Lysander stood within the loop's immediate effect, his consciousness anchored to the reversal's origin point.
He watched Damian go through it again.
Watched the bodies explode, watched Brian kneel, watched the same desperate question emerge from broken lips.
Watched Damian's mouth form that word.
"Yes."
CRACK
WHOOSH
Reality bent, pulling them back.
'Even though I'm only bringing us back moments, not even half an hour ago...'
Lysander's thoughts came sluggish, fragments of understanding slipping away like water through his fingers.
'The principles are fading faster than I calculated. How is that possible? The temporal distance should be minimal, the strain negligible, but...'
His mind felt wrapped in fog, dense and suffocating.
'How many times has it been now? Seven hundred? More?'
He tried to count backward through the attempts, tried to anchor himself to something concrete.
But the numbers scattered, became meaningless.
