Alastor sat at his desk, staring at the holographic screens surrounding him, his mind calculating at an astonishing pace. The same time. The same place. The same life he’d lived just hours before his death—only this time, he was alive.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, but the unsettling familiarity of the night was driving him to madness. The ticking of the clock echoed louder with each passing second, reminding him that time itself had become his prison.

He needed answers. He needed to know if this was truly a time loop or if it was something else, something far more dangerous.

Testing the loop was the only logical move.

"Echo," he called out, keeping his voice steady. "Disable all notifications and cancel my next meeting."

"Canceling meeting and disabling notifications," the AI responded with its usual efficiency.

He had never canceled this meeting before. A divergence. Something small but deliberate to see if this timeline would alter based on his choices.

Alastor’s eyes darted to the clock again—10:46 p.m. Just a minute had passed, but the creeping anxiety that clawed at him was unrelenting. The assassin had arrived later, closer to 11 p.m. If he could break the pattern before then, maybe he could avoid death this time.

He stood, his movements careful, his mind buzzing with possibility. He walked over to the window, watching the city below, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his thigh as he thought.

Was he truly reliving the same hours over again? Or was it something deeper? He moved across the room, deliberately placing an empty glass on the edge of the counter—a small change, but enough to track what would happen next. Chaos theory.

If the glass fell, it would be the first indication that reality wasn’t fixed.

The minutes ticked by. 10:47. He stood still, waiting for something—anything—to change. The glass remained where it was, perfectly balanced.

Alastor turned back to his desk, his eyes scanning the room for any sign of abnormality. Everything was exactly as it had been before his death. The world moved on, unaware of the horrors he had just experienced.

He began pacing. More deliberate changes. He moved a vase from one table to another. Left his jacket draped over the back of a chair instead of hanging it on the hook by the door. Then, he reached for the drawer at his desk and pulled out a small, hidden compartment. Inside was a sleek black pistol—a precaution he’d taken long ago but had never needed to use.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

This time would be different.

As his fingers wrapped around the cold steel, he felt a flicker in the back of his mind, like static in his neural link. His vision blurred for just a moment, a brief sensation of disorientation washing over him. Then, without warning, a strange symbol flashed across his neural interface—just for an instant, but enough for him to notice.

A hieroglyph.

"What the hell..." Alastor muttered, rubbing his temple as the symbol disappeared as quickly as it had come. He blinked, accessing his neural feed, searching for traces of interference. There shouldn’t have been anything abnormal, but the hieroglyph had been clear—etched in perfect detail, as though carved in stone.

A flicker of anxiety twisted in his chest. This wasn’t some random glitch. It felt deliberate, ancient. A message from somewhere beyond his understanding.

He opened his neural interface fully, diving into the digital space of his augmented reality. His vision flooded with streams of data, algorithms, and digital security layers. He scoured every feed, every input connected to his neural link, searching for traces of the symbol.

Nothing. The system reported all functions normal.

Yet he couldn’t shake the sensation that something was creeping behind the code, watching him from the darkness. He focused harder, his mind spinning through potential explanations—hacks, malfunctions, or perhaps even enemies with a deeper technological advantage.

Then it appeared again. The hieroglyph, burning brightly in his neural feed, standing out against the backdrop of data like a shadowy scar. He froze, staring at the symbol as it flickered across the digital space.

It was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, the unmistakable form of an ankh—the symbol of life, but also a symbol deeply tied to death and resurrection in Egyptian mythology. His mind raced as he tried to recall what he knew about the symbol. He’d studied fragments of Egyptian culture for business dealings and had heard legends of powerful rituals and gods who manipulated life and death.

The Ankh Symbol [https://prideontee.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2-1.jpg]

But why now? Why in his neural feed?

Alastor felt a chill run down his spine. The symbol seemed to pulse, shifting slightly in shape, as if alive, as if it were trying to communicate with him. He reached out to touch it in the digital space, his fingers hovering just above it, when the symbol suddenly distorted.

It twisted, morphing into another glyph he didn’t recognize. He stepped back in shock, his hand trembling slightly.

"Echo," he said slowly, still staring at the symbol, "run a full diagnostic of the neural interface. I need to know if there’s been any foreign code injected."

"Running diagnostic," Echo responded. "No foreign interference detected. All systems are functioning normally."

He clenched his jaw. That was impossible. The symbol couldn’t be a coincidence. The ankh... it represented life. But its appearance now, after his death—this was a sign. Something ancient, something tied to whatever game he was now part of.

A game he didn’t yet understand.

Alastor sank into his chair, staring at the symbol as it flickered on his screen, daring him to decipher its meaning. It wasn’t a simple glitch. It couldn’t be.

It was a message. A taunt.

His heart raced, the weight of the symbol pressing down on him. He knew then—this was just the beginning.