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Part I – Endless Dawn
For the people of A'Xarch, the first loops felt like dreams. A déjà vu of days repeating. Farmers re-planted the same seeds. Traders retraced the same routes. Lovers whispered the same vows.
But gradually, they realized the truth: though the world reset, they themselves did not.
Each mind became a vessel for memory. What one learned on Day 1, they remembered on Day 2, even if Day 2 was simply Day 1 again.
And so humanity cheated time.
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Part II – Lyra's Codex
Lyra, once a humble scholar, became the first to organize the madness.
She began writing a Codex of Time, inscribing everything that repeated. At first, it was small:
The sunrise always red at the horizon.
The marketplace vendor always dropped his fruit at the ninth bell.
A child always tripped on the cobblestone at noon.
But soon the Codex grew vast. Lyra discovered she could record not just events — but variations introduced by people's actions.
If she spoke to the fruit vendor differently, his dropped goods landed in another pattern. If she warned the child, they stumbled differently, or not at all.
Each action left ripples.
The Codex became scripture.
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Part III – The Gift and the Curse
Some embraced the loop, using it to achieve the impossible:
Physicians perfected surgeries.
Scientists unlocked theories in days instead of decades.
Artists crafted masterpieces without error, restarting when a stroke displeased them.
But for others, the loop was hell.
Men who lost family watched them die again and again. Women trapped in grief carried scars that never faded even if the day restarted. Suicide became common among those who could not endure repetition.
Some chose to end themselves, loop after loop, carrying despair through eternity.
A'Xarch was a continent of brilliance and madness entwined.
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Part IV – Lyra's Choice
Lyra herself saw the duality.
In her Codex, she wrote:
> "Time is both prison and ladder. The loop binds us, yet it is the key to heights we could never reach. The question is not whether we can escape… but whether we should."
Her name spread as the Timekeeper.
And though she did not yet know it, her Codex would echo across experiments, a relic carried even when Kay reset the world.
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