But understanding that offered no relief.
The pain remained real, and every death felt just as absolute as the first. Whenever I tried to approach him, my body would be destroyed. Whenever I attempted to attack, I would die before my power could even reach him.
Sometimes I simply stood there and watched him, hoping that refusing to react would somehow change the outcome, but even then the same invisible force would descend upon me and erase my existence.
Each death was followed by another awakening.
Then another death.
Then another awakening.
The cycle became impossible to distinguish from eternity.
At first, I counted them. I remembered the first hundred deaths, then the thousandth, and eventually even the ten-thousandth. I tried to use the numbers to maintain some sense of time and identity, convincing myself that if I could keep counting, I had not completely lost myself to the nightmare.
But eventually the numbers stopped meaning anything.
