The rock connected with Reeve's temple.
The crack was wet. Loud.
The man's eyes rolled back. He dropped like someone had cut his strings.
Roland's hand went for his knife—
Sable was already moving. Inside his guard. Too close for the blade to matter.
The rock came up again. Aimed at Roland's throat—
Roland caught his wrist. Twisted.
Sable's shoulder joint screamed. Ligaments tearing. The rock tumbled from nerveless fingers.
The knife came up.
Drove into Sable's chest. Between the ribs. Punctured his left lung.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream. Just made a wet, choking sound as blood filled places it wasn't supposed to be.
Roland pulled the knife out. Drove it in again. Lower this time. Liver.
Sable fell.
Distantly, he heard Ellaya screaming.
Distantly, he saw Second dive-bombing Roland's face. Talons extended—
Roland swatted the bird out of the air like it was nothing.
Second hit the pavement. Didn't move.
No.
Not him.
Not Second.
Regret flooded through Sable—sharp, visceral, overwhelming—
Reality inverted.
Loop thirty-nine.
Fifteen seconds earlier.
Sable stood there. Rock in hand. This time he charged differently.
Aimed for Kade first. The truth-teller. The one who'd see through every lie, every misdirection.
He had to die first.
Second launched from his shoulder. Went straight for Kade's eyes—
The man threw his hands up. Stumbled back—
Sable swung.
Connected. Kade's head snapped sideways. Blood sprayed. The man dropped.
Reeve pulled a knife—
Sable kicked his knee. Heard it crunch. The man went down screaming.
Roland charged. Too fast. Too strong.
The knife found Sable's throat this time. Faster. More efficient.
He died watching Second peck at Roland's face. Trying to distract him. Trying to save Sable one more time.
Regret—
Reality inverted.
[KARMA LEDGER UPDATED]
[Actions Logged: Lethal Harm x2]
[Bad Karma Added: +200]
[Current Balance: -200 Bad Karma]
[Threshold Progress: 200 / 10,000]
Loop forty.
Sable blinked at the notification. At the cold text burning itself across his vision.
Two hundred.
Not three hundred.
Because I only hit two of them before dying.
He swung at Reeve again. Missed. Got stabbed. Died.
Regret—
[KARMA LEDGER UPDATED]
[Bad Karma Added: +300]
[Current Balance: -500 Bad Karma]
Loop forty-one.
Five hundred.
It's stacking.
Sable stood there. Rock in hand. His analytical mind—the part that had gotten him through six years of medical school before he'd dropped out—started calculating.
Three hundred per loop where I attack all three.
One hundred per person.
Ten thousand needed for threshold.
Thirty-three successful attacks.
Or a hundred failed attempts.
He looked at the rock. At the three men. At Ellaya crying between them.
I can farm karma by killing them.
Over and over.
Until I hit threshold.
Until my Grace becomes permanent.
The thought should have horrified him.
It didn't.
He attacked.
The loops blurred together.
Loop forty-two: Attacked Kade first, got stabbed by Roland. (+300)
Loop forty-three: Tried to grab Ellaya and run. Roland caught them in eight seconds. Knife to the spine. (+0, didn't attack)
Loop forty-six: Different angle of attack. Swept Reeve's legs, stomped his throat. Kade tackled him. Knife to the kidney. (+100)
Every loop, the karma notification appeared. Every loop, the number climbed.
-800
-1,100-1,400
-1,700
Sable stopped keeping track of the deaths. Stopped flinching when the knife found his flesh. Stopped screaming when they broke his bones.
He just attacked. Died. Looped. Attacked again.
Efficient.
Loop sixty-three.
Sable got Kade and Reeve down before Roland reached him.
The knife drove into his chest, but this time he grabbed Roland's wrist with both hands and held on. Pulled the man close.
"I'm going to kill you," Sable whispered through blood-filled lungs. "Maybe not this loop. Maybe not the next. But eventually. I've got all the time in the world. You've only got fifteen seconds."
Roland's face went pale.
Then the knife twisted, and Sable died.
Regret—
Loop sixty-eight.
Second dove for Kade's eyes—brave, stupid, loyal—and Reeve's hand snapped out. Caught the bird mid-flight.
Squeezed.
Sable heard the bones crack. Small. Fragile. Breaking like twigs.
Second made a sound—not a chirp, not a screech, just a small, confused peep that said this hurts and I don't understand why—
Then went limp.
Sable's vision went red.
Not from rage. From something colder. More absolute.
He didn't remember moving. Didn't remember grabbing the rock. Just remembered the wet crunch of Reeve's skull caving in, and the way the man's eyes went empty, and the feeling of good, you killed him, he deserved it—
Then Roland's knife found his back.
Regret—
Not for killing Reeve.
For not killing him faster.
Reality inverted.
Second was alive on his shoulder. Confused why Sable was suddenly crying.
Loop eighty-nine.
Sable had gotten good at this. Knew exactly where to hit. How hard. Which angle to attack from.
He took down Reeve with a rock to the temple. Kade with a stomp to the throat after Second clawed his eyes. Roland with three strikes to the skull—one to stun, two to kill.
It took eight seconds.
He stood there. Breathing hard. Covered in blood. Looked at Ellaya.
She stared at him. Terrified.
"It's okay," Sable said. "You're safe."
Then Roland's hand closed around his ankle.
Not dead. Playing dead.
The knife drove into Sable's calf. Hamstrung him. He went down. Roland crawled on top of him. Knife rising—
Regret—
Loop one hundred and three.
The notification appeared:
[Current Balance: -9,700 Bad Karma]
Almost there.
Just a few more.
Loop one hundred and seventeen.
Something changed.
Sable attacked. Got Reeve down. Got Kade down. Roland tackled him. They fought. The knife found Sable's gut—
But instead of dying immediately, Sable kept moving. Kept fighting.
Blood pouring from the wound but his hands still worked. His legs still kicked. He managed to get the rock up one more time. Brought it down on Roland's skull—
The man dropped.
All three down.
Sable slumped against the wall. Hand pressed to his stomach. Blood leaking between his fingers.
Twenty seconds had passed.
More than fifteen.
He waited for the regret to trigger. For the loop to reset.
Nothing happened.
Twenty-five seconds.
Thirty.
Why isn't it looping?
Forty seconds.
His vision was going grey at the edges. Blood loss. Shock. Dying.
Loop. Come on. Loop.
Fifty seconds.
Regret—
Reality inverted.
But he didn't go back to the beginning.
He went back to the twenty-second mark.
To the moment after he'd killed all three men.
To the moment where he was bleeding out against the wall.
[WARNING: Temporal Anchor Shifted]
[New Loop Origin: 00:00:22]
[Cannot regress further]
Sable stared at the notification.
I'm stuck here.
Can't go back to the start.
Can only loop from this checkpoint.
If I die from here… I'm actually dead.
His hand pressed harder against the wound. Blood kept coming. Too much. Too fast.
I need to survive this.
Need to stop the bleeding.
Need to—
His vision went black.
Regret—
Loop from the twenty-two-second mark.
Sable ripped a sleeve from his coat. Packed the wound. Applied pressure.
His medical training kicked in. Overriding the panic. Elevation. Pressure. Don't pass out.
Thirty seconds.
Forty.
Fifty.
The bleeding slowed. His vision cleared slightly.
Ellaya was crying. Staring at him. At the three bodies.
"It's okay," Sable managed. "You're… safe."
One minute.
He'd survived past the checkpoint.
I can loop from here now. But if I die before killing them, I'm dead permanently.
This is the point of no return.
Loop one hundred and thirty-eight.
Sable had died seventeen more times from the checkpoint. Bled out. Collapsed. Couldn't stop the bleeding in time.
But he'd learned.
This time, he moved faster. Struck harder.
Kade went down first—rock to the temple, crushed skull, instant death.
Reeve second—throat strike, windpipe collapsed, choking.
Roland last—three hits, precise, mechanical, no hesitation.
Eight seconds from first contact to last death.
Then Sable immediately tore his shirt. Packed a wound he didn't have yet. Prepared for the injury he'd sustained in the last seventeen loops—
Wait.
He looked down.
No wound.
I didn't get hurt this time.
He'd been so efficient, so precise, that Roland never landed a hit.
Sable stood there. Breathing hard. Covered in blood that wasn't his. Looked at his hands.
Steady.
No shaking.
Just… steady.
He felt nothing. No horror. No guilt. No triumph.
Just cold acceptance of what he'd done.
[KARMA THRESHOLD REACHED]
[Bad Karma: 10,000 / 10,000]
[Analyzing Accumulated Sin…]
[Classification Determined]
[BESTOWED GRACE EVOLUTION INITIATED]
The world went white.
Not painful. Just… empty. Like someone had erased reality and was redrawing it with new rules.
When Sable's vision returned, new text burned across his sight:
[BESTOWED GRACE AWAKENED]
[Sable Voss Lucthilde]
Rank: Bestowed
Grace: Retrograde
Grace Rank: Transcendent
Sin: [Redemptive Wrath - Wrath against the wicked strengthens you.]
[You have been bestowed an epithet]
[The Unrepentant]
[Grace Effect: Rewind time by 1 minute upon experiencing genuine regret]
[Cost: Neurological degradation, memory fragmentation, identity erosion with each use]
[Warning: Redemption is another word for revenge]
[Warning: Second chances are bought with blood]
[Warning: Perfection requires sacrifice]
[Your Grace reflects your truth—]
[You will never forgive yourself]
[And you will punish the world for it]
Sable stared at the notification.
At the word "Transcendent."
At "The Unrepentant."
At his hands, still covered in blood.
He didn't feel regret.
That's why he hadn't looped back.
He'd killed three men a hundred and thirty-eight times, and when it finally worked, when they finally died and stayed dead…
He felt nothing.
"Are you okay?"
Ellaya's voice. Small. Scared.
Sable looked at her. At the way she stared at him—not with gratitude, but with recognition.
The look of someone who'd just watched a man walk up to three people and execute them with mechanical precision. No hesitation. No mercy. Just violence performed with the efficiency of someone who'd done it a thousand times before.
Because he had.
"Yeah," Sable said. His voice came out flat. Empty. "I'm okay."
He wasn't.
Second landed on his shoulder. The small body pressed against his neck. Seeking comfort. Seeking warmth. Seeking anything that felt like the person he'd bonded with three weeks ago.
Sable reached up. Touched the bird's head gently.
"We're okay," he whispered. "It's over."
But Second's talons dug deeper into his shoulder. Sable realized the bird didn't believe him.
Couldn't believe him.
Because the person standing here, covered in blood, staring at three corpses with empty eyes—that wasn't the same person who'd saved a drowning robin and named it Second because of some stupid TV show about renewal and fresh starts.
That person had died somewhere around loop seventy.
This person was what remained.
Ellaya took a step back.
Then another.
Her hands were shaking. Her eyes too wide. The look children got when they realized the adult they'd trusted was capable of things they couldn't understand.
"Don't," Sable said quietly. "Don't run. It's not safe out here."
"You killed them." Her voice came out small. Broken.
"Yes."
"You just… walked over and…" She couldn't finish. Couldn't process what she'd seen.
The way Sable had moved—like he knew exactly where to hit, exactly how hard, exactly when to strike. Like he'd practiced.
Because he had.
A hundred and thirty-eight times.
"They were going to hurt you," Sable said. He knelt down slowly. Kept his hands visible. Non-threatening. The same way he'd approach a wounded animal.
"They were going to cut you open and take your blood. I stopped them. That's all."
"But you… you didn't even…" Ellaya's eyes were wet. Not crying. Just overwhelmed. "You didn't try to talk to them. You just… started hitting."
I tried talking for thirty-seven loops.
It didn't work.
This did.
But he couldn't say that. Couldn't explain time loops to a seven-year-old who'd just watched three men die.
"Sometimes talking doesn't work," Sable said instead. "Sometimes people have already decided what they're going to do. And you can either accept it or stop them."
"By killing them."
"By whatever it takes."
Ellaya stared at him. At his blood-covered hands. At Second, shaking on his shoulder. At the three bodies sprawled behind him.
"Are you going to kill me?" she whispered.
The question hit like a physical blow.
"No," Sable said. His voice came out rougher than intended. "No. I did this for you. To keep you safe. I'm not—" He stopped. Took a breath. "I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."
"They promised to keep me safe too." Her voice was so small. So tired. "Roland bought me candied fruit. Said he'd protect me. Then he tried to cut me."
Adults lie.
Adults hurt you.
Why should I be different?
Sable looked at his hands. At the blood drying between his fingers. At the notification still burning in the corner of his vision.
The Unrepentant
"You're right," he said quietly. "I can't promise I won't hurt you. People like me… we make promises we can't keep. We say we'll protect people and then we fail. Or we succeed in the worst possible way."
He stood. Slowly. Kept his distance.
"But I can promise this: I won't cut you open. I won't use you. And I'll try—" the word tasted like ash "—to get you somewhere safe. That's all I've got."
Ellaya looked at him for a long moment.
Then, impossibly, she took a step forward.
"Okay," she said.
Just that. One word.
Okay.