Prologue
"My efforts...All lies in ashes..."
Footfalls reverberated through the ash remains of a crumbling edifice, a once-proud bastion now reduced to charcoal and fractured stone. A cloaked figure drifted through the ruins of a building, An Establishment that was once brimming with life now nothing but a void of endless sorrow.
"Why...does time coil back upon its tail...?" His voice, covered by epochs of anguish, hung in the air like funeral smoke. "Again...and again…"
A scrap of crimson fabric fluttered against his boot. A knitted scarf, the threads frayed but still blazing with the stubborn hue of memory. He knelt, gloved fingers brushing the wool. Her scarf. It never once left her neck, worn like armor through all the hardship she had faced.
"When...does the wheel of Eternity cease turning?..."
The words carved through him. He was a relic of eras, no chronicle recorded, a wanderer bound to a path slick with the blood of repetitions.
'My time dwindle...'
He rose, cloak rippling as he extended a gauntlet hand. The ruins shuddered. Stones wept dust. A keening wind awoke, not of nature, but of his making. A dirge only he could conduct.
"Fate's ledger is written in lies..."
Above his palm, reality fissured. A vortex of devouring darkness yawned open a cosmic maw that drank light, sound, hope. The remnants of walls, of splintered furniture, of a child's rusted music box, all spiraled into oblivion.
"Cruelty...is not decree."
His lips twisted a smile sharp enough to flay stars. Without hesitation, he stepped into the abyss. The black hole collapsed behind him in a silent detonation, leaving only a scar in the air a wound that pulsed once before dissolving.
"The curse dies with me."
Somewhere, in the marrow of infinity, his resolve crystallized.
"Soon."
