Chapter 1: Cycle 1,839
He woke to the sound of a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
The world smelled of ash.
The sky cracked above him, stitched with red lightning, as if the heavens themselves had been wounded. Buildings around him leaned like dying giants—concrete ribs exposed, windows shattered, and steel bones melted into the ground. A dead city, silent and filled with dust.
And he lay at the center of it, half-buried in rubble, one hand clenched around something sharp and cold.
A voice echoed in his mind.
[SYSTEM REBOOTING…]
[YOU HAVE DIED: 1,839 TIMES]
[MISSION: SAVE THE WORLD]
[MEMORY FILES: CORRUPTED]
A pause.
[BEGINNING CYCLE: 1,840]
His lungs pulled in air like a man surfacing from a dream. He coughed, the sound dry and too loud in the stillness. The sharp thing in his hand wasn't a weapon. It was a key—long, black, bent slightly in the middle. He didn't know what it opened.
But something inside him did.
He sat up slowly. His body protested. Muscles ached like he'd run for days. His heartbeat felt stolen, irregular. His vision flickered, like an old film reel barely holding together.
The voice returned.
[WELCOME BACK, ZERO.]
He didn't remember that name.
But somehow, it felt right.
Empty. Cold. A number with no weight.
He looked around the city square, what little remained of it. Broken fountains, scorched benches, and signs half-melted into slag. One lay at his feet, twisted but legible:
WELCOME TO—RION. Population: ∞
The final digit flickered, then vanished.
"Where the hell am I?" he whispered, his voice hoarse.
No answer. Just the dry wind blowing through glassless windows.
Then, he saw them—bodies, dozens of them, scattered across the square like abandoned puppets. Some had burned down to bone. Others were frozen in mid-step, staring at things that weren't there. One sat on a bench, eyes wide open, reading a book with no pages.
All of them looked… familiar.
He approached the nearest—a teenage girl, barely fifteen. Her pale skin was stained with soot. Her eyes stared at the sky, wide and unmoving.
But as he knelt beside her, her lips moved.
He froze.
"Z… Zero?" she whispered.
His blood chilled.
"You… finally found it. You finally—"
Her breath left her in a single gust, and she crumbled into ash.
He stumbled back, hand shaking. But before he could make sense of what just happened, a new window appeared in his vision:
[FRAGMENT MEMORY RECOVERED: 003/???]
[DATA: "You finally found it."]
[STORE TO CORE? Y/N]
"…What is this?" he muttered.
[STORING…]
A sharp pain struck his temples. The world tilted—and for a split second, a flash of something hit him.
Himself.
Standing atop a burning tower.
In armor soaked in blood.
Holding a broken blade.
Screaming something at the sky.
Then it was gone.
His legs moved on their own, guided by instinct he didn't understand. Each step through the ruins triggered flashes:
A mirror that didn't reflect him.
A knife in someone else's hand.
A girl screaming, "Don't trust the sky!"
The color blue burning.
He didn't know what any of it meant, but the pain behind his eyes told him one thing: these weren't dreams.
[MEMORY ECHO DETECTED: LOCATION 431-A]
[PROCEED TO ACCESS LOST DATA?]
He ran. Gravel crunched underfoot. The air felt heavier the deeper he went. Finally, he found it—a partially collapsed building with its roof torn open and blue light pulsing from inside.
Inside, the walls were lined with shattered mirrors. A tall device stood at the center—glass and metal shaped into a vertical obelisk, glowing softly.
[ECHO INTERFACE ACTIVE]
[PLAYING RECORDING: SELF-CYCLE 918]
A ghostly image flickered to life. Him—but older. Scarred. Calm. Eyes darker than his own.
And holding a gun.
"Zero. If you're seeing this, that means I failed. Again."
"This is Cycle 918. You're probably somewhere near the collapse point. Doesn't matter."
"You're stuck in the loop again. No surprise."
The ghost chuckled bitterly.
"Listen carefully. You think you're supposed to save the world. That's what the System told you, right? But here's the truth—"
He stepped closer to the screen, eyes piercing.
"The System is lying. It's not saving anything. It's trapping us all. And the more you remember… the faster it unravels."
"It's not the world resetting. It's you."
Zero's breath caught.
"Find the girl who remembers. She's your anchor. The only real one left. You always lose her. Don't this time."
The screen fizzled.
Then one last sentence, almost a whisper:
"If you want to break the cycle… you have to remember who you really were. And it won't be easy."
The screen shattered.
Zero stared into the empty space where his echo had stood.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: FIND THE GIRL WHO REMEMBERS]
[SYSTEM ALERT: AI AGENT "FLAME ZERO" DETECTED IN SECTOR 4-C]
He blinked.
"Flame Zero"?
Another version of him?
His thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind. Questions piled into one another, collapsing under their own weight.
But before he could process it, the sky above rumbled.
Clouds burned red. Lightning forked across the heavens—and in that flash of light, a symbol appeared: a butterfly, made of numbers and ash.
Then it vanished.
He stood alone in a world that was not his own, holding a key he didn't remember finding, chasing a truth he might not survive.
And for the first time in Cycle 1,839, he took a breath that felt real.
[CYCLE 1,840 BEGINS]
[WELCOME BACK, ZERO.]