(MC's POV)
Year 2
A new habit forms: carving patterns with my feet in the void's ashen mist. Each loop, a mark left in impermanence. When the Monkey arrives, the marks vanish. But I am stubborn; I draw again after every death.
Soon, the act feels ritualistic—a claim to agency. Minor rebellion. Sometimes I carve faces from memory: Seraphine, Father, Elowen. Over time, the faces warp, losing detail, replaced by masks of gold and shadow.
I remember less of Maharashtra, too. Rain becomes only a rumor in the bloodstream.
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Year 5
The Button grants a vision after one thousand deaths: I see a world of blue glass, towers twisting skyward, suns flickering.
For days afterward, every time I die, the vision flickers behind my eyes. Am I being teased with forgotten futures, or warned about lost destinies?
I become less reactive to pain. Sometimes, in the instant of death, I manage to smile—a challenge, or perhaps resignation. Regeneration grows efficient, errors less frequent. The Monkey shifts its pattern, as if testing my learning curve.
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Year 10
I name regions within the void—landmarks built from imagination: the Silver Shore, The Spiral Library, The Abyssal Anchor. None of it is real, but naming grants power.
The Monkey destroys these illusions with a swipe, yet I rebuild, layering new worlds atop the old. My mind refuses to simply drift.
New fragments appear—bits of my Earth memories, math equations from school, old poetry, stories half-remembered and rearranged. These fuel dreams; I become their archivist, clinging to every remnant of identity.
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Year 17
I teach myself how to think in silence. Meditation becomes necessity, holding overflowing fragments of self in careful order.
The Button pulses steadily, an anchor more valuable than life. Sometimes, using concentrated thought, I can summon brief holograms—light-trails of past companions, old homes, symbols from both worlds. The Monkey eyes these projections but doesn't interfere. Maybe it recognizes the survival instinct.
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Year 23
The thousandth death, then the ten-thousandth. I try to track these in notches scored on drifting debris, though everything resets upon destruction. The act is pointless, but I do it anyway. The void seems to appreciate the ritual, sometimes stabilizing the mist around for longer.
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Year 33
Dreams intensify. Entire lifetimes pass between deaths; I dwell in worlds built of memory, complete with seasons, wars, lovers. Upon every return, the void's landscape feels smaller, tamer, almost coiled within my will.
I learn to sense the Monkey sometimes before it materializes—the ripple that heralds its awareness. Without realizing it, I have developed a sixth sense: intuition for sentience in a world that shouldn't have any.
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Year 50
Half a century. I cannot cry or bleed anymore, but longing persists. I mourn old selves—dozens, perhaps hundreds swallowed by time.
I converse with myself in spinning echoes—debating tactics, replaying memories, inventing new personalities to stave off boredom. Occasionally, I challenge the Monkey outright during an encounter. Sometimes it adapts, rarely, it hesitates before striking. I'm no longer pure prey. We have become... adversaries, even if the contest is always fatal.
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Year 70
Regeneration produces subtle changes—brighter veins, harder bones, eyes that see deeper into the void's pattern. The Button grows more "conversational." I can sometimes ask it simple questions in my mind and receive single-word answers, more sensation than language.
"Why?" I ask, in moments of despair.
It answers, not always kindly: "Endure."
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Year 80
Clarity comes in flashes. I work out the rules of the void: how debris rotates, the way echoes move, subtle pulses in the "air" that forecast the Monkey's next act. I try manipulating matter—sometimes, with concentrated effort, I can nudge a fragment, stall the inevitable, weave the illusion of continuity. Small victories.
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Year 95
I lose count of the cycle lengths. Death is a comma, not a period.
At times, I drift for what feel like months or centuries in lucid sacrosanct thought, mapping potential escape routes in fractal geometry. None succeed, but pattern recognition grows.
Other times I attempt to speak with the Monkey. It never replies, but on rare occasions, it simply sits and watches, as if waiting for my next move or breakthrough.
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Year 100
A century.
In the monotony, in the endless agony and adaptation, I find a new steel within. Pain lays down roots; the void sharpens my mind, not dissolves it. I am no longer the boy banished by a sister's lie. I am a scholar of eternity, a creature half-forged by old hope and new limitless patience.
The Button's thrum merges with my heartbeat. When the Monkey strikes, the aftermath's pain is a guide, not a tormentor. I study every injury as if reading scripture, note every recovery as if writing gospel.
I no longer wish for rescue. Only for meaning.
At the end of the hundredth year, as I settle once again upon the mist, the Monkey approaches, head bowed fractionally, and, for the first time, offers a moment of stillness—a truce, however brief, between tormentor and captive.
I whisper into the quiet, my voice gentle and raw: "You cannot have all of me. Not ever."
The whispers do not answer. The void stirs. The Button glows, recording the stubborn fact of my continued selfhood against even its machinery.
I am still here.
And I will last as long as the void remembers what it means to be broken and remade—each time, a little less alone.