'The fuck?'
Advait felt the death; it was a cold sensation. He felt death as a sudden, eerie stillness—sounds seemed to vanish in space, warmth drained from his body, and a cold, creeping numbness set in.
Time seemed to fracture, and he experienced a chilling weightlessness, as if detached from the world. There's no pain, just the terrifying quiet of being unmade. When he returned to life, the bitter taste of death lingered, adding a nightmare—haunted by that moment of absolute stillness.
With that, nothing remained of him; the only thing which still moved here was the time in his pocket watch. It remained constant and was followed by minutes. Many hours passed by, and more silent horror until all ticking sounds stopped with the allegiance of all three hands of the clock in the same direction.
13:00:00
The unique time of unique dimension finally reached its arrival fate, and everything changed once again.
"Huh?"
Advait found himself standing in the same place in the same state as when he first found himself in this place.
In front of him was a broad street lit up by flame torches; behind him was thick darkness, and above, the moon devoured in eclipse.
His hands subconsciously moved up to his throat, and there it was. His neck was perfectly still, attached to his body and head, with him still breathing, alive, though in a somewhat weaker state, just as before.
"I'm alive..." he mumbled to himself in disbelief and looked around him; everything was the same, no flow in the air, no sound in space aside from his breaths, and at the same time. The same unknown figure hidden in darkness, staring at him from corners of the dark walls a few metres away.
"What..." he mumbled, and the metal sensation on his arm attracted his attention towards the pocket watch in his hand once again.
00:00:14
"... Dream?" He mumbled to himself as he shifted towards that unknown figure in the distance, and just as he saw before, the being immediately ran away behind the tall walls the moment it caught sight of Advait looking at him.
"Delusion? Deja vu maybe..." Advait mumbled to himself and unconsciously started to move forward in the same direction, chasing after the unknown being until he reached the corner where the unknown figure was hiding, looking at Advait with the same pair of shining pupils as before.
Advait felt stunned; confusion and uncertainty mixed with a terrible sensation of coldness and stillness in space, all too real for him to just forget.
"... Who am I kidding?" Advait frowned as a nervous grin crept over his face, and looking at the dark figure behind the shadows, he remarked, "I don't know how I'm alive if what I experienced is true. I don't even know if what I experienced was true... But I sure as hell don't want to feel it all over again."
As Advait remarked that, he finally started to step away from the direction of that unknown creature.
'It's leading me to darkness. If that thing is what killed me last time, I'm sure there is no way to survive with my physical capabilities. It wants me to step in the dark, which means that thing can't kill me in lig--!?' Advait was just thinking, but that was the moment when he finally noticed.
The face covered by shadows, with wide open pupils shining like cold steel and a crescent wide smirk stretching from corner to corner of the face.
"Fuck"
Advait, of course, realised what it meant; the figure hidden in shadows suddenly flashed right in front of his face. Till now, Advait hadn't been able to really see what that unknown being was, but now, up close under the light of flame torches, he could finally see.
A formless creature made of shadow itself, a dark mist-like substance emerging from the dark, made its body, and the sensation of its limbs was hard like iron's flesh, and the moment the creature's limbs reached Advait, Advait's throat was torn away in mere instance.
'So he could kill me even in light, huh...' Advait's eyes never left the dark creature until the very last moment of his death, and finally, as he had guessed.
13:00:00
The thirteenth hour arrived, and Advait was once again standing in the same place he was when he first reached here.
"... Evil bastard," Advait remarked, raising his eyes in the direction of the same unknown creature standing a few dozen metres away; the being of shadows crept up a creepy grin once again as it watched Advait before suddenly rushing inside the shadows of walls once again.
"Sigh..." Advait took a long breath while massaging his sore neck and started to mumble his observations. "The world is real, the deaths are real, and I'm trapped in here. I can't tell how many more times I will die and revive. I don't really feel like going insane right now, but if it's going on, I might really just lose it in a few days. Strangely, I don't feel hungry or thirsty here. I assume it's a good thing, but how will I ever pass through this dark son of a---"
"I will help you with that."
An unfamiliar voice within the absolute silence suddenly caught Advait's attention. As he turned back towards the direction of the voice, this time he noticed a mysterious figure walking out of the mist-covered pitch-black darkness behind him.
"Another one?!" Advait prepared himself, but his caution shook as he noticed it was a young girl approaching him with a tone of voice much older than her appearance.
"Do not be that cautious against me; killing you is even easier for me," she remarked and finally reached about a metre away from Advait whilst closely observing him.
"You seem new here; which loop is it for you?" She asked nonchalantly while walking around Advait, but for Advait this did nothing but increase his sense of uneasiness even more.
'Another human? I thought I was alone here, but to think there is another, and she seems much more knowledgeable about the world here, but she said it's easier to kill me? What kind of 18-year-old talks like thi--'
"I'm 113 years old."
"What?"
A sudden remark from the girl standing in front of Advait left him in a state of shock yet again. He turned towards her, but this time much more seriously and attentively.
From appearance she was no different than any other child, somewhere around 18 years old; her hairs were slightly curly and platinum blonde in colour, and her eyes were like jewels of blue and purple.
"Do not be so scared, child," she said, observing Advait's shaking arms, and remarked, "I will now explain to you about this realm; be attentive."
"Uh? Yes..." Advait was clearly taken aback with all of it; all tension was changing around him. The girl nodded, and expanding her hands, she announced.
"The dimension we both are caged inside is called 'Letheward', a dimension in between the land of gods, the land of the dead and the land of the living. The time loops back every 13 hours, and you will find yourself in the same place where you started every 13 hours, and it's endless."
She paused for a moment, and looking at Advait, she remarked, "For your reference, this is my 854th loop."
"What?" The simple sentence alone marked a stunning pause to Advait's consciousness for a brief second. He was just left staring blankly at that girl's face, who stood there with a blank look on her face.
'854? Over a year? She has been here for over a year...' Advait sucked in a deep breath, but the girl wasn't finished explaining as she continued. "Even with all this time I spent here, I don't know much about this place. I just have one clue to break through this endless loop."
She paused for a moment before stating her experience, "I have gone through this loop hundreds of times; everything stays the same each time, but something changed – just one."
Her arms stretched out towards the direction of the wide street ahead; Advait's eyes followed the direction of her arms, and there it was... The creepy creature of darkness with its shining grin staring over them from behind the shadows of the wall.
"I don't know what it is, but I personally refer to it as 'the smiling hollow'. I too died well over 300 times by that thing but don't know how; something changed after about 250 times." She explained, but Advait's eyes were still stuck on the dark creature; without a shred of doubt, Advait was quite nervous about its existence.
And suddenly, as if to purposefully scare Advait even more, the figure of dark shadow suddenly vanished from his sight, and in the next instant, as a cold sensation emerged behind him, he too turned back, and there it was…
A creepy wide form of shapeless darkness covered in black mist; up close, Advait could smell the unbearable stench of rotting insect corpses coming from that creature, and as the pupils of the dark creature squinted, Advait once again realised
'I can't avoid death ...' He frowned and closed his eyes, accepting death, but... nothing happened.
"..." Advait slowly opened his eyes, and the next thing he saw was quite clearly beyond all his expectations; the girl was standing above what seemed to be the head of that formless creature, with her eyes blankly and coldly looking beneath at the creature beneath her feet, before suddenly turning towards Advait with the same lifeless chill in her gaze.
"Pay attention," she remarked, and the next moment it felt as if gravity beneath her had increased a few hundred times because the dark creature just crumbled and fell flat on the ground beneath her, struggling to move an inch.
"As I said... After the 250th death, something changed... I began to be able to perceive the world differently, able to see everything and everyone quite clearly," she mumbled and stepped on the ground again, and turning towards Advait, remarked once again, "And after the 777th death, I gained this ability I personally refer to as 'gravity mutilation."
With that said, the next instant, even the little dust and pebbles around the dark creature started to tremble under the overwhelming pull towards the ground, and after barely over a second, the formless creature stopped moving, the dark mist around him vanished, and all that was left was an animal skull with eyeballs squashed like an egg on the ground.
The girl glanced at the massacred creature, but her face was just blank and a bit disappointed too. "It happened only once..." she sighed and explained, "The first time I managed to kill this creature, an animal screech-like voice gave me the clue to clear this place; it said
'To light the moon, you must burn your truth.'
So what do you think? Do you have any guesses on what to do?"