The battlefield collapsed.

  The ground beneath them trembled, as if reality itself was being pulled apart. The air buzzed with static, with fractured time. General Jones flickered between realities, his figure distorting, overlapping with versions of himself from countless loops. His voice came in waves, layered and disjointed, as if the same command was being issued over and over again from countless timelines.

  “Hold the line!”

  “Move forward, soldiers!”

  “Stand your ground!”

  Soldiers blurred around them—some older, some younger, some dressed in different versions of their uniforms, their faces changing in an endless cycle. Past and present merged together in a chaotic swirl. Faces from old battles. Faces from future wars. They all moved with the same grim determination, but none of them were truly *here.*

  None of them were *real.*

  Lester and Franklin stood in the center of it all, frozen in a moment that felt like it was being torn apart from within.

  The world wasn’t real.

  It was a prison.

  A prison they had built for themselves. A prison they had fought in, died in, over and over. A prison they had been tricked into believing was their only reality.

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  But now, they knew the truth.

  They had the choice to escape.

  They turned to Watts, standing in front of them—no longer the embodiment of their enemy, but a broken reflection of what they had been trapped in. His eyes were not filled with malice this time, but with a strange understanding. Watts had always known the Cycle’s true nature. He had been its prisoner as much as they had, perhaps even longer.

  But this time, Lester and Franklin didn’t charge forward.

  They didn’t raise their weapons.

  They didn’t retaliate.

  Instead, they stood before him one last time.

  And they let go.

  They let go of the past—of every battle they had lost, every death they had endured. Every time they had fought just to wake up in the same place, again and again. Every moment of pain, of hopelessness, of anger. They let it all wash over them, not as burdens, but as part of their journey. They accepted it. They accepted the truth of who they had become, who they were, and who they could be.

  They didn’t need to fight anymore.

  As they stood there, side by side, their hands at their sides, the Cycle *stopped.*

  The air went still.

  The ground beneath them no longer trembled.

  Time—*real* time—rippled around them, and the false reality they had been trapped in shattered like glass.

  The sky cracked open.

  It wasn’t a violent break. It was a release.

  A fissure in the fabric of the world, allowing something new to seep through— something pure, something they hadn’t felt in so long.A new dawn began.

  The sun rose for the first time in lifetimes. The light bathed everything in a warm glow, washing away the darkness, the ink, the shadows. The battlefield, once torn and broken, faded into nothingness. The soldiers—*all* the soldiers—vanished, their voices silenced. The endless cycle of death, of rebirth, of war… it was gone.

  Lester and Franklin stood in silence, their hearts still. There was no fighting left to be done. No battles to win. Only the quiet hum of a world that was truly *alive.*

  And for the first time — they could breathe.