Her body collapsed lifelessly on the ground.
"... Huh?" The rage that had blinded Advait till now also suddenly shattered as the shock of reality hit him; he turned toward the corpse behind him.
Nothing.
No guilt. No grief. No horror. Just... emptiness.
'Why?'
For the first time, Advait truly questioned himself. 'I should feel something, shouldn't I? Anger? Regret? Sickness? Why is there... nothing?'
And then, like a whisper in the dark, the truth slithered into his mind, the thing he was losing slowly with each loop; his lips moved before he realised.
"... humanity?" He mumbled to himself as he realised with a frown and squinted eyes, 'I have been losing my humanity with each loop...'
All he could react with was a sigh. Observing his condition, the place was drowned in strange silence. That was until a suddenly screeching voice caught Advait's attention.
A sound like rusted metal grinding against bone tore through his skull. Not through his ears, but inside his mind itself.
"Speak the lie that makes you human."
Advait's blank stare cracked. A grin—wide, manic, unhinged—split his face. He collapsed onto his back, staring into the lightless sky, laughter bubbling from his throat.
'Second clue. Of course. Of fucking course.'
"... But the pain is still unbearable." Advait remarked, glancing at the state of his body, there was no bone that wasn't cracked or unbroken around his chest; blood leaked from all the gaps on his face, and with each heartbeat it felt like his heart would explode. Advait sighed and finally smashed his throat over a piece of glass lying straight on the ground.
00:00:01
Crunch!
The moment he respawned, his entire body was folded like an ugly mould of flesh.
00:00:03
This time he lunged backwards, yelling, "Hey, Edith!" but before he could say another word, his body was found 6 feet under with not even flesh on his body.
00:00:05
"At least listen!" This time he flinched before speaking; an amused grin flooded Edith's face as she remarked, "You are learning," and once again his body was shredded off his flesh within a second.
00:00:09
"Please," Advait gasped, hands raised. "Just let me say one thing. Then you can kill me."
Edith paused. "...Fine. Talk."
He exhaled. "Thank you—"
Squelch.
But yet again he was folded like a flesh ball at Edith's mere gesture and amused smirk on her face.
00:00:03
"I got another clue; it was inside your--"
Crushed yet again.
The same ceremony lasted about 3-4 more times before Edith finally regained enough patience to listen to him this time.
"Speak," she commanded while standing still inside the pitch-black fog, but even so her jewel-like eyes could be seen through it, plain as day.
"I have gained another clue. It was inside you all this time." Advait wasted no time explaining, and Edith's eyes twitched with realisation, and the rage seemed to have been quenched instantly.
"Does the clue pass from person to person? I killed the smiling hollow, so it passed to me. You killed me, so it must have passed to you?" Edith mumbled all excitedly, but her theory was already shot down by her own actions, "... Or not."
"I apologise for my outburst..." Advait apologised with a sigh and confidently claimed, "And there is no need to find any more clues either; I have the answer to escape this loop."
"Ohhh!" Edith burst into a wide grin. "Tell me—!"
"But first," Advait paused her, and this time, instead of rage, he seemed to plead with her to answer, "How do you know the name 'Reva'?"
"... Reva." Edith also paused while recalling the name; maybe it was one of the most important memories in her life. Despite all the loops, she still remembered it. She noticed the look of deep familiarity and concern in Advait's eyes, and with a sigh, she finally gave the explanation.
"When I first arrived in Letherward, I wasn't the only one here; there were more than a dozen humans here," she explained. "One by one, all of them lost their sanity, and as days passed by, one by one, they lost their sanity, and before I realised it, they stopped reviving after the 13th hour..."
There seemed to be a brief look of loss written all over her eyes, but the depth in her eyes when she called out 'her' name was deeper than the void itself.
"Reva was the last one who vanished from the loop, but she didn't lose her mind; instead, she discovered some sort of hidden pathway to escape the loop. She wanted to tell me about it too, but by the time she discovered the new path, it was already the 13th hour, and I never met her again after that 13th hour."
Edith sighed; what she had said was just the surface-level information still left in her memories after all the loops, and she told all she knew to Advait. She sighed and turned toward Advait. "But anyway, why do you want to know about Reva? It's not like you--"
Her words suddenly paused, the look of shock way greater than the moment of her death when Advait's hands flashed past her eyes as she noticed the tears welling up in Advait's eyes.
"... She was here all the time?" He mumbled, feeling his legs go weak with a surge of emotions; he, for one, had been losing parts of his humanity all this while, yet at that moment he couldn't help but almost lose himself like some baby bursting with emotions.
"Advait..." Even Edith was taken aback to watch him continuously trying to wipe his endless tears; after a brief pause, she finally questioned, "Do you know Reva?"
"Of course," Advait answered without a shred of doubt and with a proud smile on his face, "she is my sister."
Edith couldn't help but feel those shivers; the resemblance of those smiles was otherworldly. "... What a small world," she mumbled as Advait finally wiped away his tears and, with a deep breath, declared.
"I will find her either way," he nodded and once again recalled the two clues on hand, "To light the moon, you must burn your truth. Speak the lie that makes you human."
A chuckling scoff crossed his mouth as he remarked. "Flowery nonsense. To say it simply, in order to break the loop, one must speak a powerful lie about themselves that they believe in completely, and the lie must hurt, must shatter the self."
"That's all?!" Edith yelled out excitedly, and after a moment of trance, she finally released a sigh before remarking on her truth and the lie.
"I envy the dead," Edith said blankly with not as much as a hint of hesitation in her eyes. Seeing so many perish with her own eyes, she truly did envy the dead who didn't have to hurt living with others memories, but at the same time her pride hurt to accept herself as being so weak to be crumbling with a reason like this.
"That was easy..." Though Edith may say it, the silence in her face proved her statement did indeed hurt her quite a bit, but at the same time it was the end of this hell for her as she found herself in a semi-transparent state vanishing away from this dimension.
"Ah, that's so cringe." Edith seemed flustered watching Advait's dazed face staring at her. "Envy death? As if I was just..."
Her voice grew weaker and weaker before turning completely mute to Advait's ears. Advait couldn't help but chuckle seeing her mumble on her own, and finally his attention turned over towards the lightless sky, and he remarked
"Don't be so shy, Edith... There are more shameless hypocrites pretending to be human walking around you," he remarked with a sigh, and now it was his turn to confess; his eyes felt hollow as a corpse as he took in that deep breath.
"I let my sister die when I could have kept her alive."
!?
'I can't hear what he is saying.' Edith frowned a bit frustrated; Advait noticed that and purposefully smiled even more brightly.
"Ahhh!" Edith just grumbled.
And with that, a pale sliver of moonlight cut through the sky, but the flames died out all at the same time. The torches revealed themselves to be tongues nailed to sticks—leftovers from those who couldn't live their truth.
"How amusing..." Advait mumbled as his body, too, started to lose its form.
'Finally free...' he sighed with a big grin, prepared to find himself awake in his home once again and end this nightmare state.
"Or maybe not." Advait's bright smile was drowned away in a dark frown as his eyes opened up again, not in his cosy bed but in the face of another trial.
This time it wasn't just him, and not in a rotting city but a cavern along with dozens of hollow-eyed survivors, and at the centre was a bandaged corpse with a voice grumbling nonsensical words like a death knell.
"We meet again, child." The familiar voice suddenly called him out again. As he turned, he noticed Edith standing beside him with arms crossed and a cheeky yet annoyed grin on her face, with her arms shaking, trying to stop the massacre by herself.
"... God, no." Advait himself didn't want to accept it, but that option was torn off as a voice resounded across the place, originating from a corpse covered in bandages standing in front of the crowd.
"""Congratulations. Trial One: Cleared. Welcome to the Looping Crossroads. """
With that said, the corpse fell truly lifeless, with its head rolling away and ribs crumbling to dust.
"This is going to be a long nightmare..." Advait mumbled with a long sigh at the same time, preparing for what came next: the 13 hours before and now 13 pathways surrounding the crowd from all directions.