I awoke to a sky that should have been new, but was not.
The sun rose with all the brilliance of morning, spilling gold across the horizon. Yet even as I watched, that horizon faltered. The sun stuttered, dipped, and then rose again in the same exact arc—like a page flipped back before the sentence was finished.
I blinked hard, but the scene did not change. The world around me breathed in repetition. A bird’s cry echoed, then repeated with the same tone, the same tremor. My footsteps left shallow marks upon the earth, yet when I turned, they were gone, replaced by earlier prints, as though my movement had been overwritten.
The Loop of Memory
I tried to recall the day before, but memory fractured into loops. I saw myself eating with my son, Hoàng Long—yet I also saw the same scene again, slightly altered. In one version he laughed, in another he remained silent, and in another the bowl in his hand was already empty.
Which memory was real? Or were all of them fragments caught in an endless cycle?
A deep unease settled into my chest. It was not simply déjà vu; it was suffocation. I felt trapped inside a book where the pages were being shuffled endlessly, forcing me to reread the same lines until their meaning turned hollow.
The Proof of Wind
When the followers of Wind arrived, their eyes gleamed with certainty. They pointed to the sky that rose and fell without end, to the birds repeating their cries, to the fractured echoes of memory.
“Do you see?” one of them declared. “Reality has died. The cycle is rotting. We can no longer breathe within it. Only a new will can restore the universe. Only by opening the Window of Origin can we let reality breathe again.”
Their words resonated with the crowd. And disturbingly, with me.
For had I not just lived the evidence? The air itself clung to me like stale smoke. The sun mocked me with its repeated birth. Even my own thoughts circled like prisoners pacing the same worn path.
A Suffocating Truth
The more I resisted, the more undeniable it became. This was not illusion. The reality I knew was collapsing into patterns, stripping away the natural flow of time. I could feel the edges of existence folding inward, compressing like lungs unable to exhale.
I remembered Wind’s promise from the day before—her vision of liberation, her vow to reset reality. At the time, I had doubted. But here, standing in a world that replayed itself, I began to wonder if perhaps her promise carried truth.
Could the universe itself be suffocating? Could this endless cycle be nothing more than a coffin made of memory?
My Unsteady Faith
And yet, even as conviction stirred, a quiet voice inside me whispered caution.
Yes, the cycles were unbearable. Yes, the evidence was overwhelming. But to erase all memory, to reset reality entirely—was that true freedom, or only another form of death?
The crowd around me shouted in agreement with Wind’s followers, hailing her as the herald of a new dawn. Their voices rose against the fractured sky: “New will! New will!”
But I stood still, caught between suffocation and suspicion. The stifling reality pressed upon me, and I knew that whatever choice lay ahead would carve the fate of not just myself, but every living soul bound to this dying cycle.
