She remained on her knees, tear streaming down from her eyes.
Her breath.. shallow, uneven.
Her trembling fingers pressed against the bloodstained floor, cold seeping through her skin, but she didn’t move.
She couldn't.
Her body refused to listen.
Her mind was a void, swallowed by the weight of what she had seen.
The corpses, her family.
Derrick, slumped on the sofa, his head a shredded ruin.
Ethan, his small body ripped apart, halved like a broken doll.
Ellie, a hole carved through her chest, her lifeless blue eyes frozen in horror.
Vivia, her mother.. her ethereal beauty reduced to something unrecognizable, her eyes gouged out, her body shattered.
It was all there.
Unchanging.
Unforgiving.
A grotesque sight of agony.
But Emma’s mind, even drowning in despair clung to one thought.
Escape.
I have to get out.
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and forced herself to move.
Her arms shook violently as she tried to push herself up. Her muscles screamed, her knees scraped against the rough wood, but she didn't care.
The kitchen..
A knife.
She needed a knife.
But before she could stand..
A voice.
Deep. Resonant. Unfathomable.
It cut through the air like a cold whisper threading into her mind.
"Even if you kill yourself, you cannot loop out of here."
Emma’s body froze.
The voice was everywhere.
Inside her skull.
Seeping into her bones.
"This place is an infinitely repeating timeline. The more you kill yourself and loop, the more it continues repeating."
Her breath hitched more.
"How long do you think you can loop for?"
The voice laughed... low, knowing.
"1,000 times? 2,000? Perhaps 5,000?"
Her fingers dug into the floor.
"Maybe even 13,000."
Emma’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
"But do you think that will save you? It won’t."
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The weight of the words pressed down on her chest, crushing, suffocating.
"You are nothing but a mere extra… trapped in your own fears."
Her vision blurred.
Her pulse thundered in her ears.
And then..
A tear fell from her cheek.
But it wasn’t a tear.
It was blood.
A crimson streak trailing down her pale skin, dripping onto the wooden floor.
Her breathing staggered, erratic.
Her nails, already brittle, pressed into her lips, her teeth biting into them, gnawing, tearing.
No escape.
She knew that now.
This place, this hell wasn’t real.
It was her own mind, her own deep fears twisted into reality, holding her captive.
But knowing didn’t make it any less real.
The pain.
The loss.
The suffocating dread.
It crushed her, strangled her, drowned her in an endless abyss.
She sucked in a shaky breath..
Then another..
Then another...
But it did nothing to stop the storm inside her.
Everything... everything kept playing in her mind.
Like a tape..
A storm.
An illusion.
But in that moment, something strange happened... Subtle at first.
A barely noticeable shift..
A change.
And in that fragile, teetering moment..
Emma saw it.
A movement.
Small. Subtle.
But real.
Vivian.
Her mother’s body shifted.
Emma’s breath stilled.
She hadn’t noticed it at first.
Not until she heard..
A voice.
Shaky. Weak. Fragile.
"Help…!"
Emma’s bloodied eyes widened.
Her lips parted, trembling.
The corpse that shouldn’t move... moved.
The voice that should be silent, spoke.
Then again.
"Help… us."
Emma’s expression shifted.
Slowly.
Her tear-streaked, bloodied face.. once frozen in grief, turned unreadable.
This was it..
The final push.
That was all it took.
Something buried deep inside her completely..
SNAPPED.
And in that moment...
LOOOOOOPPPP!
Emma screamed.
And her unique white eyes, dripping with blood..
The pupils.
Spun.
*****
LOOOOOOPPPP!
The word ripped from Emma’s throat like a shattered command, a fracture in the very fabric of existence.
The world lurched.
Reality split.
A lock.. unfastened.
A seam torn open.
Then, all at once..
Blank.
Then ash.
Then black.
Then white.
Then red.
Then... colorless.
And in that moment..
The world shattered.
Like fragile glass cracking under pressure, it fractured outward, sending slivers of reality spiraling into the void.
And Emma..
Appeared.
Right back where she had been, before.
The weight of time snapped into place, yet felt unreal, distorted.. like a tape rewound and played again but never truly aligning.
She stood in the vast, incomprehensible expanse.
The air.. thick with something indescribable.
The sky.. a color beyond human perception, pulsing like the heartbeat of an unseeable god.
The ground, both solid and fluid beneath her feet, shifting, uncertain.
And before her.. it sat.
A throne.
Massive.
Colossal.
A construct of something that was not stone, nor metal, nor any material known to man.
And on it..
A being.
A monolithic entity, vast beyond mortal comprehension, body stretching beyond sight, coiling through the very architecture of creation.
A head..
Not of flesh.
But a book.
Bound in covers older than time, filled with pages that should never be read.
And it stared.
Though it had no eyes, no face..
It stared.
A long, impossible silence stretched as the colossal entity processed what had just occurred.
It was confused.
How?
How did she escape?
How had she left that place, when it was impossible?
It's authority should have held firm.
It's control should have been absolute.
And yet...
She stood here.
Freed.
In that moment
Emma moved.
Her body rigid, deliberate.
Her silver-white hair swayed with an unsettling weightlessness, like strands resisting gravity itself.
Her expression..bempty. unreadable.
And her eyes.
Her pupils.
The spiraling wheels within them spun.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster.
The world reacted.
Dark red.
The hue bled into existence, flooding the air, sinking into the fabric of everything.
Then..
A sound.
At first, a distant hum.
Mechanical. Subtle.
A whisper in the vastness.
Then it grew.
The grinding of unseen gears, the spinning of a great machine buried deep within the cosmos.
Turning.
Accelerating.
Louder.
Faster.
Faster.
The throne trembled.
And the being.. the one who called itself Gramam, felt it.
Something was wrong.
His vast body, once unmoving, once sovereign, now weakened.
His presence wavering.
His grasp over this story.. this world, this cosmology.
Diminishing.
His power.. draining, slipping through his grasp like sand through torn fingers.
Impossible.
He was still within his own creation.
Still the author.
Still the absolute.
And yet.. he was losing it.
Losing authority.
Losing supremacy.
Losing influence.
The reality he had forged, the narrative he controlled..
Rejecting him.
No.
Not rejecting.
Forgetting.
Like he was both here and not here.
Inside his own story, but outside it at the same time.
The realization struck with the weight of a collapsing universe.
This couldn’t be happening.
His very essence roared in defiance.
He refused.
He refused!
His status rose....
