Myra woke up in her bed.

Wha—?

This was definitely her bed. In her dorm room. That had been—

No. There was no way that was a dream, Myra didn’t consider it for a moment. She had been consumed by molten lava, she had felt her skin burn away. That had happened. And here she was, safe and cozy in her blankets, listening to the chirps of the morning birds. Had she been rescued? Healed, magically, then put back in her room, skipping a hospital stay, all while unconscious? That didn’t make any sense… magic healing wasn’t even that good, let alone the rest of it.

Was this building not destroyed? Even if it hadn’t collapsed, it should have been buried in the eruption.

How did I get into my pajamas?

She was pretty sure stuff had moved around the room, too. Her laundry, her textbooks, …

Why is this teleport stick still here? I used it!

Increasingly uneasy, Myra hastily changed and went to check out the status outside. The status turned out to be… a campus that had not been destroyed by earthquakes or a volcano. It was a bright morning, and it was a bit chilly.

She wandered around in a bit of a daze, watching carefree classmates heading towards the school. Class is on, I guess.

She checked Abstract Space. The Common Library had been restored, though some of Myra’s miscellaneous abstract objects had disappeared. She was pretty sure the ones missing were all objects she’d made in the last month while experimenting with topology.

Myra’s heart spiked when she heard footsteps running at her from behind. She whipped around and almost put her guard up before she saw one of her favorite faces on the planet barreling towards her. Cynthia twirled around her and pulled her into a hug.

“How’s—oh.” Cynthia’s grin evaporated as she looked intently at Myra. “Myra, you look awful—ah!” She yelped as Myra pulled her friend in tightly and buried her face in her shoulder. “I know, I know, things are going to be okay…”

“Cynthia. Uh…” What do I even say? “I have an… odd question.”

“Yeah?”

“What, uh, day is it?”

“It’s Monday. That’s not an odd question.”

“But like, which Monday?”

“Um… it’s November… like the fifth? Sixth? Myra, I don’t really keep track of the date.”

That doesn’t make any sense…

I was expecting it somehow, though, wasn’t it? That’s why I asked.

If she’s right, it’s the first day after break.

“Come on, let’s go sit down. Do you need to take the day off?”

As much as Myra wanted to go crawl back into bed and pretend nothing had happened, figuring out what was going on had to take priority. Cynthia took Myra to the fountain where Iz was reading, itself a familiar sight, and sat her down next to the running water. The university fountains were all infused with a particular aura composition that was supposed to be relaxing, so Myra tried to soak it in.

Iz didn’t say much, but she seemed to catch that the vibe was ‘comforting a shaken Myra.’

“I’m sorry…” Cynthia whispered. “I thought you were doing okay last night. Did anything else happen?”

Myra tried to remember what ‘last night’ had been, since it had now been a month ago from Myra’s perspective. The night before classes had started, she had gotten dinner with Cynthia, who had just arrived in the city (Myra had been back for several days). Myra certainly hadn’t been ‘okay’ during that meal, but she had intentionally been avoiding any subject related to her father’s trial. Of course, that was what Cynthia and Iz were fixated on now.

“What would you all say if I said I’d gone back in time?”

“Um…” Cynthia turned her head. “I dunno.”

Iz frowned. “Myra—”

“Sorry, never mind, I’m getting all mixed up and confused.” Myra didn’t want her own friends to think she was crazy. How do you convince someone of a blatant impossibility?

As much as she loved Cynthia and Iz, if they had tried to convince her they had gone back in time, she would absolutely think they had lost it.

“Myra,” Iz said again.

Change the subject. “Have you ever met the imperial princess? Malazhonerra Raine?”

Iz blinked, surprised.

“Um… no…” She cocked her head in confusion.

“Oh, it’s just—” Myra took a bit of a stab in the dark. “I heard she wanted to face off with you, after you won that contest? In Jewel City?”

“Oh! No, that wasn’t it… There was a bit of a scandal where she wanted to compete, and she entered the contest under a false name. She got caught really quickly, and her father was pissed about it… it’s just what I heard. I don’t think I ever spoke to her.”

Hm. That might go a little ways to explaining the princess’s actions.

“I think she judged some parts of the contest, as well. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing. Sorry, it’s just. Trying to think of things other than my… situation. What was the contest, anyway?”

“It was a puzzle contest. We had to escape a labyrinth.”

“Oh! I also wanted to ask… have you ever met someone named—” Oh, what was her name? “—Violet Penrilla?”

“Huh? I’ve never heard of her.”

“Penrilla?” Cynthia asked. “Isn’t that guy a duke? No, I don’t think his name is Violet…”

“Sorry, just, never mind.”

“Myra, what is going on?” Iz asked, much more forcefully this time.

Myra might have answered, but someone else grabbed her attention that she barely even heard Iz’s question. Walking down the walkway was a girl with unmissable black-and-white eyes, walking absentmindedly, her attention blank and her eyes on the trees around.

“Shera!”

Shera was startled to reality as Myra bounded to her, leaving her friends confused by the fountain.

“Shera, you’re alive!” She didn’t care how manic she sounded right now. She almost hugged her.

The young woman took a step back, her eyes wide with fear, like she was distancing herself from a predator. After quivering for a moment and a few false starts with her mouth, she just said, “Hi. Myra.”

“It’s… it’s good to see you’re… okay.” Common sense started to catch up with her and she began to care about the appearance of her actions again.

“Okay.” Shera nodded and stepped nervously around her, headed to class. Cynthia and Iz rejoined her.

“Myra—”

“Come on,” Myra said. “Let’s go to class.”

◆

In all honesty, there were probably better things to do than just going to class, though Myra needed time to figure out what those were. And anyway, it was kind of hard to go against ingrained habits when the world moved along so normally.

As before, they started the class with the water exercises. Myra mastered the exercise quickly enough that she got paired with Iz this time. This was a bit of a relief since Iz was much easier to work with than Shera, and working with Shera would have been extremely awkward after their morning interaction.

“Uh, Instructor!” Myra called out. Instructor Yam had walked by, giving only an approving nod to the lovely figure-8 stream that Myra and Iz had built together. “Um, I was wondering… can we use these techniques to manipulate lava?”

“Hrm.” Instructor Yam stroked his goatee. “Are you thinking of going diving in the volcano?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Lava is a difficult substance for a lot of reasons. Attempting to touch lava telekinetically can be as painful as touching it with your skin if you don’t do it right. It’s quite viscous, its exterior hardens quickly, and compositions can vary a lot. And if we’re talking about a volcanic eruption, it moves very fast, and there is a lot of it. Of course, you shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

“Could you, uh, teach us, anyway?”

The instructor looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I don’t see why not. I will need to make sure you can do it safely, though. There’s some exercises you will need to master first.”

◆

Myra had to deal with Benkoten.

She spent most of the telekinesis lesson thinking this through. Dealing with Benkoten was somewhat more complicated than dealing with anyone else, not just because of what he’d done, but because Myra was pretty sure that Benkoten was aware of the time reset. In retrospect, a lot of the cryptic things he’d said had indicated this—things she had dismissed as ravings actually made more sense if he had known time was about to reset. In fact, it seemed like it had happened before, and that he had become accustomed to it. He was trying to “get something right eventually,” and he had probably known Shera was going to come back to life when he murdered her.

Knowing that he hadn’t tried to permanently kill Shera was a nice thought, but she wasn’t sure what he was actually doing was much better. Whatever he had been attempting to do, it had clearly involved… trying to seduce her and pump her full of drugs. There was a good chance he was going to try this all again, but with memories of how it had gone wrong the last time.

Luckily, she was aware of the reset this time, too, so she could get a big advantage if she kept him from realizing the fact. The big worry would be if he already knew it—if he knew something about how the whole thing worked, then he might have a way to know that she’d become aware. Since Myra herself didn’t have a clue how that had happened, it was impossible to know if Benkoten was aware of it.

Did I touch some weird artifact in his room?

No, I don’t think so.

The weirdest thing I did was go into the event hall. Was there something in there?

It was troubling that she didn’t know, especially since she couldn’t know if she was going to retain awareness if it happened again.

When Myra entered the topology lecture hall, she acted as naturally as possible to avoid tipping Benkoten off. Of course, trying to act natural always made everything worse, and she ended up in decision paralysis trying to remember which seat she’d taken the first day. Right… it was next to Shera.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

In the end, it didn’t matter, because Benkoten Talzatta didn’t show up, which was both a relief and a worry for a variety of different reasons. It was a relief that she didn’t have to deal with him now, but it was also a worry about what he was planning. It also removed the option of confronting him directly for answers; this had not been her favorite option anyway, but it had been something she was considering.

Shera sat next to her again, though she didn’t say anything. Wait, nobody’s whispering about me much, either. That was odd, hadn’t there been a lot of stares last time? Had it just been her imagination? In the Mastery class earlier, there hadn’t been much difference between the current loop and the previous loop. Here, though, she was certain people were paying her less attention, even in spite of her flubbed entrance.

Little of note happened during the lecture, which had been the same as last time. She definitely had a better grasp on things (though she still thought Professor Suzuki was a poor lecturer, and that even a theoretical class should start with a bit of actual logokinesis).

At lunch, she asked Nathan if he’d seen his brother.

“Wait, why?” He seemed a little shocked at the inquiry. “Do you know anything?”

It turned out that nobody had seen Benkoten. He had been expected at a student council meeting that morning, but he had been absent. Someone had sought out Nathan after their first class to see if he knew anything, and Nathan had checked Ben’s room, to no avail. This was sufficiently unlike Benkoten, a generally punctual and studious person, that Nathan had begun to worry immediately. He had notified campus security, who had ways to perform quick searches, but they were unable to locate him on campus.

Of course, Nathan was now extremely curious why Myra had been inquiring about him, despite being otherwise unconnected to any of the prior events. Of course, Myra had no way to answer that meaningfully, so she deflected the question, despite Nathan’s insistence, and the lunch became increasingly awkward. Aurora had joined as she had the first time around, but the lunch discussion never moved to the strange murders.

After lunch, Myra was extremely tempted to speak to campus security about Benkoten. She had barely considered this course of action until now, simply because she had no actual proof that he’d done anything to her. Now, though, if they were already aware that he was missing, she thought they might be more receptive if she reported him acting suspiciously. She also wanted to see if they could do something about the dorm’s teleporter disruption field.

In the end, though, she didn’t want to take any actions that could tip off Benkoten that she remembered the previous timeline, so she decided to keep quiet. Instead, she decided the best thing she could do for her personal security was to buy some emergency teleport sticks and watch her back.

With that done, Myra decided her next course of action was to be a delinquent student, skip her biomechanical systems class, and head to the library.

It was time to investigate time.

◆

Time magic did not exist.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. There had been some spontaneous anomalous phenomena that involved slowing or speeding up time, but even those were pretty rare, and they had been limited to small areas. And there was nothing that could reverse time.

Of course, the thing with spontaneous anomalous phenomena (SAPs) was that you never knew what you’d get next. Myra could maybe accept the answer that a novel SAP was responsible for her situation, though it wasn’t an explanation that helped her at all. Also, SAPs resulted from aura build-ups, and there was no such thing as a ‘time’ element.

Space magic was another possibility Myra looked into. Since space was tightly tied to time according to general relativity, affecting space could potentially affect time… but the effect seemed to be too small to be useful outside black holes. There was a theoretical concept of “closed timelike curves,” but those had never been proved to exist, and Myra was also pretty sure they resulted in self-consistent loops, which were not the sort of time travel she’d experienced.

Regardless, thinking about space had given her an idea of something to investigate.

This is so stupid, Myra thought as she lugged her equipment up to the astronomy tower. Why am I even bothering? If the stars moved by a whole month, people would be fucking talking about it.

She had hoped she would be alone, so she could check the stars against her reference book like an idiot in peace. Instead, she found Shera already with her eye pressed against a telescope. The girl looked at her briefly as she approached, then returned to her scope.

“Shera, you’re up late,” Myra said, awkwardly making small talk.

“Yeah.”

No shit, people don’t go to the astronomy tower in the middle of the day, Myra.

“I d-d-don’t really s-sleep.”

Huh. Okay…

Myra set herself up and got to work, but her efforts were slow. She wasn’t an expert in astronomy, so she was a bit caught off guard by the level of precision she would need to work with. Maybe she should start with the nearby planets?

After half an hour of screwing up calculations, she finally swallowed her pride. “Hey, Shera.”

“Y-yeah?”

“Do you look at stars a lot?”

“Yeah, ev-every n-night.”

“Are they, uh, in the right place?”

“The st-stars are a-always in th-the right p-p-place.”

“Oh.” Yep, this was stupid.

“That’s why I-I-I like them so m-much. They’re never w-wrong. E-even if you th-think they should b-be somewhere else, y-you’re th-the one th-that’s wrong. Never the stars.”

I feel like that could apply to anything else, too. “So, uh, did that happen? Like, did you come up here and say, ‘Wow, the stars were off by a full month from where I expected! I guess I, personally, was wrong’?”

“No.”

“I see.”

Myra tried to return to her own scratchwork.

“W-what-t w-was it-it-it about, earlier? Th-this m-morning?”

“Oh, that. Don’t worry about it. I was confused.”

“I just th-thought you looked happy t-t-to see m-me.” She blinked a couple of times, then deflated suddenly. “Oh. B-because y-you were c-confused.” Her face turned red and jammed her eye into her scope.

“No, no, that’s not what I mean. Shera, I was happy to see you. I actually thought something terrible had happened to you, and I was genuinely relieved to see you alive. It’s just, I realized you wouldn’t know any of the context behind my misunderstanding, and I figured that I was just bothering you.”

“Oh. O-okay.”

“Yeah, I had to stop myself before I accidentally hugged you or something. Heh.”

“Oh.”

She remained steadfastly glued to her scope. Myra was sure the star she was looking at was fascinating.

“I see. This sh-shared ex-experience I f-forgot about must have been p-pretty b-big.”

“I didn’t say you forgot anything.”

“It’s-it’s what I in-inferred.”

Myra sighed. “Fine, I won’t deny that you… forgot something. You’re pretty perceptive, aren’t you?”

She didn’t react to the compliment. “I d-don’t understand, though. I d-died, and I f-forgot, and now you’re t-trying to measure the s-stars, like you—like you—” She shuddered.

“I didn’t say you died. I said I thought you died.”

“Can you—can you j-just t-tell me what’s g-going on?” Still, she hadn’t moved from where she sat, and hadn’t looked up at Myra at all, but it was for that reason Myra could see she was breathing harder. Her slightest movement was noticeable simply from the way her body was pressed against the telescope. “If I forgot something, I-I have a right t-to know.”

“Yeah, I suppose you do. You have a guess, right? You all but spelled it out. You’re just embarrassed to say it because it’s so ridiculous.”

She didn’t respond to this, so Myra decided to go ahead.

“I time-traveled, or… something.” There. She’d said it. “This morning, when I woke up, I found myself a full moon cycle in the past. I already lived through the next month. Also, you helped me out significantly the first time around. And you, kinda, uh, came to great harm, maybe died, as a result.”

“Thanks for t-telling me. I suppose you were trying to see if the stars went back in time, t-too?”

“Yeah… or if it was just our planet being reverted, or something.”

“D-do you want me to help? I can check some of the faster stars if y-you want.”

She’s humoring me, but of course she’d rather do astronomy than listen to my nonsense.

Of course, Myra really did need some help checking the stars. “If you can, it’d be really helpful,” she said. “I was, ahh, just now realizing how precise you need to be.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna need arcsecond precision for this!” She perked up suddenly, sounding almost giddy about the concept of arcsecond precision.

Myra let her go ahead, and so Shera zoomed her telescope around the sky for a bit, checking back and forth between Myra’s reference book and the heavens.

“Yeah, everything is exactly where it should be on today’s date,” she finally said. She was still stuttering, despite loosening up, but Myra herself was noticing it less and less as she got comfortable with the conversation. “I checked a few of the fastest stars, all the planets in our system, and a couple of exoplanets.”

That was a disappointing result, since it gave no clues as to how the time reset could possibly have worked. It also meant she had no proof, and Shera probably wouldn’t believe it. Oh, well.

“So, you really like astronomy, huh? Do you… come here every night?” And do you really not sleep?

“Yeah. I’ve been into it since I was a kid,” she explained. “I found an old telescope someone had thrown out and became obsessed. The first very night I looked through it, I saw a supernova.”

“Wow, that’s really lucky.”

“Yeah! But the telescope fell apart after a few weeks. I was devastated, and for years I had to make do just looking at star charts at the library and performing calculations by hand.”

“Er, but you don’t need a telescope to just look up at the night sky…?”

“Oh, I liked doing the calculations.”

“Wait, also—” Hold on, was Myra misremembering something? Shera wasn’t from a poor background, was she? “Isn’t your dad a count? I thought you’d have access to a nice telescope.” If Shera was just an unrelated person named Marcrombie, it was going to be a bit embarrassing. And insensitive.

“Yes, Count Marcrombie is my father. But, um, his wife isn’t my mother, see.”

Ah. “Sorry, I-I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s okay. I’ve never met my father, actually. I grew up with my mother. When I was fifteen, she died, and I wrote to my father, begging him to take me in. He didn’t respond for six months… When he did, he said he had enrolled me here, and that I should take his name. That’s all I’ve ever heard from him. I don’t really know what he was thinking.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, um… oh! Do you want to see it?” Despite giving her personal revelations so freely, she seemed desperate to change the subject. “The—the star, I mean. That I saw go nova. It’s a neutron star, now.”

She excitedly swung her scope to another part of the sky and adjusted a runic dial near the base of the scope, probably adjusting it to help see something outside the optical frequency range. “Look! Look!”

Myra looked. It was a very bright star.

“I check on it every night. I feel like it’s my star, you know.” She scratched her neck. “Sorry, you think this is weird and sentimental…”

“No, not at all!” Myra didn’t personally see the appeal of looking at it every night, but Shera’s enthusiasm, at least, was delightful.

“So,” Shera said. “Can you… go ahead with it?”

Myra blinked. “Ahead with what…?”

Shera tilted her head. “You know. The full story. What happened the last time you lived through this month.”

◆

Shera listened patiently as Myra explained everything she had experienced in her previous experience of the month. Before Shera entered the story, though, they decided to take a break from some for some tea, since Myra had needed something to pep her up. Shera had offered to make it, and her dormitory was closer, so they headed there.

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess…”

Myra expected this to be an overstatement, knowing neat-freak Shera, but it was more of a mess than she expected. Clothes were on the floor. Her school supplies were organized very neatly on her desk, but they were next to some dirty cups. The mirror was cracked, nearly shattered. The nicest thing about the room was her bed, which was neatly made.

The color drained from Shera’s face as she saw Myra appraising her room. “Is-is it too much?”

“No, of course not.” It really wasn’t bad by dorm standards. It just wasn’t what Myra had expected from Shera. “Maybe get the mirror replaced, though.”

“Oh, I actually broke it on purpose.”

“Eh, what?”

“Yeah, I don’t like looking in the mirror. I’m so asymmetrical.”

“Oh, right.” What the fuck? Why not just take it down? “But you can still look into it…?” Myra pointed out. It was cracked, but she could make out her own image just fine.

“I don’t look in it, though. ‘Cause it’s cracked, right?”

“... Right.”

“Also, could you not look in it? It’s weird to look in a cracked mirror.”

“Yeah, I suppose it is.”

Myra looked away from the cracked mirror in order to put Shera at ease.

“Hold on, let me clean up.” She grabbed the dirty cups from the desk and washed them in the sink. “There we go. Right. Tea.”

Myra decided to check out her bookshelf. It was… mostly astronomy and a couple of other science texts. She had the same astronomy reference book as Myra, though it was gathering dust. Near the bottom were a few magic self-teaching books. Makes sense… that was probably all she had access to growing up.

Myra flipped through her astronomy book as she waited for the tea to be ready. She found the section on neutron stars, hoping for something to make small talk. “Hey, which one is your star?” Myra asked. “Like, its official name.”

“ZK-1034. It’s in the swampbear constellation. Right ascension, 11h, declination, plus 63 degrees.”

Myra had only needed the name to look it up, though the coordinates were exactly what she said when she found it.

Except…

“You sure that’s it?”

“Yeah, ZK-1034. I told you, it’s my star, how could I forget?”

…

…

It’s nothing…

“Shera, how old are you?”

“Eh? I’m 19.” That was young for a third year, though not unreasonable. Myra herself was 20. “The star went nova… 11 years ago. When I was 8. Why?”

She moved to look at Myra’s book.

“Wait, no—” Shera looked at the book, then scrunched her eyes in confusion.

Shit, I shouldn’t have said anything—

She’s going to be devastated.

ZK-1034 had gone supernova, rebirthing itself as a neutron star, 23 years ago.