(Lysander POV)
The dungeon is quieter tonight. The rain above has stopped, leaving the cracks in the ceiling to drip in slow intervals, each drop echoing like a distant heartbeat. I can hear it against the stone and against my chest—two rhythms, one fading, one refusing to stop.
Maybe that's all I am now. A heart refusing to quit even when the world insists I should.
The Time Button glows faintly in my hand, bleeding a golden hue that makes my skin look like it's burning. It hums to me sometimes, soft but constant—as though it knows my pulse better than I do. There are times when I think it breathes.
It came into my life like a nightmare disguised as mercy.
"Live again," the entity had said, voice like a thousand whispers fed through a single breath. "Undo what fate has denied you."
I used to think about that promise every day. But lately, the words curdle into something else. "Undo what fate has denied…" What if it wasn't a kindness? What if the entity only wanted to see how much a human could break before he stopped being one?
I press the Button close to my chest. The faint tick—like a heartbeat beneath glass—should comfort me. Instead, it reminds me of the day it fused into my life.
It wasn't light that surrounded me when I met it. It was darkness pretending to shine—two forces wrapped so tight I couldn't find the seams. I remember seeing symbols float around me: equations of existence, time carving itself into numbers I couldn't comprehend.
And then came that whisper in my ear: "You won't die like them. You'll do something better."
"Better."
The word ricochets inside my skull like an old wound reopening.
For a long time after awakening here, I believed it was destiny. A way to redeem the wasted years on Earth where no one saw magic or purpose in me. Back in Maharashtra, the air was always thick with heat and exhaust but at least it was human—raw, simple, survivable.
Here, every breath is perfume over rot. The nobles, my family—draped in ceremony, choking on the illusion that mana equals virtue.
When the entity ripped me from Earth into this place, I thought it was offering correction: a world where I could be more than average. But what did it send me into?
A family that despised me for nature I never chose. A father who judged worth by brilliance. A sister whose smile could sanctify lies.
And the fiancée who turned her silence into blades.
Was all of that coincidence? Or calculation?
When I close my eyes, sometimes I imagine invisible strings—every betrayal, every humiliation—leading back to the same unseen hand. My life, a cruel marionette show, and me, the screaming puppet thinking each movement is freedom.
The Button thrums again. My thoughts twist in rhythm with it.
If I press it now… what happens this time? Another reset? Another illusion wrapped in golden words?
Will I wake again in some other cage? Will the entity whisper again—calm, confident, promising salvation while dragging me deeper?
I dig my nails into my palm until I feel blood. The warmth steadies me. Pain is real. Blood is real.
"Show yourself," I whisper into the dark. "If you're real… if you're still watching me—say something."
Nothing.
Just air heavy enough to taste, mixing with the faint metallic tang from my bleeding hand. The Button's hum grows louder—as if mocking me, or answering.
Maybe it's all in my mind—mania born from solitude. Or maybe not.
On Earth, we called such whispers "voices." Hallucinations. Here, they call them omens. What's the difference when both destroy you slowly?
I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling. It's low enough that if I stood, I could almost reach it. The stone breathes faint heat—life pulsing beneath rock.
Sometimes, I think the entity isn't far. It's in the dungeon's ribs, the world's marrow, the rhythm of time itself. It could be smiling right now, listening to me unravel.
Flash.
A memory surges through me—the night of my first death in my previous life. Car tires screaming, glass shattering, the mangled clock on the dashboard frozen at 11:11. Time stopped then. Just like the entity promised. It said, "You won't end—only continue."
Continue into what? This? Endless survival without peace, time bent into torment?
Maybe I really died that night, and this life—the noble titles, mana, betrayal, monsters—is nothing but a stretched hallucination born from that frozen second. The Button might not even exist. Perhaps I'm still dying on Earth, dreaming eternity in microscopic time between heartbeats.
I laugh, a small broken sound that the air doesn't echo. Madness or realization—it's hard to tell anymore.
The longer I stare at the Button, the more it feels less like a gift and more like a heart beating for something else.
"What are you?" I whisper to it. "A tool? A curse? Or are you him?"
The hum sharpens to a low chant, unintelligible but rhythmic. It slides into my thoughts like a knife between silk.
I can almost hear the entity again, its voice clean and cruel.
"You seek purpose, and still you ask for mercy. You were chosen not to live—you were chosen to endure."
Endure. That word again.
Was that all I am? A test subject in a divine experiment testing the elasticity of hope?
My body trembles. Everything inside me wants to crush the Button—to spit on divine games and their puppeteers. But the other part of me, the one that has bled too long, whispers differently:
Press it.
If I press it, maybe I can find out the truth. Maybe I can meet the entity again. Maybe I can ask—why me? why this?
Or maybe it's waiting for that very moment—to pull me into another eternity worse than the last.
The unknown hum of infinity sings louder now, the Button's glow licking the wall like firelight. Gold refracts off the dungeon's bloodstains, painting halos around the filth. It's almost beautiful. That's the cruelty of it—the evil of beauty wrapped around torture.
I draw in a breath. My hand tightens. My body quivers from exhaustion, my skin feverish against the chilled air.
"Fine," I murmur. "Let's see how deep you want this story to go."
The hum peaks—vibrant, alive.
And somewhere between heartbeat and light, a whisper—familiar, amused—answers for the first time since death took me:
"Finally."
The light devours everything.