1 Chapter 1: The End of The Endless Loop

"I have shared bread and wine with Time itself. I have also shared it with you, several times…

…you just don't know it yet." Dante Liberato, The Myriad, Year 2023.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely, highly, and absolutely coincidental.

"Trump, please! Listen to the General! Boston is already gone, those goddamn fucking Scorps have already overrun our men!"

"Mr. President, you have to launch the nukes!"

"We have already salvaged the one and only Magistone of the city, Mr. President. Our loss will be… minimal."

"...Okay."

The time was September 8, 2023, when the finger of the 46th President of the USA, President Joseph B. Trump, pressed the small square button that decided the fate of 300,000 people.

President Trump closed his eyes; his breaths, almost filling the entire room with a loud and weightful whisper. And as he opened his eyes, he just looked at the people depending on him before shaking his head.

"No man should ever be forced to make this choice, but if it must be done, then it must be me. God bless America, god bless us all."

And with those words, a nuke was released to the world—its destination, Boston. And while this weapon of mass destruction was on its way to the city, its people were completely aware that they had been completely abandoned by their leaders.

Even if that was the case, however, none of them really cared. How could they, when the only thing they could really do was run, hide, and cower in fear?

"Sweetie, come here, please. Slowly… just be—Sweetie!?"

And just like that, another child was brutally and violently killed in front of its mother.

Children, men, women, the elderly. All of them are being killed, mutilated, and cleaved in half indiscriminately by creatures not of Earth. Their heads were shaped in a crescent; their bodies resembled that of a pink shrimp, if shrimps had 8 viscerally sharp legs that were longer than their body, that is. They were large, with their silhouette spanning the size of a car and their legs an entire bus if stretched.

These creatures, Scorps… they don't have mouths, not really. They don't consume anyone and anything, no. They were just killing them, for reasons that have been unknown ever since they first invaded Earth 74 years ago.

They don't care about anything else and just kill. They just kill humans.

And right at the heart of Boston, Downtown, where these Scorps were just tearing and cleaving everyone with their sharp legs, in the center of the orchestra of screams and chaos…

…a young man stood completely unfazed, untouched, and uncaring.

He just stood there; his skin slightly tan, wearing an immaculate suit that matched his immaculate pulled-back hair despite all the dust and ash around him,

The young man does not relish in the chaos, nor does he suffer from it. He could not even hear anything, not because he was deaf, no—but because everything was just… white noise for him.

He was just there, existing while everything else was not.

The young man that could not be moved.

And even as one of the scorps finally noticed him, he still remained unmoved.

Even as the scorp rushed toward him, he did not even move so much as a flinch. And surprisingly, he did not need to. The monster's 8 sharp legs, for some reason, did not even manage to hit the young man even once as they went right through him.

"Kuhk…?" The scorp's crescent head tilted to the side as it looked at the young man, who still remained completely still even after what just happened. It stared at him for a few seconds, before all the hairs on its body started to tingle and stand up… causing it to just scitter away.

As for the young man, as you would expect him to be, he was still there… motionless.

A second.

A minute.

With every passing moment, a fiery dread filled the air as a nuclear missile drew closer to Boston with no one and nothing to stop it—all but one. The young man's finger.

The bomb descended with incredible velocity, straight towards the young man who remained still and unflinching, his finger still pointing towards the oncoming projectile. He felt an immense pressure building up inside of him as time seemed to slow down to a crawl until finally, the nuke touched the tip of his finger.

Right at the very center.

Well, the young man's fingers did not stop anything exactly, everything still ended in a boom as the nuke finally caused the irreversible destruction that it was sent out to do.

Irreversible — perhaps that is not really the word to use, at least not for the young man, that is. For him, all of this was something that had already happened before.

This entire day, the entire week, this very moment has already taken place in his life again and again without fail. Like clockwork; he had experienced this chaos so many times that nothing fazed him anymore. He had heard everything, seen everything, felt everything to the point that only a dizzying white noise remained.

The young man was stuck in an endless loop. A loop of despair that started when he woke up exactly one week ago and will conclude, without fail, this very second—the very second of the destruction of Boston.

And after the second passes, he finds himself awake. His body which disintegrated in less than a second was now once again whole.

Another week will pass, and time will once again rewind for him.

Again.

Again.

And again.

…and again.

"Dante!"

"..."

And as Dante instinctively caught a chalk that was thrown at him, his loop once again began.

The classroom he had seen countless of times; the people, the scent, the temperature—everything was the same, is the same; as it had always been, and always will be.

"Huh…?"

…Always will be?

Dante looked around him. And finally, for the first time in a very long time, he saw faces. Everything was the same, and yet something was different. Something has changed. He can feel it—the air around him tastes different. It took a moment for Dante to realize why it is, but after what seemed like a lifetime for him, he finally realized what was truly different.

It was him. He was different.

He doesn't know why or how, but he knows—he just feels it.

He was finally free of the cage that had kept him in isolation for eternity.

His loop…

…it has ended.