The fifth cycle began with a rush of wind and crackling light.
Niko soared back into the looped corridor like a comet on a string, the white-blue trail of energy flaring behind him in ribbons. The captured guard, still bound by the tendrils like a fly caught mid-flight, dangled beneath him—kicking, muttering, but ultimately useless.
The other guards looked up as the pair glided overhead again. Their scowls deepened. Their eyes narrowed.
Niko didn't wait.
He grinned wide, then shouted down at them in a voice layered with smug theatrics:
"If none of you convince loopy here to turn off his little hallway trick—I'm gonna paint the walls with his face."
The guards below didn't flinch.
Instead, a few of them laughed. One even clapped slowly.
Another called out, "You think we care about him? Do what you want. We serve the War God."
Niko sighed. Loudly. Comedically. His entire body drooped as if exhausted by the sheer inconvenience of their response.
"Man… you're really gonna make me do this? Ugh. Fine."
It was all an act—pure theater. He had no intention of killing the guy. Not yet, anyway. There was a chance he'd need him. If the House had taught Niko anything, it was that weird powers had weird consequences… and if this looping hallway started doing something weirder, he might need a failsafe.
So, he decided to bluff just a little harder.
As he swung wide across the chamber again, Niko coiled his tendrils tighter around the struggling guard, then snapped his gaze down to the group. With a sudden flick, one of the cords lashed toward the ground like a lightning strike.
It wrapped around a spear.
One of the guards—young, broad-shouldered—stumbled back with a yelp as the weapon was yanked from his grip and flown upward in a blur.
"Hey! That was mine, you little—"
"Shut up," Niko snapped, deadpan. "I'm working."
The spear glinted in the half-light, hovering now in Niko's grip like a needle ready to thread the moment. He raised it with a dramatic flair, turning back toward the groundlings with one brow arched.
"So…" he called out, lazily twirling the tip. "Last chance. Are you really sure none of you want to be the reasonable one here?"
His eyes drifted to the restrained guard, who hadn't said a word—face pale, breaths shallow, maybe realizing this wasn't going to stop.
Below, the guards didn't even look at one another. One of them just smirked.
"You'll tire out before we do, coward. Do it. Or don't."
Niko's smile tightened.
'Figures. Zealots always make the worst bargaining chips.'
He rolled his shoulder, angled the spear downward, and let the weight of silence build.
Then he muttered, more to himself than anyone else,
"Alright. Let's keep dancing."
And with that, the slingshot tension began to build again.
By the ninth cycle, Niko's body was starting to scream at him.
His arms burned from the tension, the tendrils thrummed with dull ache, and the constant wind ripping against his skin had become more punishment than thrill. The additional weight of the restrained guard dangling beneath him made it all worse—every arc in the air dragged a little harder, every slingshot required a little more precision to avoid losing momentum.
Around the seventh cycle, he'd tossed the stolen spear across the room—far from the guards. Holding onto it had been a dumb idea, he realized. Flashy, sure. Intimidating, maybe. But effective? Not even a little. Right now, he needed fewer burdens, not more.
Now, two full cycles later, he was still gliding through the repeating loop of the hallway, dodging increasingly erratic attacks from below. A jet of fire roared past his side, searing the tips of his coat. He twisted out of the way just in time to dodge a burst of spiked ice that erupted from the floor.
'This is getting ridiculous.'
Niko gritted his teeth as another tendril launched him upward in a wide arc, his body almost numb from the effort it took to keep himself aloft and alive. The guards hadn't let up—if anything, they were getting more coordinated. Fireballs, water spikes, geysers, winds—everything came at him in intervals, and it was only his increasingly frayed instincts keeping him ahead.
He glanced down at the guard still roped in his energy tendrils, the man swinging limply like cargo on a broken lift.
'Should just kill him.'
The thought came sharp and clean—tempting in its finality. One punch. One squeeze. It would solve everything. No more weight. No more guessing games. No more strategizing around his presence.
But another part of him, sharper still, cut through the exhaustion and snarled back:
'You idiot. You're in a hole, in the ground, surrounded by people who want you dead. You think you're just gonna walk out if the loop snaps shut and you don't have the guy who made it?'
Niko scowled, jaw twitching as he threw himself into another wide swing, narrowly avoiding a pulse of lightning that slammed into the wall behind him and split it open like a cracked shell.
His hair whipped in the gust, white-blue light bouncing across his features.
He hated this.
Not the fight. Not the speed. That part was fun, in a suicidal kind of way. But the dragging uncertainty. The strain. The pressure to think six steps ahead while his body was trying to shut down.
He'd felt the edges of burnout nipping at his nerves for the last couple cycles. Just a little more, and it'd take him out. Ten minutes down, and he wouldn't get back up in time.
Another gust of wind knocked him slightly off balance mid-air, and he had to fling a tendril wide to catch the wall again—swinging hard left, then yanking himself back into position.
As the wind rushed around him and the rhythm of the cycle resumed, he growled low in his throat.
'Fine. You live. For now.'
And then he rocketed forward again, the momentum whipping his coat behind him, white-blue arcs spiraling like afterimages in the dark.
The swinging had become a punishing rhythm—motion for motion's sake. Niko's body was aching from every possible angle, the muscles in his shoulders and back screaming each time he whipped a tendril out and launched himself forward. Below him, the dead weight of the captured guard—the one who had been causing the looping hallway—swayed like a grotesque pendant on a rope of light.
By now, it had to be the ninth—no, tenth—rotation. He was burning out. Not from energy use, but from everything else. Strain. Weight. Exhaustion. Mental fatigue.
The wind pushed his hair back as he swung.
'How long has it been…? I started maybe forty-five minutes after sundown. Then I waited, got in… what, an hour after that? So it's gotta be—midnight? Later?'
The thought rolled around in his skull as he looped again, his vision blurring slightly. His breathing was ragged, arms numb from the effort.
He had let go of the spear a few cycles ago, tossed it somewhere behind the main group. No point keeping it—it was throwing off his balance, weighing him down. Swinging was hard enough with a full-grown man dangling from his tendrils.
'Maybe I should just stop… set down on the far side, heal a little, catch my breath.'
Then another thought pushed in.
'But healing costs energy. And energy means burnout. And burnout means I'm lying flat for ten minutes while these psychos tenderize me like meat.'
He grimaced, jaw clenched tight.
'Nope. Not happening.'
So he kept going. No options. No plan. Just momentum.
The tenth cycle came.
The guards, as always, hurled their magic and mayhem skyward—flames, water jets, spikes of wind. The usual. Niko was already weaving between them on muscle memory alone.
But then something changed.
One of the guards—random, previously unnoticed—did nothing.
Again.
Niko caught it mid-swing, eyes narrowing as he rocketed past overhead.
'Hold on… not him again.'
It was a different guy than the one he had in his tendrils. Just some faceless cultist in the crowd. Niko blinked once.
'No attack… Is this another looper?'
But before he could finish the thought, the guard moved. His fingers snapped—silent, precise—and something shimmered at his side.
A spike of metal shot upward.
Not at Niko.
At the guard Niko had hanging below him.
Niko's eyes went wide. "No—!"
He yanked the tendrils with everything he had, trying to pull his captive upward.
Too late.
The spike punched through the guard's chest with a dull thunk, the weight of the impact jerking the tendrils hard. Blood splattered in a fine arc as the man spasmed once—then went limp.
The tendrils slackened.
And in the same breath—everything shifted.
Reality cracked. The looping hallway, with its impossible sky and mirrored walls, folded in on itself like collapsing glass. The architecture buckled, shimmered, and blinked out of existence.
Niko barely caught himself as gravity returned to normal. His boots skidded across cracked, dusty stone—the real base. The not-stone walls reappeared around him, claustrophobic and strangely organic. The floor exhaled dust with every step.
Silence.
Niko let the limp corpse fall from the tendrils. His knees sagged, chest heaving with exertion. Sweat beaded at his brow.
He let out a breath and tried to smile, but it came out crooked.
"…Well. That's one way to do it."
The quiet stretched.
He stood there, heart still racing. Looking down at the dead body.
Then to the hall ahead.
Then back.
The fake guard—the real looper—was gone. Just a dead, stabbed mess on the floor now. Whatever secrets he had, whatever use he might've been… were gone with him.
Niko scowled, rubbing his neck.
'So… what now?'
He had no guide. No hostage. No plan.
Just a half-burned-out body and a whole cult still somewhere down here.
He sighed and looked forward.
"…Great."