Rudra sat there for exactly three seconds after the tent flap fell.
Three heartbeats.
Then his jaw tightened.
"Fine," he muttered. "I'll deal with it myself."
He stood, the air around him prickling as if the world itself didn't like that decision. From beneath his cloak he drew the talwar, the curved blade whispering as it cleared the sheath, old steel catching firelight like it remembered blood. His other hand snapped the revolver into place, the weight familiar, grounding—six answers to one problem.
He paused, grimaced, and fished into his pocket.
Mint chewing gum.
He shoved it into his mouth, chewing hard, jaw working like he was grinding a thought into paste. "Can't fight with bad breath," he muttered. "Standards."
The taste cut through the copper tang that still lingered in the back of his throat—the phantom blood, the memory of dying. His shoulders rolled once, twice. The stiffness eased. The anger didn't.
This wasn't bravado.
This was offense.
He stepped out of the tent.
The night greeted him the same way it always did—cold, vast, pretending nothing was wrong. But Rudra could feel it now, the pressure, like a thumb on the back of his skull urging him not to look too closely.
Too bad.
His grip tightened on the talwar. His revolver rested low, patient. The gum snapped between his teeth.
"Alright," he said softly to the dark, eyes sharp, presence heavy enough to make insects scatter from the grass. "Round… what, three?"
Something out there noticed him.
And for the first time since this loop began—
Rudra smiled like he was done being scared.
Before he could even take a step, a blur of brown fur exploded from the grass.
A marmot—but not a regular one. Its beady eyes burned with pure malice, teeth gnashing, claws scraping the dirt like tiny scythes. It leapt straight at him, intent clear: Rudra was prey.
He growled through clenched teeth, the gum snapping in his mouth. Talwar rose, revolver lifted in tandem, body coiling like a spring.
"Of course," he muttered, sidestepping the first furious charge, "of course it's a fuck-ass marmot. Only I attract evil marmots."
The creature landed, rolled, and darted again, faster than it had any right to be. Rudra blocked with the flat of the talwar, sparks flying as the claws met steel. The smell of fur singed, mingling with the metallic tang in his nose.
He spun, the revolver snapping to life, a bullet cracking the night—but the marmot didn't flinch. Its little body blurred unnaturally, almost like it was phasing through reality.
"Really?" he muttered, exhaling sharply. "A marmot…of all things?"
The thing squealed—a high-pitched, almost human-like warcry—and leapt again, faster, smarter. Rudra's eyes narrowed. Every instinct told him: this wasn't an animal. This was something else, something twisted by whatever had been messing with his perception all along.
He tightened his grip on the talwar and revolver, stance steady, and prepared for the weirdest duel of his life—against a goddamn homicidal marmot.
Rudra looked down at the little bastard latched onto his shin, claws dug in, teeth gnawing at his boot like it had a personal vendetta.
He sighed.
"See, this is why I can't have nice things."
For a brief, tempting moment, he genuinely considered punting it. Just a clean, effortless kick—send the demon rodent skipping across the Mongolian steppe, bouncing into another week, maybe another reincarnation cycle. The math was easy. The execution easier.
Then reason—unwelcome, bureaucratic reason—kicked in.
There were exactly two entities in existence he did not, under any circumstances, fuck with.
The IRS.
And PETA.
He exhaled through his nose, deadpan, and started walking.
The marmot squealed in rage, tightening its grip, clinging to his leg like an angry, possessed koala. Its tiny body swayed with each step, claws scraping fabric, teeth clicking uselessly against reinforced leather.
"This is harassment," Rudra muttered, continuing forward as if nothing was wrong. "I am being assaulted by wildlife. Again."
The marmot bit harder.
"Oh don't get brave now," he said calmly. "I'm doing you a favor."
It tried to climb higher. Rudra flicked his leg just enough to keep it from reaching anything vital, not even breaking stride. His posture stayed upright, talwar resting over his shoulder, revolver low at his side, mint gum snapping quietly between his teeth like punctuation to his irritation.
From a distance, it probably looked absurd.
A fifteen-year-old walking across the plains.
Armed to the teeth.
Expression flat.
With a feral marmot clinging to his leg in silent, furious defiance.
"This is my life now," he said to no one. "Time loops, ice witches, Aeons, perception fuckery—and emotional support marmots."
The marmot hissed.
Rudra kept walking.
[Location: not far away]
Nicole stood beneath a ceiling that smelled faintly of old smoke and iron, the kind of place where history had been argued into existence and then buried under paperwork. The line crackled softly, the voice on the other end steady, heavy, unmistakably used to being obeyed.
Grissley Biar listened while she spoke.
Three topics. She kept them compartmentalized in her mind, like loaded chambers she refused to let touch.
First: the Dark Young—offspring of Shub-Niggurath, half-formed things that did not belong to soil or sky. She reported the signs she'd tracked so far: warped terrain, animal behavior degrading into ritual repetition, locals tending to nothing and calling it harvest. The patterns were wrong. Too clean. Too quiet.
Second: the two hunters from HANDPUMP.
"Richard Lee Murphy," she said, professionally, almost coldly. "Alias Riley. Australian. Irish descent. Ginger. Slight beard. Six foot two. Stage Two confirmed. High mobility, lightning-based manifestation. Loud. Reckless. Effective."
A pause on the line. The sound of a pen scratching.
"And the other?" Grissley asked.
Nicole's fingers tightened around the receiver.
"…Rudra," she said, and felt her spine go rigid despite herself. "From the Karmasot bloodline."
The name sat in the air like frost.
For just a fraction of a second—short enough that no one could accuse her of weakness—her thoughts slipped. A man with the same blood. Same eyes. Same quiet refusal to kneel. A battlefield decades ago, soaked red and white, where he had burned himself hollow to keep her alive.
She shut that door hard.
"That bloodline is dangerous," she continued, voice smoothing back into steel. "Unstable perception. High metaphysical resistance. Possible Chronos-class interference."
Grissley hummed low in his throat. "A troublesome pairing."
"They don't know what they're walking into," Nicole said. Not concern. Not quite. Something sharper.
Then she moved to the third topic, deliberately, decisively—because it was safer than memory.
"The Dark Young exhibits perception-manipulation field effects," she said. "Localized reality dampening. Subjects fail to notice inconsistencies, injuries, temporal skips. Language anomalies. Memory smoothing. It doesn't hide itself."
"It convinces you not to look," Grissley finished.
"Yes," Nicole replied. "And it piggybacks on stronger phenomena. Hunters. Mantra usage. Emotional spikes. The field grows denser the more 'important' the observer is."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"And the Karmasot boy?" Grissley asked.
Nicole stared at the wall, at nothing, at everything she wished had stayed buried in 1918.
"…He will notice," she said quietly. "Even if something tries very hard to stop him."
The line went silent except for the distant hum of machinery, the sound of an empire breathing.
"Proceed with caution," Grissley Biar finally said. "Complete both objectives."
The connection clicked dead.
Nicole lowered the receiver slowly.
For a moment, her reflection stared back at her from the dark glass—blue eyes too bright, too old, rimmed with something dangerously close to regret.
"Of course it had to be you," she murmured to no one.
Then she straightened, frost settling back into her bones, and stepped out into the cold—already feeling the world bend, gently, insistently, asking her not to notice what was coming.