A sharp pulse of pain forced Asol awake as his temples throbbed like a drumbeat echoing through his skull. Sweat clung to his skin, cold as the air that crawled through the cracks in the walls. When he tried to breathe, his lungs shivered, and for a brief moment, he couldn't tell if he was alive or still trapped in another dream.
He sat up slowly with the bedsheets damp beneath his palms. The room was dim—dark, yet not completely so. A single lamp, barely alive, flickered near a broken desk. The floor beneath him was cracked concrete, lines splitting like veins. Mold crept along the walls, its scent sharp and bitter in the air.
And then his eyes found a bucket of water beside the bed, and a damp cloth draped over its rim. Someone had tended to him. Someone had made sure he didn't die here. His gaze drifted to the corner where his prosthetic arm lay on the floor, lifeless and cold. For a moment, he simply stared at it, wondering if it too shared his exhaustion.
"...Where am I?" His voice cracked against the silence.
He rose from the bed with every movement stiff and his body aching as though gravity itself had doubled its weight. The air felt heavy, almost deliberate. Across the room was a narrow door. He stepped through it and found what passed for a bathroom—cracked tiles, rusted pipes, and a mirror that had seen better centuries. In the reflection, a stranger looked back. His eyes were dull. His skin pale. His hair stuck to his forehead in sweat.
"...Was I always this tired-looking?" he muttered.
No answer came, not even from the part of him that used to fight back against self-pity. When he returned to the front door, he tried the handle—locked, unmoving. Whoever brought him here had no intention of letting him walk free. Maybe it was that "caretaker." Maybe it was someone else. He sank back onto the bed, the old springs groaning beneath him, and stared at the dim light trembling above. His thoughts wandered to Aoi, to Kazuma. That final moment before he left: Aoi's trembling eyes, Kazuma's hesitation, that unspoken fear.
"Were they… looking at me the same way?" he whispered. "Like I'd already lost?"
Before the thought could settle, the sound of a lock clicking shattered the silence. Asol's eyes widened. His hand moved instinctively—Aura flaring faintly along his arm as his prosthetic snapped into place. He took a stance, ready for whatever entered. The door creaked open.
It was the girl with crimson eyes and black hair—the same one from before. Her expression softened when she saw him upright, alive, and breathing. He lowered his guard, but not his caution.
"...You again."
She said nothing. Just stood there, a faint light behind her framing her silhouette. Her uniform—a torn school outfit—hung loosely against her small frame, the seams frayed and burned. It wasn't the tattered rags he'd seen her in before. Somehow, this made her presence even stranger.
"Where am I?" he asked. "And why did you—"
He stopped himself. It was useless. She was mute. He remembered that much. Still, something was different. Her eyes weren't as distant as before. They held purpose. Then she reached out her hand toward him. The moment her fingers extended, a voice rang inside his mind—clear, distant, and melodic.
'Come.'
Asol flinched, his heart jolting against his ribs.
"What the—"
She didn't speak. Her lips hadn't even moved. Yet he'd heard her. Or rather… felt her voice ripple through his thoughts. Cautiously, he reached out. Her hand was warm. When he touched it, the world seemed to hum as an invisible resonance that pressed softly against his chest. She led him through the door.
The smell hit him first—rot, dampness, and oil. The corridor beyond was lined with shacks like the one he had woken in, all made from rusted metal and broken stone. Dim bulbs flickered in the distance like dying stars. People were there. Dozens of them, maybe more—thin, pale, hollow-eyed. Some lay in the corners, their bodies trembling. Others sat in silence, their faces turned toward the floor. Children without shoes. Old men without hope. The air felt heavy with decay and something worse.
It was like stepping back into that dream again, if it even was a dream—the one of the underground, buried in despair.
He swallowed hard. "This place..."
'Underground.'
Her voice echoed within his head.
Below the city. Below their paradise.'
He turned to her.
"How are you—talking to me?"
She paused, her expression darkening.
'They took my voice,' she said. 'But not my mind.'
"'They'?"
'The heroes.'
Her words struck him harder than he expected. Heroes. Oppressors. He had really hoped what he saw in that "dream" wasn't true. But the longer he looked around, the clearer it became. The people here weren't free. They were workers—slaves. It was real. That dream was real. The ground trembled faintly beneath his feet. In the distance, he could hear the echo of machinery grinding through the dark.
'They make us dig for Adamantium. The metal of gods. The heroes take it, forge their weapons, their armor... their dreams.'
Adamantium.
His prosthetic arm pulsed faintly, as if responding to her words. The cold metal that replaced his flesh—it came from here. From these people. He didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say. Only the sound of his heartbeat and the echo of her bare footsteps leading him onward.
They stopped before a larger shack, one built sturdier than the rest. The girl turned to him, her crimson eyes glowing faintly in the dim.
'Go inside,' she urged.
Asol hesitated, but the air around her left no room for refusal. He stepped through the threshold. Inside, time itself seemed to stand still. The room was lit by a single oil lamp. The floor was layered with worn mats. The scent of old wood and incense hung faintly in the air. And there, sitting calmly on a tattered mat, was the old man. The same old man from his "dream."
"Asol Ansaldo," the man greeted, his voice low, gravelly. "You've arrived sooner than I thought."
Asol's body froze. It was too exact—the tone, the posture, even the silence that surrounded him. He wasn't imagining it.
"...You're real."
The old man smiled faintly.
"Reality and dream are merely two halves of the same mirror. It is the mind that decides which side reflects the truth."
Asol sat before him, unsure whether to listen or to fight.
"Then tell me. What is this place? Why are heroes doing this?"
The old man's eyes narrowed, the flame reflecting in their depths.
"One's intention to protect a loved one," he said, "is often the most beautiful lie of all. Beneath every hero's mask lies something else—something far crueler. The man called a hero... is Evil itself. He deceived us all. Even the one he called sister."
Asol's breath caught in his throat.
"You mean—"
The man nodded slowly.
"Providence."
Asol's jaw clenched, his mind flashing with fragments—Kazuma's hesitation, Aoi's pain, the world that crumbled beneath false salvation.
"What did he do?"
The old man's answer came like a knife drawn in silence.
"He killed his own parents. And he killed the hero Ultima, along with many others who shared his light."
The room fell still.
Asol could only stare, the dim flame casting long shadows on the walls. The girl with crimson eyes stood at the doorway, watching quietly, her hand pressed over her heart as though she already knew this truth—had always known it. And for the first time in a long while, Asol realized that even in the deepest darkness, there were stories crueler than nightmares.
The lamp's flame swayed, flickering like a fragile heartbeat. Asol's hands tightened on his knees. The air was suffocating — not because it was heavy, but because every word that left the old man's mouth weighed too much to breathe through.
The old man's gaze was distant, as though he were looking beyond the walls, beyond the rot and darkness of the underground, toward something far older — a truth that refused to die.
"Providence…" Asol muttered, his voice low. "You're saying he's behind this? Behind all of this?"
The man nodded once, slowly, as if the motion itself pained him.
"He is not a man bound by virtue. He is not a hero bound by duty. He is... the sickness that calls itself salvation."
Asol frowned. "What does that even mean?"
The old man leaned forward slightly, the light casting half his face in shadow.
"Providence was not content with being human. Nor was he satisfied being a hero. To him, mortals are fragments — incomplete vessels of will and chaos. He believes divinity is his inheritance. That humanity exists merely to serve the hierarchy he envisions."
He paused, eyes narrowing.
"He does not seek unification. He seeks control. He believes that only through domination — through absolute superiority — can the world avoid collapse. In his words, 'Equality is an illusion of the weak.'"
Asol's expression hardened.
"So he made the heroes his gods."
"Yes." The old man's tone sharpened, bitter. "To him, heroes are the chosen. The superior species. Those born of light— given the right to rule those who crawl in the dark. He preaches that the poor, the powerless, the broken — they exist merely as proof of the strong's divinity."
Asol clenched his fist. His metal fingers groaned under the pressure.
"That's… insane."
"Insanity dressed in righteousness," the old man said quietly. "He wraps tyranny in the language of salvation. He tells the heroes they are protectors, when in truth, he has made them gods of oppression. They drain the weak of labor, of spirit, of worth — mining the world's marrow while calling it justice."
"So the heroes I saw during that event... They are also in on this as well?"
The silence that followed was unbearable. Asol could feel his heart pounding in his ears. He wanted to deny it— to say the old man was wrong — but deep down, he already knew. The heroes' glimmering towers. Their distant eyes. The empty smiles of those who ruled above the clouds while others rotted below.
He remembered the girl beside him.
Her voice echoing in his mind.
They took my voice."
Now he understood who "they" were. Providence's world. His order. The old man's voice returned, rougher now, cutting through the quiet.
"You have felt it too, haven't you, Asol? The pain.
Asol blinked.
"Pain?"
"The headaches," the man said. "The ones that split your skull, that come without warning— the pain that drags you to your knees."
Asol froze. He could still remember them vividly. Each time his head throbbed, the world spun. Time fractured. A sense of repetition followed— déjà vu too perfect to be coincidence.
"How do you—"
"Because it is not pain," the old man interrupted. "It is correction."
"Correction?"
The old man's eyes glinted in the dim light.
"You are trapped in a temporal loop, Asol Ansaldo. Each time you awaken with that migraine, your world has already reset. The moment you wake up in pain, you have already looped back— returned to the point Providence chose for you."
Asol's breath hitched. His mind reeled.
"You're saying… every time I black out—"
"You return to the beginning," the man finished. "The loop always starts in the same place — the room within Providence's home."
The image hit him like a hammer. The sterile white walls. The faint hum of machines. The faint smell of antiseptic.
"How many times do you think I've gone through it?"
"Countless times. You were never leaving that room," the old man said. "You merely believed you did. Providence's power binds time itself to his will. You walk his illusions, and when he deems you stray too far from the path, he pulls you back. Like a god tugging the strings of a puppet."
Asol staggered backward, the floorboards creaking beneath his heel. "You're lying."
"I wish I were," the man replied, his tone softening. "But you already know it's true. Think. The same conversations. The same sights. The same mistakes. Have you not felt the world itself repeating around you?"
His hands trembled. His chest tightened. Those flashes— the strange familiarity in every nightmare, every déjà vu. The way his body sometimes reacted before his mind even caught up. He had lived this before. Over and over.
"Then how did I wake here then? Was that temporal loop broken?"
The girl with the crimson eyes appeared beside him, staring into his eyes as the old man answered.
"This little one used a great power to break the loop."
The old man continued, his voice now grave and unyielding.
"Providence has remade time into a mirror that reflects only his desire. Every loop erases resistance. Every failure resets the stage. You were his experiment, Asol— the one variable he couldn't predict. Perhaps that was why he spared you each cycle. Or perhaps…"
He leaned closer, the flame trembling between them.
"...you are the very proof of his divinity he wishes to claim."
Asol's eyes widened.
"What?"
The old man's words came slowly, deliberate. The room felt smaller. The air colder. Asol's thoughts blurred into noise — anger, fear, disbelief, all twisting together.
"He wants to be God," Asol whispered. "That's what this is."
The old man nodded solemnly.
"Not the God who unites, but the God who rules. The one who believes creation must kneel before the creator. He does not seek harmony— only dominion. The heroes, the people, even time itself— all are tools to his ascension."
Silence again. Only the faint hum of the lamp and the steady beat of Asol's heart. If this was true— if Providence was looping him through a false world — then every victory, every death, every fleeting moment of peace was a lie.
He took a step toward the light, his Aura faintly stirring, crackling like restrained lightning along the seams of his prosthetic.
"Then I'll break the illusion he conjured," he said, his voice steady despite the tremor in his body. "Even if it means tearing his world apart."