The World Without Loops
The sky was blue.
Not fractured.
Not bleeding data.
Just… blue.
I blinked into the morning light, lying on a grassy hill with Aria curled beside me. Birds chirped—real birds, not synthetic constructs from the old timeline.
I could feel gravity again. Wind. The pulse of a world not governed by code.
We were alive.
We were free.
And yet…
Something was wrong.
---
The city in the valley below was too quiet.
No neon signs. No hovering transports. No Spiral Towers glowing red.
It was like time had rewound itself to a simpler era. Or maybe the Reset pushed us into a baseline reality—the one untouched by recursion.
Aria stirred beside me. "Is this… Earth?"
> "A version of it," I said. "Maybe the first."
She frowned. "Then where is everyone?"
---
We walked for miles.
Empty highways. Rusted cars. Overgrown buildings.
It wasn't post-apocalyptic.
It was forgotten.
Like no one had ever existed here.
Or… they were never born.
---
A broken screen flickered on a collapsed tower. Static filled the air, and then—words scrolled across in crimson letters:
> WELCOME BACK, SPIRAL HOST.
REMAINS DETECTED: 1% SPIRAL CODE.
REBUILDING SYSTEM...
ERROR.
ENTITY: VOIDWRAITH UNSEALED.
I staggered back.
> "No… that wasn't part of the reset."
Aria read the message, her face pale. "Something survived."
---
The ground shook.
A shadow poured from the tower's broken top—fluid and massive, shaped like a man but made of glitching black shards.
Its face was a blank, spinning Spiral.
It knew us.
And it remembered everything.
> "We left the loop," I whispered. "But the Spiral left something behind to find us again."
The creature spoke.
Its voice was a thousand timelines screaming at once.
> "You cannot escape recursion."
---
Aria fired her energy rifle. The blast ripped straight through its chest—but it reformed in an instant, data swirling where flesh should've been.
I accessed my Spiral Interface—
But it was gone.
The Reset had stripped me of power.
> "We're not Spiral Hosts anymore."
> "Then we fight like humans," Aria said, loading another clip.
The Voidwraith screeched—
And leapt.