"What exactly are you trying to achieve by showing me a bunch of illusions?"

Gabriel’s voice sounded rough, even to him. But the way it felt in his throat… it was like fire was trying to escape his lungs. If those illusions were all supposed to be possible futures then he would have to spit on this figure. As if he would allow such shitty futures to even appear in Alice’s nightmares.

"We’re just trying to make a self-proclaimed page understand what it means to be a character, ?#=¤#%, a true and whole one. You can no longer remove yourself from the story, so start thinking about the things you don’t understand. The knocking, the anger, the sadness, the desire. Think about it, understand it."

The figure’s wrist vanished from Gabriel’s grasp after it spoke. It didn’t slip out, it just seemed to vanish, as if it had never been there to begin with. Its gaze slid back to the screen, the image reflecting in its eyes.

"And you can call it illusions all you like, but they’re all possibilities. Each one of them can become real, and with everything we’ve seen, we’ve become excellent at judging which ones are the likeliest ones. Tell us, ?#(!"!(^*, do you want us to tell you which is the most likeliest to become reality? We can show you, all you need to do is ask us. The future that may come, the futures that had come, the futures that will now never come… Ask us, ?¤"(/!&, ask us to show you."

The reverberating voice became almost seductive as it bounced around within the darkness, within him. The figure’s finger was already back to tracing the screen, images flickering past it. The empire burning, Alice falling in love with Caine, the Crown Princess killing Alice, Caine killing Alice, Alice ending her own life. Things he remembered from the show, things he had never seen before, they flickered past the screen with each blink, seemingly searing themselves into his retinas.

"You’re looking, "&"/§/!"), are you interested? We can show you everything."

The voice kept talking, probably because it saw that Gabriel kept looking at the flickering screen. But honestly, the voice barely registered in his mind at this time. True, he kept looking at the flickering scenes. No, it was more correct to say that he couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

Death, tears. Death, tears. Death, tears. Rejection, tears. Life, tears. Every time Alice flashed by the screen, she was crying. When she died, she cried. When she lived, she cried. The face, the colours that had started to dye his world, it was always painted with tears when he saw it in that screen.

Another knock in his chest.

He felt it as he looked at her in the screen. The Alice in this life was leagues better than the one from the show. She was happier, she smiled more, she laughed more. That pitiful villainess that kept flashing by the screen, the pitiful villainess that showed up in all those illusions this thing was trying to show him… His Alice was leagues better.

"If that there is what you’re trying to show me, then you can just skip it. It’s all worthless."

Worthless. Every last image that flickered across that screen was worthless to him. Since he woke up in this world, he’d done everything in his power to ensure that Alice ended up happy. He wanted to see her happy, he wanted her to smile brightly. There was no worth in looking at such miserable illusions.

"Is that what you think, *^*^"¤%? Why is that? How can you decide that its all worthless?"

The figure just kept talking to him, the name that fell from its lips clanking around in his ears until it gave him a headache. Ah, he was getting really tired of listening to it. He wanted to see Alice, he had to show her that he was fine so that she didn’t start cr… cried too much.

"Aren’t you the one who spoke of desire earlier? And since you keep showing me scenes of her, you must be aware of it too, right? I want her to be happy, so any future you show me, possible or not, if she’s crying then its worthless."

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Gabriel could feel it. That thing knew him. The gaze that pierced him, the things it showed him, the way it spoke. That thing knew him, it knew him very well, enough to know a desire he had never voiced out. Then again, it took his old form so perhaps it was to be expected that it would know him. And indeed, it didn’t even hide it.

"That’s right, ="%&#!¤, that’s your desire. You want to make her happy, you want to make her smile. That second and third tenet, you’re trying so hard to follow them properly. But look there, =%*^`#¤%."

The gaze of the figure pierced through him and landed on the screen again. Gabriel didn’t know how or when, but the finger of the figure was already on the screen again. The image was flickering. The Alice crying in the mountains, the Alice crying in her cell, the Alice crying at his body. Again and again the images flickered, tears dripping on a body he didn’t inhabit.

"That’s you, %¤%&&¤%&, you’re the reason she’s crying there. You’re what’s making her cry."

Flicker. Tears. Flicker. Tears. Flicker. Tears. Flicker. Tears. The images never stopped, blinking between hundreds if not thousands of versions of Alice crying at his side. They never stopped. And neither did the figure.

"Do you know the best way you can make her happy, &%¤&¤%? Die for her. Right there, right now, let the last of your life fade."

Hah, he felt like laughing. It sounded like something the leader of a suicide cult would say to his congregation to ‘save them from the horrors of life’. Sure, Gabriel could die to stop her tears, but they would only stop because she too died with him. What a joke.

"Don’t look at us like that, ¤%&¤%&¤. It’s not a joke. This world is trapped in a loop, people just don’t know it yet. If you die, you’ll just wake up again back in that orphanage on the first day. People generally can’t keep their memories when it loops, but you’ll be able to. You can start afresh if you just die here."

The screen flickered again as the figure spoke. But the scene didn’t go forward this time, it went backwards. First, it showed him the show he was familiar with, the events blinking by so fast that he couldn’t understand how he took it all in. Alice died, a black blotch on reality appeared and killed Caine, and then the entire world seemed to twist and turn violently.

Everything suddenly reverted. Death was undone, destruction was undone, the world was undone. And then the events repeated. Slightly different this time, slightly altered. Alice was picked up by the Crown Princess, the black blotch was picked up by her. At a glance, it was clear that the Crown Princess at the very least retained her memories of the loop, she probably had a hand in starting it even.

She tried to change it, but it didn’t help. Sooner or later, the black blotch did something horrific that made the world twist and revert back to the start again. And this happened time, and time, and time, and time, and time, and time, and time again. It kept happening without pause, more and more people dying each time.

The Crown Princess kept fighting, but he could tell that she was getting tired. With each loop that passed, she was sleeping less and less, eating less and less. Life was taking a toll on her, loss was ruining her. In the last flicker that the figure showed him, he couldn’t even recognize the Crown Princess, she looked more like a puppet than anything else. But still, she kept trying to fight the black blotch.

"See, &%¤&¤*? It’s that easy. Just close your eyes and wait. Try again in the next life. Stop her from coming here, stop yourself from doing some of the stupid things. It’s that easy."

The figure whispered like the devil, the finger that kept touching the screen flickering through loop after loop. It was insane, it was something removed from the realm of reality. But Gabriel was someone who came here from another world, he was using magic, spirits and gods existed, so who was to say that this too wasn’t real? And above all… He felt it in his stomach, at the back of his throat, pulsating behind his eyes. This was true, every fibre of his being was convincing him that it was true.

"It’s not just easy, it is the best option. Isn’t that right, &¤%¤&¤%&? That second and third tenet, aren’t they to never let anyone else take what you treasure and to do everything you must to acquire that which you want? You want her to smile, you want her to laugh. Go back, do it again from the start, do it better. Isn’t that the best way to make her smile… To make her happy?"

The tenets he had decided that he wasn’t following properly after seeing Alice get humiliated, the figure was dredging them out as if to remind him. This was the best way, the easiest way. Just do it over, just start again, right all the mistakes you made in this life.

"Just go on, ¤&¤%&¤%&, you just need to close your eyes and then you’ll be following your tenets. It’s easy, ¤%&¤%&. It’s right, %&%#¤%#¤. It’s the best outcome."

The devil grated him with each utterance, each word coming from his own bones, bouncing in his head as an echo he couldn’t escape.