When Tri spoke to his parents, he told them the truth. He told them about the loop, about the memories that stitched themselves into his mind, about the flood of brokenness that surged through him. He spoke of *Imp*, of the fracture, of the silence between cycles.
They did not understand. To them, his words were madness — the ramblings of a boy possessed by nightmares. Fear drove them to act. They sent him away, into the ward.
The ward was not a hospital, not a prison, but something in between. Its walls were pale, its lights harsh, its corridors endless. For Tri, it felt like eternity, though only five years passed. He was fifteen now. In that time, his mind stitched together the broken pieces of himself. Some fragments held, others dangled loose, like threads that refused to weave.
The guards believed he could not escape. They let him wander, certain there was nowhere to run, nothing beyond the ward's walls. So Tri walked. His footsteps echoed against the sterile floor. Each door he passed hummed faintly, as if alive.
Behind one door, he glimpsed figures feasting. They were human — unmistakably human — yet their hunger was twisted. They laughed as they tore into their meals, comparing the taste to chicken, to fowl, to familiar comforts. But their words carried a darker meaning: they were not speaking of food, but of brokenness, of *Imp*.
Tri recoiled. Anger rose in him. His fists clenched, his breath quickened. He wanted to burst through the door, to stop them, to scream. But confusion tangled with his rage. Were they real? Were they illusions? Was this the ward, or was this the loop breaking again?
Behind another door, sparks flew. Smoke curled upward, filling the air with the acrid scent of burning. The figures inside laughed, comparing their ritual to a barbecue. "Don't ring the smoke alarm," one joked, waving away the haze. "I know, I know," the other replied, grinning as if the act were nothing more than a party.
Tri froze. He heard screams — human screams, sharp and piercing, echoing through the ward. The sound clawed at his mind, tearing at the fragile stitches that held him together. His anger surged. He pressed himself against the wall, his chest heavy, his vision blurred. He wanted to fight, to break the door, to stop the screams. But confusion overwhelmed him. Were these humans? Were they shadows? Were they echoes of *Imp*?
Tri staggered forward, his body trembling. He calmed himself. He breathed. He endured.
And then, suddenly, all the pieces of his memory and psyche broke into their original state. The flood returned.
He saw the boy he had been — hollow‑eyed, starving, crushed beneath despair. The boy tried to hold back the flood of memories and the broken ones, but he could not.
Tri reached for his face, desperate to ground himself, but something stopped him. He looked down and saw it: a barrier, invisible yet solid, tethered to his hand.
It was not illusion, not imagination. It was his own fracture made manifest — his own *wonder*. But unlike the magician's, which bent reality into endless loops and dazzling illusions, Tri's wonder was different. It did not create. It did not bend. It resisted.
The barrier was stoic, unyielding, a wall against the flood of memory and despair. It held him upright even as his mind broke apart. It was his defense, his refusal, his persistence given form. It made him stoic and unyielding. Tri felt untouchable. He felt unstoppable. Unmovable.
Fueled by anger, Tri launched into the next room — the one filled with smoke and laughter. He shoved his barrier forward, slamming it into the face of one of the figures. The man responded with a beam of energy, a blast that tore from his mouth like fire. But Tri's barrier contained it, absorbing the force into his own mind.
The room erupted. White walls were splattered, chaos churned like the inside of a blending machine. Yet the two other figures did not tremble. One stepped forward, eyes gleaming, and spoke:
"Ready for me?"