Darkness, darkness once again, one should have been used to this by now. However, despite Altair's more than three thousand iterations, the excruciating feeling of being violently ripped apart and put back together never seemed to fade. The avalanche of multiple iterations of memories rushing back and forth and being rewound every single time continued to haunt him even in death.

  His consciousness dissolving into a thousand minds, then converging back into a single unified stream, then breaking apart once again was jarring; multiple times his idea of self slipped and forgot. How many times now? How many more lives must be lost in this endless endeavor?

  No, how much time had actually passed? Nobody knows, not even Altair did.

  Minutes? Hours? Days? Or eternity itself? Yet despite all of that, his vision cleared once again.

  Half asleep, as if he had forgotten himself, he glanced around like a lost child, finding each piece of himself as time went by. Yet, the numerous statues of figures standing tall simply watched.

  Then, as if something snapped within him, he fell back onto the ground, and a number appeared in his peripheral vision.

  Three thousand four hundred twenty-seventh

  Like a speeding starliner across the distant nebulas, clarity returned to his mind. He glanced from side to side, as if there were anybody there with him. Yet his senses said otherwise.

  "So I died again?" Altair smirked, as if he had completely lost his sanity. "When will my suffering end?" He snapped toward the sky, and reached out for an answer toward those angelic figures.

  Then the distant trumpet reverberated through the surroundings.

  "I see." Altair said monotonously as the color of life from his eyes disappeared. Once the life was snuffed out of him, he fell lifelessly to the ground.

  Then, without Altair knowing, another anomaly appeared. A deep tolling of bells followed after the trumpets, and then the procession of black figures started. With slow strides, they circled the corpse; and from a place in another faraway distance, the hum of children could be heard.

  "Free the dreamers, end the rain, wake the sleepers, feel the pain"

  As the procession circled Altair, one of the angelic figures raised a sword, and from it flames came screeching out.

  "All shall return to what it should have been. How long will you continue to deny your destiny?" The angelic figure lowered his blade, and the entire world turned upside down. The sky turned fiery black as the ominous dark rain once again started.

  Then, almost immediately, everyone started to phase in and out, as if they were being violently destroyed and assimilated into one. The black procession resisted with all their might, continuously chanting over and over again.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Free the dreamers."

  "End the suffering."

  "Deny the assimilation."

  "Find the defier."

  Until everything was pure black, with only the angelic figures standing tall. Even then, they disappeared like a whisper of a distant memory.

  Altair snapped awake. His vision still disoriented, he quickly shifted his head to the side. "Vigil?" He beckoned. "D-do you remember?" He said, his voice laced with anxiety he never knew he could still feel.

  Vigil was eerily silent, as if he were organizing his thoughts. "Y-Yes, Lieutenant, I remember everything," his voice phasing in and out. "R-Right, I must now start the process of creating the resonance disruptor and dissonance projector!" He talked with such haste that you'd think he had failed thousands of times already.

  Upon hearing the affirmation, Altair merely smiled. For the first time in his life, there was somebody he could count on, especially in his current situation of looping through time again and again.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. That's when he noticed something in his peripheral vision. He pivoted his attention toward it, and once he saw it, his eyes went wide. Adrenaline rushed forth within him, his hands trembling in fear of defeat, and having to experience that ominous scene again was jarring to him.

  "Vigil? Isn't this the biological signature of the giant Stygians?" He said, panic seeping into his voice. "Out of all the times to loop, it just had to be now!? Vigil! Can we hold out long enough until the weapons can be deployed?"

  "I can expedite the process to five minutes, Lieutenant." Vigil's voice was calm and calculating, a stark contrast to the previous iteration. "However, we wouldn't be able to produce new ammunition, and we would need a massive amount of energy to sustain our operation past the fighting."

  Altair, meanwhile, began rummaging through his mind, seeking to build optimal pathways. "What are our current units of energy reserves?" He paused, raised his eyebrow, then continued. "With each Stygian we kill, theoretically, how much energy do we gain in return?"

  Vigil, upon hearing it, had an epiphany, and now with his voice raised by a few notes, he began to review past information. "According to past information… it should be fifteen units, Lieutenant, per Stygian we kill, and two units per autocannon round."

  Altair then smiled and nodded. "Excellent! Thank you, Vigil!" He praised Vigil's achievement and capacity now that more time had passed since he had first broken in fear.

  "How much ammunition do we have left, all around?" Altair switched his priorities now that he felt more comfortable and secure.

  "We have around one thousand shells for our autocannons, and around four missiles left. The plasma cannon takes energy, and so it's empty. As for our seeker charges, they're also empty, and shields are at thirty-five percent as of now, Lieutenant." Vigil listed out every weapon system they had.

  Altair carefully took in all the information he had received. "Let's make it count then, buddy."

  Meanwhile, outside the Ironside, Mira was merely standing still. Her heart pounded loudly, and she was confused as to what was happening.

  Lyria came up beside her and asked, "What's wrong? The Ironside hasn't spoken since earlier." She spoke cautiously. "Though, I am detecting a significant amount of mana being centered around the Ironside." She said as she placed down her staff.

  Brennan, who was standing nearby, was more alert than usual, his ears perking up and down. "Be careful, I sense large movements around us." He beckoned toward his partymates.

  Mira, heeding the advice, cautiously glanced around them. After a while, her heart pounded even more loudly, an unknown fear as if she had already experienced it from another lifetime dawning upon her. "They are already around us." She said in a whisper.

  As they continued to find their footing in the situation, the Ironside began to rumble and move.