I had an inkling as to who it would be, who the burden would ultimately fall to, as it matched what had been alluded to before, and aligned with who would remain at the fort. Still, the way it played out could spiral in any direction, and I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe I had all the angles.

Cadence and Tom rose and passed through the front gate, their forms swallowed by twilight. I remained behind beneath the hushed limbs of a tree, letting the moment breathe before I followed. As dusk deepened into true night, I approached the gate and pressed it open with a long, mournful creak that echoed across the compound like a sigh.

Inside the school grounds, night didn’t gradually settle—it collapsed into place. One moment the world still breathed, the next it was suffocating in shadow. A golden light shimmered on the second floor, the same unnatural glow as before. That feeling returned, crawling up my insides like ants under the skin. It wasn’t fear this time, not quite. It felt... mournful, like a memory mourning itself.

I stepped inside the student building and climbed the stairwell. The golden light billowed down the stairs, warm and slow, like candle smoke caught in reverse. It drifted toward Serenity and Becca’s dorm, pooling there before taking shape. Tom’s shape. But this was no living boy. This wasn’t the same determined teen who walked out of the church and chose to return.

The apparition stood solemnly, his soul stretched thin, like the last glimmer of a dying fire. His translucent gaze met mine, and I stopped short, uncertain if words were owed or allowed.

He stepped closer and gestured to Serenity’s door. “I don’t know what happens after this,” he said softly. “But I can feel myself... fading. My spirit—whatever version of it exists now—can’t hold out. You changed something. The past I remember doesn’t line up anymore. I remember dying at the church... then being here... trying to hold it back. Trying to save them.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Tom. I really am.”

“It’s alright,” he replied, offering a weary smile. “As long as they live, it’s enough. Every time I showed you the past, it used up just a bit more of my energy. Left me just a little weaker each time…but now, I’m still alive.” His body faded leaving only his outstretched hand pointing to the door of the dorm.

And then he was gone.

I stood in the quiet aftermath of that final fading, feeling the weight of the unspoken truth. Tom had been the one pulling me through the past or at least the glimpses—guiding, revealing, hoping. But now that he hadn’t died at the church, that timeline—the one where he became protector in death—no longer had foundation. It had unraveled.

Check.

I turned toward the dorm door he’d pointed to and leaned in, pressing my ear against the wood. Voices rang out inside, heated and overlapping.

“No! You can’t just sacrifice yourself!” Serenity and Cadence—their voices overlapped, sharp with desperation.

Tom must have told them everything. After he came back with Cadence, he must have sat down and laid it out for all of them, not just her. I could picture it now. The grim explanation. The silence that followed. Then the rising storm of grief.

They had already faced terrors the night before. The storm, the fears, the shadows. They hadn’t slept. They’d braced themselves for the next assault, only to find Tom waiting for them instead. I had missed it all by going with him to the church.

“If it wasn’t for someone leaving all those mystic crystals on my bed…we probably wouldn’t have made it” Becca said and I nearly fell over.

Cadence was the first to break the silence. “He doesn’t have to.”

The group turned toward her.

“What then?” Becca asked, her voice brittle.

Cadence stood firm. “What choice do we have? If this is real, and it sounds like it is, then within weeks everyone here will vanish. This place will be pulled into purgatory. I’d rather step into that well and stop it myself than wait around to die anyway.”

Tom shook his head. “I have to be the one. I made the promise. It has to be me.”

Brent, silent until now, finally spoke. “That’s not all.”

Everyone turned.

“Think about what happens after. If someone closes the door from the other side, that’s it. They’re stuck. Or maybe they move on. Who knows. But someone has to stay here too, to guard this side. If that spirit was right, the curse won’t stop. It’ll try again.”

Cadence went pale. “So two must die. Just as that one spirit protected his side.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

“Brent...” Tom murmured.

The dorm door creaked open of its own accord. I stepped back as the two boys faced each other, hands on each other’s shoulders. Brent searched Tom’s eyes, then nodded once.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

Lightning tore the sky apart. Windows shattered from the pressure. The storm descended in a chorus of fury, and the watch on my wrist pulsed.

I glanced down, and with a flick, summoned the final quest screen.

Quest: Protect Tom. End the curse. Close the door to purgatory.

Boon of Mystery: Bring Tom back. Choose between Tom and Cadence. Change fate. Rewards will compound.

One word pulsed brighter than the rest: Reward.

I tapped it.

Seconds passed.

‘Fuck it,’ I thought. ‘I’ll gamble.’

The watch responded.

Boon of Mystery: Rolling the odds...

Smoke curled from my lips as I knocked on the dorm door. Inside, scrambling footsteps answered. Tom and Brent flung it open with textbook and lamp in hand.

Preemptive good, that’s good thinking.

I looked them all over. “First... give me back my lantern.”

Tom blinked. “You left it there?”

“Damn right I did. Those little stings you felt? Pebbles.” I pulled the remaining four from my coat pocket and let them drop into my palm.

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Well I’ll be...”

I cut him off. “I was sent to stop this. In ten seconds I’m going to know if you really have to die. Until then, think hard about what you’re leaving behind. What future you’re willing to sacrifice.”

His gaze wandered to his friends, then back to me. I continued, the smoke curling around my words.

“I didn’t know where I was at first. Took me a minute. But then I realized it—this wasn’t just time travel. This was further down. A rerun. You died, Tom. I changed that. Which means the timeline that swallowed your friends hasn’t happened... yet. The fact something isn’t resetting must mean…I am in the true present of that loop.”

I told them everything.

The other version of Cadence. The mirrored fort. The door that should’ve stayed closed. The one she would’ve sealed with her life.

And then, in a shimmer of mist, Frog appeared beside me—larger than life.

“Go eat anything stupid enough to cross your path,” I muttered.

The kids backed up instinctively. Frog croaked once, deep and loud.

I ignored the crashing sounds down the hall. That seemed to grow in sound and size.

“The curse became a living thing. It grew, like a mold. It would have happened anyway—your actions only sped it up. The only thing that matters now is sealing the door.”

Cadence asked, “Why must it be a spirit?”

“Good question,” I replied. “It doesn’t need to be. The door only requires someone willing to enter the fold and stop it from the other side. And since I’ve technically been to purgatory...”

Their eyes widened.

“Let it open the door. I’ll go through. I’ll close it.”

Another ding. I looked at the watch. The reward lit up.

Spirit Protector: One Use. Summon a specter to guard a location, bound to your will.

A talisman materialized in my hand. I passed it to Tom. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would rip out of my chest. Fate had been kind. I had been blessed and in turn these teens lives.

“This is your last line of defense. One use only. You better mean it.”

Tom took it, nodding slowly. The others gathered around.

“We promise,” they said in unison.

“Good,” I said. “Because when I piss this thing off, you’ll need that charm more than ever. When the time comes, run to the well. Plant it.”

That was when the floor quaked.

Frog. Had. Gotten. Big.

He filled the hallway like a tank, his croak shaking the walls.

“You saved dessert for me, right?” I asked.

“RIIIIIBBBITTT.”

I didn’t look at the watch again. No point. I stepped forward, patted Frog on the shoulder, and drew both arms from beneath my trench coat.

Two spectral hands shimmered to life beside me, gripping pistols aimed down the hall. One real hand summoned my chain blade, the other closed the door behind me.

Tom’s whisper made me kick the door closed behind me.

“I didn’t follow along a lot of his story…but I think that’s the spirit from the lantern. He must have been drawn by my words as well…”

Time to be a showboat.

Because if I was going to finish this?

I wasn’t going quietly.

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Time passed in brittle silence, the tension so taut it almost hummed in the stillness. No one spoke, their focus drawn instead to the dorm door, now lined with an assortment of talismans and wards that had been crammed into every crevice and nailed into the corners like desperate charms. One by one, those charms began to burn out in spontaneous bursts, the paper curling into blackened wisps, the string binding them unraveling as if undone by unseen fingers. Their protective light faltered. Their faith, barely clinging.

“Who was that guy…?” someone finally whispered, their voice small against the distant echo of gunfire still crackling through the halls outside.

“I… I think… my guardian angel,” Tom muttered, his grip tightening around the golden talisman in his hand until his knuckles turned white.

Every eye in the room settled on it—the straight-edged charm that looked deceptively like a bookmark, but exuded a pressure that made their skin crawl and bones ache in reverence. As Tom’s gaze lingered on the dorm door, the talisman began to pulse softly. A circle bloomed from its center, etched with a dot, followed by jagged lines—runes, perhaps, or some divine script—spidering outward like a living circuit. The golden glow intensified with each passing second, and then, as if the air itself had taken a breath, the gunfire outside ceased.

Becca moved first, creeping toward the window, her steps uncertain. She peered through the cracked glass just as a blur of motion streaked past—so fast it was like lightning itself had taken human shape and thundered down the corridor. Moments later, the storm outside came to a reluctant halt, the rain still heavy but the air strangely calm, as if the chaos had burned itself out.

“Let’s go!” Tom’s voice rang out, sudden and sharp, slicing through the inertia. He burst from the room with a force that dared the others not to follow.

Two steps turned into four. Then six. Eight. Ten. Five pounding heartbeats charged through mud-slicked paths, their shoes sinking with each frantic stride as they sprinted into the storm-lashed campus. None of them spared a glance for the shattered windows or the ruptured walls of the school behind them. The wreckage wasn’t what mattered now.

Ahead, at the center of the courtyard, a colossal Frog stood sentinel over the well. Mist roiled across its damp, rounded back, and with a single croak—more like a low growl of thunder—it vanished in a swell of mist that seeped into the mouth of the well and disappeared below.

“What… did he do?” Cadence asked breathlessly, leaning over the rim to peer into the fathomless dark. The abyss offered no answer, only a void where the mist had gone.

Tom stepped up beside her, his hands bracing the stone rim. Brent joined him, and together they heaved the iron-rimmed lid onto the top of the well, sealing its mouth with a loud, final clatter.

“He pissed it off,” Tom said with grim amusement, “cussed, kicked, and beat the thing senseless without hesitation—did everything he could to provoke it. Then, when it reached its boiling point, he used it like a battering ram and smashed it straight through the door inside the well… or that’s what I think happened. He figured out that it didn’t need the spirits to open the door—it just needed pressure. Someone to push hard enough.”

Becca stood beside them, her gaze fixed on the now-sealed well. Her voice was soft, thoughtful. “He knew more than we did… and I think he was here the whole time. Watching. Learning. Whoever or whatever was moving him around was showing him the threads—how every cause leads to its consequence. Maybe he realized people didn’t need to die.”

Tom nodded. “If I’d known that… I wouldn’t have asked Brent to stop you two from interfering. I wouldn’t have asked Cadence to be ready to die. I would’ve done it alone.”

Serenity stirred, her lips parting to speak, but Brent and Becca both shook their heads slowly. Cadence met her eyes and gave a gentle nod. The moment passed in silence.

“He didn’t hesitate in his choice,” Tom said, more to himself than anyone. “I did. But not anymore.”

With those words, he slapped the talisman hard against the top of the well. The contact echoed like a small thunderclap. Immediately, the grass beneath his palm withered into dust, and golden light poured across the concrete lid in flickering veins, etching glowing lines that pulsed like a heartbeat. Then the glow faded, leaving behind an intricate pattern burned into the surface.

From that golden web rose a mist, slow and deliberate. It coalesced into the form of a small creature sitting serenely atop the well’s lid.

“…A dog?” Brent said, eyebrows raised.

“It’s… it’s a pug!” Becca squealed with delight, her voice bursting through the heavy quiet. “He’s so cute!”

“That’s… your will?” Cadence asked, dumbfounded, her jaw slack as she turned to stare at Tom.

“I…” Tom started, but his voice trailed off. The little spirit-dog was sniffing the air now, its oversized snout twitching in agitation. It turned sharply, eyes narrowing at the glasshouse across the courtyard.

Inside, five spirits sneered from behind the broken panes, their expressions contorted by malice.

“Those bastards!” Tom snarled.

Whoosh.

The pug spirit swelled in an instant, ballooning into a towering hound the size of a van. Its fur rippled like fire, and a mane of shimmering mist spread around its face as it let loose a roar that split the air and rattled the earth beneath their feet. Its eyes, molten with judgment, locked onto the glasshouse—and then it moved.

What followed was less a battle and more a massacre. Plants flew through the air, pottery exploded into dust, and bloodless, ghostly limbs tumbled across the courtyard before evaporating into ash. The spirits were gone in moments—erased from existence with a righteous fury none of them would ever forget.

A few seconds later, the pug returned. Normal-sized. Adorably grumpy. It trudged around the corner of the glasshouse and plopped itself down atop the well, curling up to nap as though nothing had happened.

“…What are we going to name it?” Brent asked weakly.

Four loud slaps rang out in quick succession, followed by a yelp of pain.

Becca loomed over him with a heel pressed to his chest. “Your mother. That cute little guy will name himself.”

Tom leaned toward Serenity and whispered something, earning a surprised giggle. Her face lit up.

“What?” Becca asked, suspicion rising.

“Oh, nothing,” Serenity said innocently.

Tom grinned, his eyes twinkling. “We were wondering if you two wanted to go on a double date.”

“Wha—?” Brent’s face turned red as a beet before SLAP—Becca put him back in his place with a decisive strike.

A beat passed, and then she smirked. “I would love to.”

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30 minutes earlier I had indeed pissed it off. The second I had left the dorm, I had Frog spill all the contents of talismans he had stocked up on. After slapping several of them onto my body, I slapped the rest onto the outside of Frog. With so many on him it looked as if Frog was wearing paper armor, comical, but hopefully affective.

A strange shadow looked towards the second story window to the right of the courtyard as I approached the closest classroom, before peeking out a window. Our gazes met, before a hailstorm of bullet rained down onto the shadow.

I was reloading my pistol and Derringer when the shadow whirled across the earth towards the left most hallways back entrance to the courtyard. My heart began to race as my fingers nimbly pushed bullets into the pistol.

*BOOM*

The classroom door was blown apart, as a shadowy energy shot past frog and struck Jaeger’s body in full force. I broke through the window and out into the rain at a high velocity, the first thing I felt was blood rushing up my throat and then the light prickly sensation of rain landing against my body.

*BAM*

I landed through the adjacent building sections window into a classroom, tumbling several times against desks and chairs before coming to a stop against the far wall parallel to the windows I broke through. Blood stained my teeth that had been clenched.

“Cuh Cugh…fuckin…shit…” I slid up from the floor. No healing potion or remnants to duplicate. The blood in my throat receded, but the pain in my side didn’t.

“Ya know…when you remove the whole thriller feeling…this reminds me of the times before” I had to stop myself from laughing hysterically. The adrenaline was punching fear in the face alongside bordering mindless abandon.

*BOOM*

The classroom door exploded again, but this time I was prepared and sent my chain blade out with lightning bolts dancing across its body, my senses prickling in the doors direction mere seconds before it burst. It struck the shadow in a glorious wave before jumping back towards my awaiting palm. The blade didn’t seem to do any harm, but the lightning energy sure did. I flicked the bracelet to refill back up my lightning sigils.

*whoosh!*

The shadowy energy shot forwards and shattered countless desks before striking the wall behind me.

Seems it wasn’t perceptive to high speed. It swiveled around to see me across the classroom, *whizz* the chain blade came flying towards it, but with the previous incident, it sent out shadowy energy before latching onto the chains body.

“Tsk tsk…you think that’s all I have up my sleeve” The chain blade disappeared into thin air, before reappearing in my hands and flinging out again.

The shadowy energy convulsed at the sudden strike before enlarging itself.

“Come on you stupid fuck!” I ran out of the classroom at the fastest speed below L3 I could muster, “You are not life! You deserve to be ended! You are nothing! You are dust!”

‘What would piss off a spirit? The opposite of what Tom did with the guardian?

“I curse you! TO forever be damned! To forever rot and wither!”

 The hallway was silent until the shadow broke through the wall and began tearing the floor up to the ceiling with its body. Everything it touched disintegrated as if it was aging endlessly. I figured that if this curse had been let loose into the state of purgatory this land would become in the other future that the land would end up as the swamps and decayed trees that I had previously seen drained of vitality.

*click* *click* *clack*

I ripped my way down the steps, and flew towards the right direction before rounding the left wings bottom floor main hallway. I sprinted towards the end of it, even as lockers and pieces of windows flew up and assailed my body. If I wasn’t able to dodge the high speed of the curse spirit I would teleport 10 feet ahead of it while running, leaving my last sigil slot open for spacial energy. 7 jumps left.

My hand gripped the corner of the small hallway leading into the courtyard before flinging me towards the door. My body bashed the double doors, splitting them open wide before I tumbled onto the ground and skidded against random splashes of gravel hidden by pools rain.

“HA YOU STUP…” My body was slapped to the right, I flew and snapped off the statue of the cupid with my shoulder. The feeling of blood coming up in throat was felt again, but I simply used my ethereal arms to shoot the pistols at the shadow energy.

*Boom* *Boom* *RAtaa* *RAtaa*

Both guns were emptied before I moved my good arm into a pocket for bullets. The spirit flew towards the fountain, breaking it into a million pieces.

I held my breath and counted the seconds before teleporting backwards.

*BOOM*

A massive frog came shooting through the left wings wall, breaking the classrooms windows and sending glass everywhere, it collided heavily with the shadow energy and sent it flying. Countless weak ended talismans burnt up into ash as they made contact with the deathly energy.

“Good…it might work…cuh…” My lungs burned as I coughed, I loaded the last round into the pistol, and then placed them back into the holsters under my arm pit and trench coat inner pocket. Frog leapt forward with a strong kick to the earth, and then swallowed whole the curse spirit. It then leapt into a large waterfall of mist and disappeared. I whirled the bracelet on my wrist and just as the third rune of lightning glowed on my wrist, disappeared from the spot.

The rain slowed to a crawl, if not stopped all together, my body fought against the air and currents like they were water. I collided with a set of lockers and went sprawling against the now slick tiles of the interior areas the spirit had torn by. I lurched to my feet and spun the bracelet again. Over and over I spun it against my body.

Through the back side hallway, into the left wings main hallway, around the corner and out the front door and around the building towards the glass house. I glanced at the second story window to see the frozen image of Becca looking out the window. I smiled and zoomed across the final stretch towards the well. As the energy dwindled in my runes, I spun the bracelet once more to fill back up two runes of lightning.

I breathed hard as I held my chest, the cape flexed out into wings and hugged the inner wall of the well as my body fell forward into a nose dive. Before I struck the abyss that layed deep in the earth the cape stopped me from going further. Frog appeared from a mist above the well and spat out the creature that was held back by the last remnants of the talismans upon frogs body. The crystals on his back having cracked in some places.

Frog watched as the curse spirit came spiraling down the well and towards me. The curse spirit grew larger and larger, as if it wanted to exercise its strength but as it did tremors and cracks appeared in the abyss below me.

*CREEAKK*

The sound of an old door opening sounded out below me, without needing to look the cape tucked inwards and covered my body in a protective layer before the curse spirit latched onto me and sent us both flying downwards. The ash of talismans burning was the only remains left in the well as I disappeared into the abyss below.

Frog looked towards the figures of teens coming around a corner before it slowly moved his body into a mist and faded away.

I whipped out from a door and tumbled on the earth as the curse spirit spiraled out after me.

The bracelet whirled on my wrist again before my body shot forward and slammed shut a door behind the two of us. As I let go of the handle, the strange door that stood erect in a barren landscape faded into thin air never to appear again.

“Fuck me…no…fuck you!” I shouted out into the air, a rune for lightning dipping down past the threshold and time flow to my mind becoming normal once more. The spirit whirled, faces of hundreds of people expanding outwards. It wanted to take a form to cause fear to rise within me, but hell, what left was there to though.

It moved off from him and out into the distance before disappearing. It seemed to be under the threat of something. I turned around and came eye to neck with a familiar valiant man.

“So… how’s the kiddo?” The valiant spirit asked with a monk hanging from his hands.

“After I listened to what you told me…I caught several clues as to what you were letting onto…if I wasn’t up to the task, then Tom really did have to die and pass through the door…closing it behind him, and yet sealing the spirit on the other side. Although this would close the door, it would be inevitable to open again…when you also said the words of the quest I was on, to stop all this, I knew they had a relation…and that I was the catalyst to fix it all.”

The valiant spirit nodded, “I wish I had the chance to actually talk with you…would’ve been nice.” The valiant spirit lifted a leg and kicked me backwards, a strange confused looked passed over me as arms wrapped around my body from behind and pulled me through a door way. The faces of Tao and Ito staring down at me greeted my eyes, as smiles broke out onto their faces.

A certain shop keeper looked at me from afar, “Well you’ll be damned…or was it I’ll be.”