In a galactic war that has raged for a thousand years, death is usually the end. For Specialist Caelum, it is merely a reload screen.

Cursed with the ability to "respawn" at a save point every time he is killed, Caelum has lived through the same hellish war 5,002 times. He has memorized every enemy ambush, every artillery strike, and every way to die. He is tired, overpowered, and cynical—he just wants to speed-run the war to save his childhood love, Lyra, from her destined death.

But in this timeline, a new variable appears: High Marshall Vesper.

Cold, calculating, and obsessed with probability, Vesper notices that Caelum is a statistical impossibility. Suspecting him of being an enemy anomaly, she begins assigning him to suicide missions, effectively trying to kill him to test her theories.

Now, Caelum must survive the enemy army and his own commander. But as Vesper closes in on his secret, a terrifying truth begins to surface: Vesper isn't just hunting him. She is remembering the loops too. And the reason they are drawn to each other isn't love or hate—it’s because they are fragments of the same shattered soul, fighting a civil war across time.

I jumped. Without my armor, I felt light, but weak. I grabbed the ventilation grate with my flesh hand. My metal arm—heavy and dead—dragged me down, but I hauled myself up.


I jammed the wooden stake into the spinning fan blades.


The motor shrieked. It was a horrible, high-pitched grinding sound.


Vesper covered her ears. The glass walls of our cells began to vibrate. Ripples appeared on the surface.


My cell wall shattered into a million diamond-like shards. A second later, Vesper's wall exploded outward.


The alarm didn't go off immediately. The sonic frequency had scrambled the local sensors.


I dropped to the floor, rolling over the broken glass. I ignored the cuts.


I grabbed Vesper's hand. We sprinted down the corridor.


"Stop!" The guard with the limp turned the corner. He fumbled for his stun baton.


I didn't slow down. I couldn't shoot him. I couldn't kill a Federation soldier—he was just doing his job.


I slid under his swing. I used my dead metal arm like a battering ram, slamming it into his stomach.


He folded. I chopped him in the neck. He went down.


"Keycard!" Vesper grabbed it from his belt. "We need to get to Level 4. The Quarantine Labs."


"My arm," I grunted, trying to lift the Ouroboros. "I can't fight like this. It's dead weight. I need a recharge station."


"There's an Armory on Level 6," Vesper said, swiping the card at the elevator. "But it will be guarded by Unit 99."


"Unit 99?" I groaned. "The Valkyries? You have got to be kidding me."


"Captain Silas hates you," Vesper reminded me as the elevator doors closed. "Statistically, she will shoot you on sight."


Chapter 26 - Chapter 25: The Silent Riot