His body split further, fragments of himself evaporating into the abyss. Yet he didn't care. Not about the pain. Not about the light bleeding from his skin. All he could do was stare at the place she had been, hollow and wordless, drowning in the silence that followed her absence.
"In the end… I couldn't protect her. I couldn't protect anyone," he whispered, pain and regret etched into every word. "If there's an afterlife… maybe I could—" His voice cracked. "Do I even deserve that, after what I've done?"
{ How pitiful }
The sudden voice echoed loudly across the void. No body, no presence—just sound, cutting into the silence like a blade.
Mike's head snapped up. "Who's there?" he demanded, his eyes darting across the endless dark, searching for the phantom.
{ You're even worse than I was }
The voice resonated inside his skull, mocking yet strangely familiar.
Before Mike could reply—snap—the void shattered.
In an instant, the darkness gave way to blinding white. His fractured body healed, restored to its original form.
And the voice spoke again.
{ Well, I guess I can't blame you… after all, I am you. }
Mike froze, the words echoing in his mind.
"…You're me?" he whispered, his voice hoarse, trembling between disbelief and anger.
From the white void, a figure emerged. The same height, the same build… the same silver-tipped black hair. But his eyes were sharper, carrying the weight of countless battles and endless grief. This wasn't just a reflection—it was him, older somehow, more weathered.
The white space pressed in around them—featureless, endless, a purity so stark it was suffocating. Every breath Mike drew felt loud, like an intrusion. There was no horizon, no sky, no ground—just blinding whiteness, as though existence itself had been stripped bare.
Past Mike smirked faintly. "Took you long enough to realize. I'm the one who came before you. The one who carried the burden of going back again and again… dragging my body through timelines until it broke me."
Mike's chest tightened. "So all those… déjà vu… those dreams… it was you?"
Past Mike nodded slowly. "Every time Mio died, every time Chloe screamed, every time the world crumbled around us—I lived it. Over and over. Until I learned something the hard way."
As he spoke, the whiteness rippled. For a heartbeat, Mike saw it—Mio's body crushed beneath rubble, Chloe's bloodied hand reaching out, his own corpse broken and lifeless in dozens of different ways. And then the visions dissolved back into the white, leaving only silence behind.
Mike staggered, clutching his head. "Stop it…!"
Past Mike's eyes softened. "That's the truth I can't wash away. And now it's yours to bear."
He stepped closer, his presence heavy but calm. "Traveling back physically… it tears reality apart. You literally create a new timeline on top of the original. And then you have two Mikes in one world. That's a paradox, a wound in time itself. I tried to fight it, to fix it with sheer will, but all I did was make things worse."
Mike clenched his fists, his voice breaking. "So what changed? Why am I different?"
Past Mike tilted his head, studying him with a strange pity. "Because I … found the only way out. Not the body. The mind. Memories carried backward, instead of flesh. Pain instead of paradox. That's the regression I—no, we—unlocked."
The white seemed to pulse faintly, like it agreed with the truth of those words.
Silence stretched between them, heavy, suffocating.
Mike finally spoke, voice low and trembling. "Then what am I supposed to do? I couldn't save Mio. I couldn't save anyone. I failed."
Past Mike grabbed him by the collar, yanking him close, eyes blazing with a fire born of despair. "You think failure is the end? You think I didn't scream the same words after thousands of losses? But hear me, because it's the only thing that kept me going—failure is fuel. Every time you fall, every time she dies, every time the world burns, you carve the path sharper for the next run. That's the curse… and the gift… of being us."
Mike's breath hitched. His chest felt heavy, but also… lighter, as if some part of him recognized the truth in those words.
Past Mike released him, his voice quieter now, almost mournful. "I can't carry it anymore. That's why you exist. You're the continuation of every mistake I made, every regret I swallowed. Don't waste it. Don't let our pain be meaningless."
The whiteness quivered again. A faint shadow appeared, Mio's smile—gentle, luminous—before shattering like glass. Mike reached out instinctively, but it vanished into nothingness.
His hands trembled. "…So you're saying I still have a chance?"
Past Mike smirked, that faint spark of defiance gleaming in his eyes. "We always have a chance. As long as you keep walking, as long as you keep fighting… she'll live. Maybe not this time. Maybe not the next. But someday, in one of these countless loops, Mio will smile again. And Chloe will laugh again. And you'll finally breathe without regret."
The words pierced him, cutting through despair like a blade.
For the first time in what felt like eternity, Mike's heart stirred—not with despair, but with the faintest flicker of hope.
Past Mike stepped back, his figure beginning to dissolve into the white. "Now go. This void isn't your coffin. It's your rebirth. Don't make me regret passing this flame to you."
Mike looked up sharply. "Wait—! Will I ever see you again?"
Past Mike's fading silhouette grinned. "You already do. Every time you look in the mirror."
The whiteness fractured. A soundless crack split the space, light bleeding through like veins of fire.
And then—
The white space faded, revealing itself for what it truly was: the mind realm, a sanctuary carved within his own existence where fragments of himself could meet across timelines. That was where he had spoken with his past self.
Mike's restored body flickered, then resumed its collapse. Cracks spread again, flesh and light splintering until he was nothing but fragments.
His consciousness wavered, flickered… and then dimmed, swallowed by the void.
Silence. Finality.
And then—
[ Notice! — Condition has been met ]
[ Condition — Death ]
A chime reverberated across the emptiness.
[ Monarch of Time — Passive Effect Activated ]
[ Initiating Host's Regression ]
The void roared to life, swallowing him whole.