The fire snapped. A sharp, dry sound, like a bone breaking in a quiet room. The air felt thin and mean, carrying the kind of chill that didn’t care about the flames.

  Rein frowned slightly, watching the boy in the monocle from the corner of his eye.

  Kellen had to be carrying information from countless previous loops—

  but he shouldn’t have any record of the most recent one.

  The one he had just crawled out of.

  Rein made a quiet assumption.

  In other loops, some version of him had probably walked straight to the spatial expansion circle before ever touching the food.

  It made sense.

  Rein let out a slow breath, then rose to his feet and turned toward Kellen. His gaze met the pale eye behind the monocle—steady, unreadable—before he softened his voice just enough to sound human.

  “Sorry,” Rein said. “When I saw a magic circuit that complex, I couldn’t help myself. Guess I got a little rude without realizing it.”

  He forced a faint smile.

  “Let’s start the party.”

  Kellen blinked, visibly surprised. Then—almost instantly—his expression snapped back into place.

  Wide. Friendly. Perfectly on-script.

  He nodded.

  Rein walked back to the others, already reaching into his cloak.

  He pulled out Boris’s pocket watch and stared at it.

  “So…”

  His eyes locked onto the second hand.

  19:33.

  He slipped the watch back inside his cloak, then looked up at the group.

  “I don’t think it’d be a bad idea if we ate and talked at the same time.”

  His smile was thin—almost strained.

  "Boris, I need you to do something for me..." Rein’s voice was an indistinct murmur against the boy’s ear, the rest of his words unheard. Then, he broke away, moving straight for the table.

  Dinner unfolded exactly the way he expected.

  The smell of the steak, the exact saltiness of the stew—it was perfect. Every bite felt like a rerun. It made his stomach turn, the heavy, greasy sensation of swallowing the same moment twice.

  Like chewing through a memory instead of a meal.

  Mira laughed as she chatted with Boris, bright and unguarded. Then Marten—the small-framed boy—walked over with his plate and sat down beside her.

  It was haunting.

  Every movement, every clink of a fork, fell into the same rhythm.

  “Congratulations on your win today!” Marten said with a friendly smile.

  Rein nodded—and cut him off before the words could even land.

  “And yeah… you won one thousand AC from betting on the match, didn’t you?”

  Marten’s smile froze, then crumbled.

  Boris choked mid-chew, his face turning red.

  “H-how do you know that?” Marten asked, voice trembling. His eyes sharpened with confusion—and something close to fear.

  Rein didn’t answer. He kept his tone flat, his posture relaxed, and added as if it were nothing—

  “Don’t worry. The Viremont family isn’t my problem.”

  A pause.

  “Not right now.”

  He speared a piece of meat with his fork and ate like he’d just commented on the weather.

  Marten sat there, stunned into silence. Mira’s eyes widened like she was staring at a stranger. Boris wiped his mouth and looked at Rein like he’d just watched someone break reality in half.

  Rein lifted his glass, drinking with practiced calm. Over the rim, his eyes tracked Marten sitting across from him.

  From the wreckage of data LIZ had scavenged from the Ekhosar during the previous loop.

  This cheerful, ordinary Marten would eventually be eaten alive by mana corruption.

  The one who would lose himself completely…

  …and become a mindless lycan.

  That meant Marten had died more times than anyone at this table could even imagine.

  His data and his mana had been shattered and rewritten until there was barely anything left to restore.

  Rein’s blue eyes flashed.

  He used the glass as cover and activated Mana Vision without letting anyone notice.

  At the table, Mira was enthusiastically asking Marten about lycans, and Marten was answering like always—like the same harmless conversation they’d had in other loops.

  It was almost funny.

  Almost.

  Because only minutes ago—in a collapsing dungeon—Marten had been hunting Mira like an animal, desperate to tear her apart.

  But what Rein saw now was far worse.

  The mana inside the cabin was warped and dim, corrupted into a dull grey haze.

  It spiraled beneath the wooden floor like a drain—

  a vortex pulling everything toward the deepest point of the cabin.

  The basement.

  Where the Ekhosar was hiding.

  Rein’s gaze shifted back to Marten, and a cold, oily slick slid down his spine.

  Inside the boy’s body, corrupted mana had already invaded more than half of his structure. His core mana circle was mostly black now, violently unstable, the corruption spreading through him like cancer waiting to rupture.

  Prior to this loop, Rein hadn't been able to see any of it.

  Maybe he’d been under the book’s spell too—living in the bright, fresh world the Ekhosar had painted over the wet black rot of the truth.

  But LIZ had built him a filter.

  A way to see through the lie.

  And she’d injected it into him along with the memory of the previous loop.

  So now, through Rein’s eyes… there was no celebration.

  A party that wasn’t a party at all—

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

  but a banquet of the dead who didn’t know they were dead yet.

  Dana. Curt. Jalara.

  Even Kellen himself.

  They were completely overwritten by the Ekhosar’s interference. In Rein’s vision, their mana resembled ruins—pulverized into nothingness, corrupted beyond reversal.

  The sight made his stomach turn a slow, greasy somersault. He had to clench his teeth to keep the hot, sour wash of bile from spilling over.

  Finally, Rein looked at Mira and Boris…

  he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  Their mana carried traces of corruption too—residue from looping—

  but they weren’t past the line yet.

  They hadn’t crossed the point of no return.

  Their core structures were still stable enough to be pulled back into reality—

  if he acted in time.

  Rein set his glass down slowly, forcing himself to blend into the table’s fake warmth.

  He knew what was coming.

  That white fog would creep in.

  Then the monsters—and the lycan leaking out of the dungeon’s fracture—would crash into the cabin like a flood.

  Rein looked at Marten again, his eyes tightening with something that was almost pity—and something else he didn’t have a name for.

  In a twisted loop like this, events could overlap until even the beginning was impossible to find.

  The Marten sitting here right now…

  might end up killed by Marten.

  The lycan version—born from a previous collapsing loop.

  A clean paradox.

  Rein’s lips thinned as his index finger tapped the tabletop—metronomic.

  Physics had been ripped apart.

  Time had been crushed and kneaded into a lump of corrupted data.

  It was turning into a prison.

  A hell designed to make them kill each other—forever.

  The pocket watch in Rein’s cloak kept ticking.

  20:12.

  Then Kellen’s smooth voice rose from the head of the table, cutting through the silence.

  “First… I’d like to thank Jalara Louden once again for this wonderful dinner tonight.”

  Polite applause followed.

  Jalara lifted her glass, wearing a smile that looked… wrong.

  Too perfect.

  “And now…” Kellen continued, his voice charming, theatrical, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for. As president of the Society, I would like to invite—”

  He didn’t get to finish.

  Rein suddenly stood.

  The movement was sharp—wrong timing, wrong rhythm—

  and Kellen froze mid-sentence like someone had yanked a string.

  Rein walked straight up to him, close enough to make the air tighten.

  His gaze traced the stress points in Kellen’s expression.

  “How many inscribed magic circles did you place in this room?” Rein asked—again.

  Maybe to Kellen, it was just another repeated question in another loop.

  Kellen looked confused. “There are… four. One in each corner. Why?”

  His smile twitched. “Did you notice a flaw?”

  Rein didn’t answer.

  He simply swept his gaze across the cabin.

  With Mana Vision active, he didn’t need to inspect anything up close.

  The structure of the magic was laid bare—every layer, every circuit, every hidden flow.

  Last time, he hadn’t had the chance. The monsters had arrived too soon.

  But this time, the record had a scratch. Rein was finished with the old tune.

  The only thing he hadn’t done in the previous loop was check every node.

  And now—he saw it.

  Kellen had said there were only four.

  But the structure didn’t add up.

  Four points could hold a shape.

  It could look stable. But this wasn’t a simple ward or a novice array.

  It was an advanced spatial expansion inscription—one that bent interior volume without collapsing the boundary.

  A circle like that needed an anchor.

  A fifth node.

  Hidden.

  Something buried beneath the wood, tucked behind a decorative rune, masked as harmless ornamentation—anything to complete the circuit and keep the whole thing from tearing itself apart.

  Kellen had lied. Again.

  “Wait—shouldn’t we talk about Corvus topology first?” Kellen said quickly, glancing toward the others as their expressions began to fracture.

  Too late.

  Rein changed targets. He decided to use a piece of bait—a jagged piece of truth dangled right in front of the monocle boy’s ego.

  “You should tell them, Kellen.” Rein said. His voice was calm—almost clinical. “Tell them the script just caught fire. Tell them that in less than five minutes, the walls are coming down, the monsters are coming in, and everyone at this table is going to die.”

  He stopped.

  “Again.”

  His gaze slid, precise as a scalpel.

  “Right, Curt?”

  Curt flinched so hard his whole body jerked.

  His eyes trembled—wide, glassy, terrified—locked on the window like it was already showing him the future.

  “I…” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I saw myself die over there. Just now.

  It was… wrong. But it felt real.”

  “Believe me, Curt,” Rein said quietly. “Don’t stand near that window.”

  Jalara shot up from her chair, anger snapping out of confusion like a whip.

  “How do you know any of this?!” Jalara snapped. “Who are you?”

  Rein didn’t answer. He let the silence stretch until it became a physical pressure in the room.

  The hearth fire popped softly, a lonely sound in the quiet, while the lantern flame wavered.

  The atmosphere collapsed.

  The dinner table stopped being a celebration and became a courtroom—

  no, an execution ground.

  Wood screamed against the floor as chairs slid back. A fork rolled across the table.

  The members of the Society began to circle, wary eyes shifting between Rein and Kellen, as if one wrong word would turn into blood.

  Rein didn’t look surprised.

  He already knew what was hiding in them—deep under the polished smiles and rehearsed lines.

  Every one of them had seen it.

  Their own deaths. Over and over.

  The memories were worn down, corrupted, half-erased… but still there, like bruises beneath skin.

  All Rein did was press a finger into the wound.

  The silence that fell was a stranglehold. Fear choked the room like smoke.

  “Why don’t you ask your president?” Rein said evenly.

  “I’m sure he has an endless story he’s been keeping from you.”

  Rein’s eyes locked on Kellen.

  “Don’t you, Kellen?”

  The sudden, ugly shriek of a chair leg dragging across the floorboards tore through the quiet.

  Kellen went rigid.

  The host’s smile drained away, leaving his face bloodless—as if something underneath had finally shown through.

  His monocle trembled—so lightly it might’ve been the room shaking.

  A bead of sweat slid along his temple and vanished into the collar of his shirt.

  “H-hiding what?” Kellen stammered, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rein. What is this—some kind of joke?”

  Rein didn’t argue.

  He looked past Kellen.

  The cabin still smelled like roasted meat and cheap wine—but underneath it, something else surfaced: rotting mana.

  “Boris,” Rein said. “Check outside.”

  A beat. “The fog’s already there—thicker than it should be.”

  Boris hesitated, a question rattling in his throat like a loose stone. He met Rein’s eyes and decided he didn't want the answer after all. He gave his head a quick jerk—swallowing the words whole.

  He closed his eyes. Then he opened Eye of the Beholder.

  A few seconds—his face tightening.

  “Yes,” he said, voice strained. “It’s closing in fast… alive. It’s surrounding us.”

  A soft drag brushed the outer wall—not a scratch. More like wet cloth pulled over wood.

  The window glass fogged from the edges inward.

  Dana’s gaze snapped to the window, her eyes tracking the frost as it ate away at the glass.

  Her fingers were freezing. She rubbed them together hard, clutching at her own skin as if she could claw her way back to warmth.

  And then she screamed.

  “No—! I-I don’t want to die!”

  Her voice cracked. “That fog… that cursed fog—it's back!”

  Dana’s scream tore through the cabin like a jagged blade—and the lie they were living snapped. Before the eyes of the Society members, the walls of the nightmare groaned; hairline fractures spread across their vision as the interference buckled under the raw, piercing sound of her panic."

  Jalara looked at Rein, caught between disbelief and terror.

  Then her fingers forgot how to hold. The glass tumbled, shattering against the floor. She stared down at the mess, watching her own wide eyes blink back at her from a dozen different angles.

  Cold steel. A sickening tilt—and the moment her body stopped being hers.

  She screamed and grabbed her neck with both hands—as if sheer will could keep her together. Her breath came out wrong—too thin, too high.

  Beside her, Marten slumped to the floor.

  The light wobbled, its reflection skipping across the walls ?in sick, uneven beats.

  Then Marten’s knees gave out. As he crumpled, his shadow on the wall spasmed violently—a grotesque, hunching thing.

  He stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else—

  like they were already turning.

  “No… no… lycan… that’s not real…” His voice cracked, losing its edge to a low, guttural vibration. “That thing… that monster… that was me?”

  He swallowed. “I’m a lycan?”

  The room lurched, the walls pitching forward like the jaws of a beast.

  It was the same look on every face—the frantic realization that they were running out of time.

  Rein had done it.

  He’d dragged every buried nightmare up into the light—at once.

  For one breath, nobody moved. Even the crackle of the lantern sounded too loud.

  Then Rein spoke.

  “End the show, Kellen.”

  “Now.”

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Category: Magical Phenomenon / Temporal Anomaly

  Related Concepts: Mana Circuit Collapse, Chrono-loop Degradation, Ekhosar Entropy Field

  Overview:

  Corrupted Mana Looping refers to a magical-chronological condition in which an individual’s mana signature becomes degraded or overwritten due to repeated exposure to unstable time loops, demonic influence, or entropy zones such as those created by the Ekhosar.

  Rather than dissipating naturally, the mana that should flow cleanly through the body begins to echo, rebound, and fragment—creating corrupted feedback that leads to both physical mutation and psychological deterioration.

  Mechanism of Corruption:

  – Within a looped environment, time replays in fragmented cycles.

  – The individual’s mana circuit, normally a stable loop, is forced to re-initiate repeatedly without reset, leading to overlap and circuit ghosting.

  – Over time, this causes permanent imprint scars on the mana channels.

  – In more advanced stages, foreign magical data (often from unknown sources) replaces core elements of the original circuit—resulting in loss of self, memory instability, and physical abnormalities.

  Observable Effects:

  – Gray or black discoloration in mana signature when viewed through Mana Vision

  – Inconsistent aura patterns and abnormal mana pulses

  – Degradation of spell precision and control

  – Increased susceptibility to curse effects, especially necrotic-type corruption

  – Unstable behavior or memory loss (commonly seen in loop-aware individuals)

  Notable Cases:

  – Marten: Exhibits advanced signs of loop-based corruption; his lycanthropic transformation is accelerated unnaturally.

  – Curt & Dana: Both experience memory echoes and temporal dissonance, unsure of whether they are in their tenth loop or more.

  – Kellen: Suspected of being overwritten partially by unknown coding within the loop structure.

  Resistance Factors:

  – Strong core identity

  – High-level mana filtration techniques (e.g., LIZ’s filter system)

  – Artificial or divine protections (e.g., warded relics, god-blessed mana nodes)

  – Limited loop exposure or self-aware immunity

  Notes:

  This phenomenon is theorized to be part of the Ekhosar’s entropy-based manipulation. Its long-term effects may be irreversible unless counteracted by reality anchoring magic, loop severance, or divine intervention. Research into reversal is ongoing.