In a galactic war that has raged for a thousand years, death is usually the end. For Specialist Caelum, it is merely a reload screen.

Cursed with the ability to "respawn" at a save point every time he is killed, Caelum has lived through the same hellish war 5,002 times. He has memorized every enemy ambush, every artillery strike, and every way to die. He is tired, overpowered, and cynical—he just wants to speed-run the war to save his childhood love, Lyra, from her destined death.

But in this timeline, a new variable appears: High Marshall Vesper.

Cold, calculating, and obsessed with probability, Vesper notices that Caelum is a statistical impossibility. Suspecting him of being an enemy anomaly, she begins assigning him to suicide missions, effectively trying to kill him to test her theories.

Now, Caelum must survive the enemy army and his own commander. But as Vesper closes in on his secret, a terrifying truth begins to surface: Vesper isn't just hunting him. She is remembering the loops too. And the reason they are drawn to each other isn't love or hate—it’s because they are fragments of the same shattered soul, fighting a civil war across time.

Most people think it's just a sensation, a signal sent to the brain. But when you are connected to the Deus System, you realize pain is data. It's a corrupted file overwriting your nervous system. It tastes like ozone and burning copper.


[WARNING: Host Vitals Critical.] [Ouroboros Integrity: 12%. Heat Sink Fused.]


The red holographic text blinked in my vision, overlaying the grey mud of the trench. I tried to lift my right arm—the one encased in the black, jagged metal of the Type-Zero: Ouroboros gauntlet—but the servos were locked. The coolant lines had ruptured. Steam hissed from my elbow, mixing with the freezing rain.


Ah. Right. The Kinetic Sniper on the ridge. I forgot to angle my shield at 08:02.


The voice in my cranial implant was High Marshall Vesper. Even through the static of a dying frequency, she sounded crystal clear. Cold. Calculating.


"Unit 7," I whispered, the vocalizer in my helmet cracking. "Status is... terminal. Again."


"Do not be absurd, Specialist," Vesper snapped. I could hear the hum of her Laplace Drones spinning up in the background of her transmission. "I have calculated a 3% survival probability if you crawl ten meters north. Move. That is an order."


In exactly one minute and forty-two seconds, an orbital kinetic rod from the Iron Ascendancy is going to turn this entire grid square into glass. I know this because I died to it last time. And the time before that.


The universe is a broken algorithm, and I am the only error code that keeps repeating.


"Sorry, Marshall," I murmured, watching the sky turn bright orange. "My hardware is fried. I'm initiating a hard reset."


"Unit 7? Caelum? What are you talking about? Your neural signature is spiking!"


I closed my eyes. The Ouroboros Gauntlet began to vibrate, feeding off the kinetic energy of the incoming blast. It wasn't magic. It was a failsafe.


[CRITICAL ERROR DETECTED.] [Initiating System Restore...] [Loading Save File: 5,002...]


Chapter 1 - Prologue: System Failure