Chapter 028 The Seventeenth Try
**Aria**
Dreams usually have a texture. A kind of fuzzy logic where you accept that your high school math teacher is also a dragon and you're wearing nothing but a tuba. But this didn't feel like that. This felt crisp. High-definition.
Distinctly upside down.
I sat on a swing that hung from a patch of grass, looking up-or down-at a sky paved with checkered linoleum. Clouds grew out of the tile like mold in a shower stall. The air smelled of ozone and my grandmother's old peppermint candies.
My brain was doing a fantastic job of coping with trauma. *Oh, you've been tortured for five days? Here, have a Salvador Dal painting.*
I pushed off the ground-which was the sky-and swung higher. My ribs didn't scream. My wrists didn't burn. For a second, I could almost pretend the last week hadn't happened. That I was just Aria, dealing with a weird melatonin nightmare, and not a battery for a supernatural apocalypse.
Then the air ripped.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure drop, like being in an airplane cabin when the door blows off. The linoleum sky cracked. A shadow tore through the beautiful, nonsensical scenery, bleeding black smoke that smelled like wet ash and copper.
Thalren.
He didn't walk into the dream. He crashed into it.
He landed in the grass above me, or below me-physics was really just a suggestion here-and the impact shook the swing chains. I stopped swinging.
He looked... bad. Even in a dream, my mind couldn't sanitize him. His armor was battered, streaks of dried ichor mixing with the mud on his cloak. But it was his face that stopped my heart. The black veins I'd seen starting at his jaw were thicker now, pulsing with a life of their own. His eyes were wild, frantic, scanning the inverted world until they locked onto me.
"Aria."
His voice sounded like gravel grinding together.
I stood up. The swing vanished. Gravity decided to stop playing games and snapped right-side up. I stumbled, and he was there.
He hit me like a linebacker, wrapping his arms around me so tight I actually squeaked. If this were real, he probably would have broken the few ribs Luminae hadn't cracked yet. But here, in this headspace, he just felt solid. Warm. Real.
"I found you," he buried his face in my neck. His skin was fever-hot. "I found you."
"Yeah," I whispered, gripping the back of his cloak. "You found me."
He pulled back, hands gripping my shoulders. His eyes were frantic, roving over my face, down to my arms. He was checking for damage. And because my subconscious is a traitor that values accuracy over comfort, the dream-me flickered. The clean clothes vanished. Suddenly I was wearing the blood-crusted tunic I'd been dumped in. The split lip throbbed. The raw burns on my throat from screaming flared hot.
Thalren froze. His pupils blew wide, swallowing the gold.
"What did he do?" The words were barely human. A growl that vibrated in his chest. "Aria. What did he do?"
"Calibrations," I said. My voice was raspy, just like in the waking world. "He calls them calibrations."
Thalren's hands tightened on my shoulders. Smoke started to rise from his skin-literal smoke, curling off his armor. The grass around his boots turned gray and died in seconds.
"I'm going to kill him," he said. It wasn't a threat; it was a statement of fact, devoid of emotion, which made it terrifying. "I'm going to tear him apart. Slowly. Cell by cell. I will make him beg for the void."
"Thalren-"
"I'm close," he interrupted, his intensity scary. "We're entering the valley tomorrow. I'll burn the gates. I'll tear the mountain down if I have to."
"No."
He blinked, like I'd slapped him. "No?"
"You can't come tomorrow."
He stared at me. "Do you think I'm going to leave you there? With him?"
"I think if you come tomorrow, we lose." I pulled away from him. It took effort; his gravity was stronger than the dream's. I walked to the edge of the grass patch, looking out at the chaotic swirl of colors that passed for a horizon. "He's waiting for you, Thalren. He knows you're coming. He's counting on it."
"I don't care what he knows. I'll kill him anyway."
"You won't," I said softly. I turned back to him. "You've tried. You've tried sixteen times."
The silence that followed was heavy. The linoleum sky stopped shifting. The wind died.
Thalren frowned, a deep crease between his brows. "What are you talking about?"
"Luminae told me," I said. "During the sessions. When the pain gets bad... he talks. He likes to lecture." I hugged my arms around myself. The memory of the tuning fork ghosted over my sternum. "This isn't the first time we've done this. It's the seventeenth. We're in a loop, Thalren."
He shook his head, a quick, jerky motion. "A loop. You mean... time?"
"Iterations. He calls them iterations." I took a breath. "Sixteen times, you've come to rescue me. Sometimes you bring an army. Sometimes you come alone. Sometimes you get there early, sometimes late."
I stepped closer to him. The smoke coming off him smelled like burning pine now.
"I've died sixteen different ways, Thalren. I saw you become a monster trying to save me. In Iteration Four, you let the corruption take you completely just to break the door down. You killed Luminae, but by then... you didn't know who I was anymore. You killed me too."
Thalren flinched. He looked down at his hands-at the black veins mapping his skin.
"Sixteen times," he whispered.
"In Iteration Nine, we tried to run," I continued, uncorking the bottle of horrors Luminae had poured into my head. "We almost made it to the coast. But the mark on my chest... it's a beacon. He found us. He always finds us."
"Why?" Thalren looked up, eyes anguished. "Why does it happen?"
"Because we're predictable," I said. "We react. He hurts me, you get angry, you charge in. He uses your anger. He uses my fear. We're puppets dancing on strings he cut sixteen lifetimes ago."
Thalren paced away, his boots crushing dream-flowers that turned to ash instantly. He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the strands tight. "So what? We do nothing? I let him... tune you?"
"We change the variables," I said.
He spun around. "How?"
"Every other time, you attacked as soon as you got there. You rushed. You tried to stop the Convergence before it started." I met his gaze. "This time, you wait."
"Wait?" The word exploded out of him. "You want me to sit outside while he carves you up? For days?"
"One day," I said. "Just one more day. The Convergence happens in six days. But the final alignment... he needs the stars to be right. He needs the peak energy. If you attack at dawn on the final day-right when the ritual starts-he'll be vulnerable. He'll be channeling too much power to defend himself properly."
"And what happens to you in the meantime?" His voice cracked.
"I hold on," I said. I tried to sound braver than I felt. "I'm getting good at it. The serving girl... she helps. And the bond..." I touched my chest. "It's shifting. I can feel you now. That's new. Luminae said the bond usually breaks by now."
Thalren crossed the distance between us in a stride. He grabbed my hands. His skin was rough, calloused, familiar.
"If I wait," he said, low and dangerous, "and you die... I will burn this world to cinders. I won't just restart the loop. I will end existence."
"I know," I said. And God help me, I believed him. "But I'm asking you to trust me. Not the pattern. Not the magic. Me."
He stared at me for a long, agonizing minute. The smoke around him thinned. The black veins seemed to settle, pulse slowing.
"Dawn," he said. "On the day of Convergence."
"Dawn," I agreed.
The dream started to shudder. The edges of his face blurred, like watercolor in the rain. The linoleum sky began to drip.
"I'm waking up," I said, panic flaring. "Thalren-"
"I'm here," he said fiercely, pulling me in again. "I'm right here. Hold on to the anchor, Aria. Honda Civic. Dr Pepper. Me. Just hold on."
"I am," I whispered into his chest. "I am."
The world dissolved into white static.
***
**Thalren**
I woke up because the ground was screaming.
Not literally-though with my luck lately, that wouldn't have surprised me-but in the way that matters to a Warden. Usually, sleeping on the earth is comforting. You feel the hum of roots, the slow drift of water, the lifecycle of beetles and worms.
This morning, I woke up in a graveyard.
I sat up, gasping, air tearing at my lungs. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs-*Aria, Aria, Dawn, Aria*-a hangover from the dream.
I looked around.
"Shit," I hissed.
I had gone to sleep in a lush clearing of Silverpine Hollow, surrounded by ferns and ancient moss. Now, I sat in the center of a perfect circle of death. For twenty feet in every direction, the world was gray. The ferns were ash. The moss was dust. Small saplings had withered and snapped, their leaves curled like burnt paper.
The corruption. It was reacting to my sleep state. To the rage I'd felt in the dream.
"Impressive landscaping," a voice said.
I snapped my head up. Sylith was sitting on a fallen log just outside the circle of necrosis. He was whittling a piece of wood, looking entirely too calm for a man staring at an abomination.
Thrak and Zephyran were further back, awake but keeping their distance. Vorn was sharpening his axe, eyeing me warily.
I scrambled to my feet. The dead grass crunched like glass under my boots.
"Where is he?" I demanded.
Sylith raised an eyebrow. "Who? The Crown prince? Probably still sipping tea in his tower."
"The Chronicler," I growled. I scanned the camp. The cloaked figure was gone.
"Left an hour ago," Sylith said, not looking up from his whittling. "Said his part was done. Something about 'observing the variable shift' and not wanting to bias the outcome."
"You knew," I said. The heavy, cold certainty settled in my gut, heavier than the sword on my back.
Sylith paused. The knife stilled against the wood. "Kael-"
"Don't call me that," I snapped. I stepped toward him. The corruption flared at my feet, a wave of black rot seeking fresh ground. Sylith didn't flinch, but Thrak put a hand on his hammer.
"You knew about the loops," I said. My voice was dangerously quiet. "Aria told me. Sixteen times. We've done this sixteen times."
The entire camp went silent. Even Vorn stopped grinding his axe. Zephyran, who had been packing her satchel, froze.
Sylith slowly set down the wood and the knife. He looked tired. Not just sleepy-tired-soul-tired. Like he'd walked every mile of those sixteen lifetimes.
"Yes," he said.
I saw red. I didn't mean to move, but suddenly I was across the clearing. I grabbed Sylith by the front of his tunic and slammed him against a tree. The impact shook leaves-green ones-down onto us.
"Why?" I roared. "You watched us die? You watched her die? Sixteen times, and you said nothing?"
"Thalren!" Zephyran shouted, stepping forward. "Let him go!"
"Stay back!" I didn't look at her. I glared into Sylith's eyes. They were heterochromatic-one green, one violet-and they were filled with a terrible, ancient sadness.
"Because telling you didn't work," Sylith choked out. He didn't fight my grip. "In Iteration Three, I told you everything the moment we met. You tried to outsmart fate. You went to the coast instead of the mountain. The Crown burned every village from here to the sea to flush you out. Thousands died."
He coughed, his hands gripping my wrists, not to push me away, but to steady himself.
"In Iteration Seven," he continued, "I told Aria. She tried to kill herself to end the cycle. Luminae... he brought her back. It wasn't pretty. It broke her mind before the ritual even started."
I felt the blood drain from my face. My grip loosened.
Sylith slid down the tree trunk, gasping for air. He rubbed his throat.
"I am not the architect of this hell, Warden," he rasped. He pulled up his sleeve. His arm was covered in tally marks-scarred into the skin. Sets of five. There were dozens of them. "I am just the idiot who remembers it."
I stared at the scars. "Why is this time different?"
"Because you figured it out," Sylith said. He stood up, shakily, brushing bark off his shoulder. "Every other time, I had to intervene. I had to nudge. This time... the dream. The bond. That's new. You two connected without proximity. That hasn't happened since Iteration Two, and that was... brief."
I looked at my hands. The black veins were pulsing, eager.
"The Chronicler left," Zephyran said, her voice trembling slightly. "Does that mean...?"
"It means we're off script," Sylith said. He looked at me. "The script says you charge Corespire tomorrow. You breach the gates at sundown. You fight your way to the ritual chamber, exhausted, bleeding. You arrive just as Luminae finishes the first phase. He uses your arrival-your violence-to catalyze the Bloom."
"And then?" I asked.
"And then the world turns white," Sylith said softly. "And I wake up in a tavern in Fenwood, wondering why my head hurts."
The clearing was silent. A bird chirped, oblivious to the fact that we were discussing the reboot of the universe.
"Aria has a plan," I said.
Thrak stepped forward, his massive arms crossed. "The girl came to you in a dream?"
"She did."
"Is she... intact?"
"She's hurting," I said, the rage simmering again, hot and caustic. "But she's thinking. She says we wait. We don't attack tomorrow. We wait for Convergence day. Dawn."
Sylith's eyes narrowed. "Dawn? That cuts it close. If we miss the window by even an hour, the fusion becomes permanent. There's no resetting that."
"She said he's weakest then," I said. "He'll be channeling too much to defend himself."
Sylith looked at the sky, calculating. "It's a gamble. High risk. If we wait, his hold on her strengthens. Her humanity erodes."
"She asked me to trust her," I said. "Not the odds."
I looked around the circle. Thrak, the mercenary who just wanted to get paid. Zephyran, the scholar dragged into a war. Vorn and Xyl, rebels fighting for a cause they barely understood.
"I can't ask you to do this," I said. "Staying means waiting in the shadow of the mountain for days. If we're caught, we're dead. If we fail, apparently we're dead anyway, or worse-we do it all again."
Vorn spat on the ground. "Do I get to kill something?"
"Hopefully Luminae," I said.
"Then I'm in," Vorn grunted. "I hate walking. Might as well make it worth the trip."
Zephyran adjusted her glasses. Her hands were shaking, but she nodded. "If this is the seventeenth time... statistically, we're due for an outlier event. I'm curious."
Thrak sighed, a sound like a crumbling boulder. "I liked the old plan better. Less sitting around. But if the girl says wait, we wait. She's the payload."
I turned back to Sylith. He was watching me with a strange expression. Hope? Fear?
"What happens if we break the cycle, Sylith?" I asked. "What happens to the next iteration?"
"There isn't one," Sylith said quietly. "If we succeed... or if we fail in a new way... the loop breaks. Time moves forward. Whatever happens, sticks."
"Good," I said. I looked down at the dead circle of grass around my feet. "I'm tired of reruns."
I walked over to my pack and swung it onto my shoulder. The movement pulled at the corruption in my neck, a sharp, biting pain that promised power and madness in equal measure.
"We move," I commanded. "We find a blind spot near the valley. And we wait for the sun."
"And then?" Thrak asked.
I looked south, toward the invisible pull of Corespire. I could feel her there. Faintly. Like a radio signal in a storm.
"And then," I said, "we rewrite the ending."
No one argued.
As we marched out, leaving the circle of dead earth behind us, I let myself touch the bond. Just for a second.
*I'm coming,* I projected. Not words, just pure intent. *Hold on, Aria. I'm coming.*
The static pushed back. Warm. Alive.
*I know.*
We marched into the trees, and for the first time in sixteen lifetimes, the wind felt like it was blowing at our backs.