The silence following Professor Halem's words was unnatural.
Callen and Isora stood frozen by the fountain, drenched in blood and ash from the battle they'd survived. Behind them, the Academy still smoldered. The skies had turned pale, and the red moon had faded.
But nothing felt like victory.
Because of what he'd just said.
> "Thirty-nine loops, and finally someone gets it right."
Isora was first to speak. Her voice came out low and deadly.
"Explain. Now."
Halem didn't flinch.
He stepped forward slowly, robe fluttering in the ash-laced breeze, gold eyes catching the morning light like shards of a buried sun.
"You think I'm surprised? Disappointed? Hardly. This was always the plan."
Callen's wand was already in his hand.
"If you were watching the loops… that means you're Fixed."
Halem gave a small smile. "In a manner of speaking."
Callen's grip tightened. "Are you working for the Chronovore?"
At that, Halem laughed.
Not loudly. Not maniacally.
But bitterly.
"I created it."
---
The words hit like a physical blow.
Isora's flame aura sparked without warning. "You WHAT?!"
Halem raised a single hand, palm outward—not defensively, but wearily.
"You think I'm proud? You think I'm some mad god-pretender? No. I'm the first mistake. The first man who tried to stop time from bleeding. And failed."
Callen's mind reeled. "You're the First Looper?"
"I was the only looper—until now."
He turned away from them, gazing up at the broken sky.
"A hundred years ago, when the First Academy discovered soul-casting, we didn't understand the cost. We thought we could pierce time's veil, just for a moment, just long enough to save the world from the Cataclysm we saw coming."
"What cataclysm?" Isora demanded.
Halem turned back, eyes haunted.
"The end of magic. Not war, not monsters. Entropy. The unraveling of spellcraft itself. Reality fraying at the seams."
Callen whispered, "Like glass breaking."
Halem nodded.
"So we built a spell. A Grand Anchor. A temporal cage around Aethenhold. I volunteered to hold the loop. I volunteered to die and return, over and over, refining the timeline, until we found a path that led to salvation."
He took a breath. "But I… underestimated the soul."
---
Callen didn't lower his wand. He couldn't.
Because everything Halem said made too much sense.
The sealed chambers. The journals. The missing decades from magical history.
Even the Chronovore.
"You created the loop—but not the creature," Callen said slowly.
Halem's voice dropped to a near whisper.
"It was born from me."
The silence grew heavy.
"My mind cracked from the strain. My essence began to fragment. I started forgetting—like you are now. Names. Faces. Even my own magic. Pieces of myself tore away…"
He tapped his temple.
"…and some of those pieces learned to live without me."
Callen went cold.
"You're saying the Chronovore is… you?"
"Not exactly. It's what remains of me. The discarded thoughts. The rage. The fear. The hunger to survive no matter the cost. It fed on magic and rewrote itself."
He looked straight at them.
"By the time I realized what it was becoming, it had already taken a shape. The knight. The shadows. The whispering loops. That's what happens when God tries to cage Time and Time bites back."
---
Isora looked shaken.
"You've been pretending this whole time? Watching us die? Letting students burn—just to what? Learn something?"
Halem didn't blink. "I had to. If I interfered too early, the loop corrected itself. Reset too soon. You had to grow stronger than I ever could. You had to become Fixed on your own."
Callen stepped closer. "Then why appear now?"
Halem sighed. "Because you finally triggered the Variable Threshold. You've changed the loop enough that it may not reset. You may… escape."
"And the Chronovore?"
Halem gave a hollow smile.
"It's afraid of you."
---
The three stood in silence beneath the pale sky.
Finally, Callen asked, "Why us? Why not you? If you started this, why can't you end it?"
Halem turned back toward the Arcarium, his silhouette outlined by the sun's first rays.
"I'm already dead, Callen Ward. I've been dead since Loop Twenty-Seven. What you see now is just a recursive soul-echo held together by enchantments and a broken promise."
He looked at them—truly looked at them.
"You're the first ones to surpass me. To anchor someone else. To hurt the knight. To make it run."
Callen's throat was dry. "So what now?"
Halem pointed toward the ruins of the eastern wall.
"There's a vault beneath the Arcarium. One last chamber. You'll need a true anchor to reach it. One created from a sacrifice. Inside it is the original spell circle. The Heart of the Hourglass."
He met their eyes.
> "Break it—and everything ends."
"Succeed, and you wake up in a world that remembers."
"Fail… and the loops begin again."
---
Later that night, Callen and Isora sat alone.
No battles. No monsters. No screams.
Just two people staring into the flickering fire of their dorm hearth.
"You believe him?" she asked.
"I don't think we have a choice," Callen replied.
She looked down. "A sacrifice anchor. What does that mean?"
Callen didn't answer right away.
But he knew.
It meant blood. Soul. A true tether forged in death.
He just didn't know whose.
Isora looked at him.
"I'll do it," she said suddenly.
"No—"
"You know I'll die in the next loop anyway. I'm not afraid."
He gripped her hand. "No. We find another way. We finish this together."
She didn't argue.
But she didn't promise either.
---
That night, the stars above Aethenhold shimmered strangely.
A crack appeared in the sky—just for a moment.
And far beneath the school, deep within the Hourglass Vault…
The Chronovore stirred.
Its voice echoed in the dark.
> "So close… so close to the end again."
"But do they know the price?"
"Let's show them."
And the loop prepared to turn.
One last time.