The First Day

  “Is she alright? Are you sure?” Margaret asked. I held the back of my hand against the woman’s forehead. She was asleep, finally. I’d spent the entire day with her already. After saving the girls, of course. I wasn’t sure why I was so attached to them specifically. Why I could save each person one time and move on, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving those two children in pain. But I always made time for them. I think I understand why now. It seems obvious in retrospect. But that doesn’t matter anymore, I suppose. The woman I was helping—Matia, was her name, I believe—was getting better. My aura could do almost nothing to help. It could rewarm a cold bottle, or hasten how quickly a soup was prepared. I was no alchemist, capable of creating medicines or potions, so speeding that process was of no help. All in all, there was nothing special about me specifically that made me capable of helping her.

  And yet, she must have died a thousand times of this fever. Well before the quiet could take her. A thousand times in a thousand loops. Perhaps that number is an exaggeration. Living through each felt like a thousand days on their own, after all. I hadn’t been counting. I’d considered it briefly, but quickly realized that with no goal—no number to count to—I would only hasten my own descent into madness. In any case, for every loop I’d been through, she had died sick and alone. She’d nearly died that time, too. She almost definitely would have, had I not broken into her home and spent my day keeping her alive. But I only had basic knowledge of caretaking. There were exactly two things that made me special. I was there, and I was willing to help.

  That was it. She wasn’t afflicted by the Quiet, or the loop, or any kind of magic I could feel. Luke hadn’t reached her. She was simply sick, and alone. Perhaps this was because of the quiet. Perhaps her caretakers or family had died. Or they were in the cult which refused to acknowledge that anything could ever be wrong. But she had too little furniture for frequent guests. One chair, a narrow bed, and only a few dishes. I didn’t think that was the case. Without my trail of aura to follow, no one would have known she needed saving. Yet, once her fever broke, I was rewarded with that same fountain of aura. That same embrace of the soul, warm and cooling at the same time, like blue light. She wasn’t the first like this.

  After confirming the truth. That soul magic was involved, or at least Matthew Cross had pursued it, I had been through several loops. I’m not sure exactly how many. But I’d run into the same over and over again. I could help people, whether their misfortune was the result of the plague on Beddenmor or not. Many of them needed little more than a friend for a few hours. Just someone to talk to. I thought I was a poor choice, but I was there, and it seemed to help. Some needed help connecting with or finding each other. Some were too afraid to check on their loved ones. Too afraid to find them dead already. I could only do so much to help any of them. But it was enough for all of them.

  There were others, of course. Those whose minds had been taken. Trapped in their own bodies as I had been. Like the girls had been. These were more dangerous. I couldn’t tip Luke or his cultists off. But when they were alone, and the aura led me directly to them, I could help them. If they’d lived long enough in previous loops when Margaret’s bodies were hunting people, anyway.

  “She’s alright,” I finally confirmed. “She’ll be alright. At least until…” I trailed. It seemed cruel to finish the thought. That she’d be safe until the quiet took her. That she’d fought to stay alive only to last two more days at most. It felt like it mattered anyway, and I held onto that feeling.

  “Is it enough?” Margaret asked. I paused. She’d asked me that question nearly every time I’d helped someone. On the first day, when we were safe. On the second day, when the city seemed to fall into Luke’s designs and play out his delusion. On the final day, when the entire world crashed down around us. I got stronger with each, and each time she asked me if it was enough. Each time, the answer had been no. Except… I could feel the aura in my veins like fire.

  It was enough. Enough power, at least. Enough strength to overwhelm Luke, if my past contest with him was any indicator. But that wasn’t really what I was building up. I’d had the power to confront Luke for some time, especially if I didn’t use up all my aura before I saw him. But that wasn’t what I needed. I needed to be… enough. I needed to do enough good. To help enough. To know enough people had a better life, if only for a few hours, because I’d been there. I needed something to hold onto after I met Luke again. After I did something I knew I’d never forgive myself for. After I broke what was left of my mind, to save the people of Beddenmor.

  Because I’d beat him before. I’d suffocated him. I’d left him unconscious. And still he’d killed the boy I was protecting. Soul magic. So powerful. So strange. Able to fulfil the cruelties of a zealot even as he slept. Beating him wouldn’t be enough. Luke had to be killed. Margaret was right. Luke had to be killed, and only I could do it. I hated the thought. I loathed myself for having it. But I couldn’t think of any other solution.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “One more,” I replied. “I want to try and save Vel again, first.” Margaret looked at me. The sick woman slept in front of me, and Margaret seemed to sit alongside her.

  “You know that has the same solution. If not the same risks if you fail,” she replied. I nodded. That was one reason to try. One reason was simple. I owed Vel safety. I had promised it to him, and I had let him drown. I needed to fix that. But also… Margaret was right. It wasn’t as dangerous. Confronting Luke meant risking not my life but my mind. Potentially falling under his control again. Even staying that way, loop, after loop, after loop. But Vel’s father? If I choked… if I couldn’t do it, well. At least I would only die.

  “I know,” I replied coldly. The choice may as well have been suicide for me. The choice to take a life… again. It was giving up whatever soul I had left, if any at all. It would shatter me. But it wasn’t about me. “Let’s go.”

  My hands trembled as I stood in front of Vel’s door. I felt sick, but determined in equal measure. I had two voices in my head, competing for my attention.

  This isn’t real. What certainty you have is just Luke’s magic trying to break you. You won’t survive this.

  You can’t keep running from this. No one will survive if you can’t do this. This isn’t false confidence; this is necessity.

  Please don’t.

  Please just do it.

  Please.

  Please.

  I knocked. I heard familiar movements inside. The shuffling of a weary body. The click as the door unlocked. I began to whisper a chant as the handle turned. Aura burned down my arms and into my fingertips. It bathed my grimoire, and weary tome that it was, it glowed with teal. The door swung open, and a friendly monster smiled at me.

  And the world was still.

  But I wasn’t, and he wasn’t. This strange, cruel man stood with me in a world where time only existed for the two of us. I held my breath. I was good at that, by this point. It was second nature. There was no way to breathe when the world was still, and I knew better than to try. But the man I was facing didn’t. He didn’t know who I was, or why his lungs screamed when he tried to greet me. He didn’t know why I would do this. My teeth started to hurt as I stared at him. I was clenching my jaw too tightly. He held his hands to his neck, and his eyes bulged. I needed to breathe, too, of course. But not so quickly as he would. I hadn’t tried to breathe in… nothing. Not just a lack of air, but nothing. His lungs were collapsing. He stumbled backward, failing to catch himself on first the door frame and then the open door.

  He ran into the wall behind him, and grasped at it as he slid to the ground. I walked through the door, following him inside. I stared at him, and he stared at me. Part of me would like to say here that I glared. But part of me is glad I didn’t. My face wore only an apology, ever-present like a well-maintained wrinkle. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. The last time I had chosen to let someone die, I had been wrong. I couldn’t make this choice again. I couldn’t be trusted with it. But I was also the only one who could. And I knew it was a choice that had to be made.

  I considered trapping him. Tying him up. Knocking him out. But every solution I thought of led me to the same answer. Or, the same memory. The memory of a cult, a mob, and a broken and drowned boy. I couldn’t risk that again. I knew I’d made the wrong choice once. I knew I couldn’t treat this as something simple and trivial. Still. I had to save Vel. Maybe the loop made it easier. Maybe, no matter how much I told myself that what I did mattered every time, I didn’t fully believe that. I knew I didn’t entirely, or I’d have been frozen with indecision every loop. Either way. I didn’t drop the spell, even as confused eyes begged me to.

  He didn’t know why I was doing this. He didn’t know why his death would make the world a kinder place. But it was in the same way he didn’t know his wife was dead, even as her corpse hovered over the kitchen table. He didn’t know because he’d taken warm salt and rubbed at his eyes until the day they stopped hurting him. Until they stopped showing him what he didn’t want to see. Because he’d filled his ears with water. Because he’d numbed them and carved away at them with every word that told him he couldn’t be both cruel and kind. He was a man who believed he was good. Who believed he was happy. Who believed he was a kind father, worthy of respect. He was a man who made his child wish for death, and allowed it so long as the wish was silent and released only into empty nights. He didn’t know why I was doing this. Because he genuinely didn’t know who he was anymore. He demanded so much comfort and respect that he couldn’t taste the rot of his own tongue.

  It still hurt to kill him. It still hurt to watch the light fade from his eyes. My lungs protested, too. They begged for air, if not as desperately. But I waited. I waited until his hands fell to his sides. I waited until the convulsing stopped. I let the darkness creep into my own vision, and I watched the man die. Part of me died with him.

  But part of me lit up, too.

  As my spell evaporated around me, and I let air fill my lungs again, both feelings tried to tear me in opposite directions. I knelt in front of the body at my feet, and I pressed two fingers to his neck. His pulse was quiet. I rolled back on my feet, and I held one hand to my mouth as my throat tried to rapidly close around each new breath I took.

  I rapidly glanced around the empty home. How many things were red?

  End of the First Day