Anna’s Perspective.

“It looks like we did it!” Jessa declared with a slightly unhinged grin as she ran her hands through her blonde hair. She had clearly been stressed.

I crawled out from under the middle of the carriage seating and I stood from my previously hidden position.

I let out a huge sigh as I stared into the time-frozen distance outside of the military cart.

“This is it. Huh.” I muttered with relief flowing all throughout my body.

I knew doing these five hundred death runs the first time was rough, but doing it again knowing that I would never be strong enough to do anything without real training- that was painful.

I turned to Jessa, and I smiled happily as her blonde hair swayed. I ignored how she seemed to startle at something on my face for a moment. “You know, if Darren were still here he would tell you that ruffling her hair like that just as a method of stress release is ‘cringe’ and ‘the most shaky method of stress release there is’ his strange turns of phrase are always so amusing.”

Jessa opened her mouth to retort, but I continued, “We certainly did succeed. Now we can train together! Er, Eventually!”

“If he were here he would be baffled and angry, for us keeping this from him.” Jessa responded with a scowl on her face and a menacing glint in her amethyst eyes. The face blank of visible emotion was kind of unsettling.

“Jessa, that face is scary. But you know he would forgive the woman who he loved immediately. I wonder about you, however.” The smile I gave her was intimidatingly sharp, but my shining silver eyes sparkled with a bit too much teasing mirth.

I wonder if dying a thousand times in a hopeless situation caused us to be a bit unhinged.

Five hundred extra deaths to orchestrate the one I loved becoming qualified as well might just do that.

No, I’m perfectly sane.

“He’ll forgive me when he realizes he is allowed to have us both as his wives. With five hundred days of just surviving, I’m sure he’ll be happy with the surprise gift of a lady on each arm.”

“You’re a lady?” Jessa retorted.

Two portals opened and we stepped through to somewhere else as we continued to joke and prod at each other.

A long adventure awaits us all on the other side of that portal.

----------------------------------------

Darren’s perspective

Time twisted and folded around me as my vision burned with the chaotic dance of painful sensations and moments that defied logic.

I had no Idea why I even knew that I was actually feeling sensation at all!

My mind burned as sensations ground to a halt and I found myself standing on a ground stained by what seemed to be black so deep that it made pitch and tar look like sunshine.

It stretched out before me as a vast expanse that seemed to cut off at a random point in the distance that I couldn't actually see.

I took a hesitant step forward as my footfall echoed unnaturally in the vast chamber that seemed to have no end.

In the vast silence of this place it sounded startlingly loud.

The darkness recoiled as if startled by my presence.

The stain of tar colored glass suddenly retreated to reveal a bottomless abyss that yawned beneath my feet.

I saw below me that beneath the glass was depths of unending void that I could only call ‘darkness absolute’.

To my mind, the term ‘absolute darkness’ made me feel as if there was hope that a light might shine on it, so to describe this, I just had to make an entirely new term to categorize what was below me.

A void of everything.

I saw that the glass below me was just a weak and fragile shield against the infinite void and I instinctively knew I would cease to exist if the platform broke beneath my feet.

No way.

Never in a million years would I ever want to fall down there.

Not a chance in hell!

For some reason a mirror had just spontaneously appeared a few feet ahead.

Yes, totally add weird shit to my existential dread chamber.

I began to step forward towards the mirror that had just appeared upon the glass in front of me and somehow wasn’t too damn heavy in a way that caused me to fall into the abyss.

I walked forward and my eyes blurred as I looked into the mirror

When my sight returned, I realized with a jolt of horror that my frame that was hardened by a subjective year and a half of swinging a sword in a way I knew was way beyond amateurish had collapsed in on itself.

I was once again a scrawny dumbass with no prospects.

Not only that but I was now a thirteen-year-old boy.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

My eighteen year old body had been rewound to five years before I had first entered this time loop.

My body at least, had returned to being the boy who had naively believed he was the protagonist of a story about being cool and the one who would change fate and save everyone.

I had become him again.

Just a stupid kid.

A kid with the weight of five hundred days of death on his shoulders and nothing to show for it.

An additional lifetime of being a worthless delinquent behind that too might not have helped either.

At least if I didn’t remember I would have had more realistic dreams.

My thoughts of Jessa and of Anna along with a future where we could all be together felt foolish and distant now.

After five hundred days in a row of watching them die in different ways all on the same unending day while we kept fighting and failing in ways that promised at least one of us death every time-

I shook my head.

Don’t think about it.

I can’t think about it.

I’ll see Jessa again.

I'll revive Anna.

I had to.

I tore my mind away from the line of thought and forced myself to think about something else.

At this point I had to focus on finding a way to get stronger.

I approached the mirror and examined its unnaturally smooth surface.

On my second look something changed.

Its smooth surface was marred by a single detail.

A plain brass doorknob that seemed to have been plucked from an ordinary door in an ordinary world that certainly wasn’t this one.

I took a deep breath and I reached out and turned the knob as the freezingly cold metal bit into my palm.

Great.

Ice-brass.

Just what my hand needed!

The mirror-door swung open before I had even pulled and revealed the space inside it.

It was like a dimly lit arena the size of the grand coliseum in rome.

But the ceiling looked like a cavern.

But for some reason the harder I looked at it the further away it seemed.

Everything about this place was unnatural!

Strangely, the silence was broken only by the faint dripping of water from somewhere deep within the structure.

I looked up to see a massive ball-like figure hung from the ceiling at the center of the room.

The ball was suspended by a network of thick chains that glowed a malevolent black.

As my eyes adjusted to the slightly less dark place, I saw that there was something wrapped within them.

It was a man.

Or at least his head.

He was probably in his mid-twenties.

His face was the only thing exposed from beneath that metal ball made of chains.

I noticed an aura of ancient power radiating from him.

This aura made him seem ageless.

It made me feel like I was standing in front of a beacon of danger that went beyond the definition of a thing to be wary of.

I looked around and noticed that there was a web of creepy black chains that were moored into the ground and all over the room.

The additional chains went up to the infinitely tall ceiling that pulsed with a sinister energy.

From around I looked back at the main surrounded by chains

He had endless black hair the same shade as mine.

The difference was that it fell unkemptly to the ground.

Which said something about the length of his hair, because he was hanging 100 feet up.

How did it grow that long? There’s no way hair can grow that long without him having been there for an extremely long time. But how hasn’t he starved or dehydrated to death?! There is so much wrong with this scene that it beggars understanding of any kind!

"Hey there, successor," His words interrupted my panic attack with a voice that came out as a strong and powerful echo.

The sound could only be described as “Absolute authority.”

It gave the feeling of a tired man who had once held the entire world in his hands.

He offered me a savage grin that sent a shiver down my spine.

I swallowed hard and forced a neutral expression onto my face.

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.

My eyes darted to the massive scar that slashed a massive line across his face.

The scar was a jagged thing that wrapped around his face to the back of his head and into his hair beginning from the middle of his nose and making a hard left behind his ear and disappeared into his mane of ridiculously long, pitch-black hair.

Yeah! focus on the scar and hair! Darren! Focus on trivial details!

Amazing job, Darren! Do that!

Yes! Much less terrifying than those intense golden eyes that seemed to pierce through my very soul! Go ahead Darren!

Make a fool out of yourself.

But then my eyes narrowed.

Successor?

But then, a spark of hope ignited within me.

Prime devourer coming in a hundred years?

A crazy, desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, this was the turning point.

The book.

The prophecy.

The freaking spatial displacement and the age regression.

"Does this mean I'm the hero, after all?" I blurted out as a nervously confused smile twitched onto my face.

It looked more like I was cringing maniacally, I was sure.

My face contorted at the corners of my lips and my eyebrows made a shape that gave me a baffled look to anyone who could possibly be observing.

I know the look that was on my face had to look so unnatural that anyone who could see it on my face would have no choice but to send me to a funny farm.

The face that conveyed all the emotions of bafflement, incredulity, along with hope and despair all at once.

"It's just like one of those stories where the main character gets sent back in time! It isn't a high fantasy torture loop story, it's a tragic hero regression! My suffering is over!"

The chained man scoffed as his voice became a low growl of irritation echoed through the chamber. He then looked at me with pity. "Don't kid yourself, successor," he said as his eyes narrowed with irritation. "This isn't some made-up story. Your suffering has just begun. You’ll learn that life is made specifically of that type of thing and not a bit of it has true happiness that without strength is not a step from being taken away."

My smile vanished.

I knew it was the truth.

I smashed those embers of hope.

I replaced them with the grim acceptance of my situation.

He was right. This wasn't a story. This was my life and it was a hell that would make authors like wildbow praise whomever would write something like this world and ask how they can make more horrible worlds, just like this one.

Gege, eat your heart out because at least cursed spirits-

Actually, no.

My thoughts on stories where rocks fall and everyone dies is the default were interrupted by the impatient looking man with the chains.

"Welcome to my prison eternal solitude and unending boredom," the chained man declared with voice of amusement that made me feel like he was at least a bit nuts. "I am the Sword God Emperor. No one remembers me, but if they did, they'd sing my praises." He boomed throughout the chamber as he continued speaking.

Only to then whisper with a very punchable grin. “Welcome home, successor.”