"Tell me about your daughter's ugh."
Luca paused mid-strike, the demon before him forgotten for a precious second. The voice had come from nowhere—a phantom of his own mind, yet as clear as if someone stood beside him in the arena.
His momentary distraction cost him dearly. The serpent-tailed demon he faced took advantage of his hesitation, driving a poisoned barb into Luca's chest. As the venom spread, paralyzing his already crippled body, Luca desperately tried to recall Elena's ugh. Had it been bright and musical? Low and thoughtful? How could he not remember something so fundamental?
Darkness cimed him, and the reset began again.
Time had lost all meaning. Luca had stopped counting individual resets after reaching one hundred thousand. Instead, he measured his existence in milestones—the defeat of particurly challenging opponents, the acquisition of new abilities, the rare moments of crity when the fog of endless repetition briefly lifted.
But something was happening to his mind, something more insidious than the physical torture or the ps
ychological strain of endless resets. His memories—the precious fragments of his former life that had sustained him through countless deaths—were beginning to blur.
"Your Majesty, I assure you the trade agreement is sound," Luca said aloud to the empty cell during his waking moments of the fifty-thousand-and-something reset.
Vex, who in this iteration had not yet introduced himself, stared at the blind newcomer with confusion. "Who are you talking to, broken one?"
Luca blinked, disoriented. For a moment, he had been in the royal council chamber, advising King Edric on Verrath negotiations. The memory had been so vivid—the smell of parchment, the tension in the air, the weight of responsibility—that he had responded aloud, forgetting where and when he truly was.
"No one," Luca replied. "Just remembering."
But was it remembering, or was his mind creating false memories to escape the unbearable present? This question haunted him with increasing frequency.
In the arena that day, he defeated three opponents in quick succession—Grask, the six-armed whip-wielder, and the fire demon—before falling to the teleporting assassin once again. Each victory was mechanical, performed with the unthinking precision that comes from having done something thousands upon thousands of times.
With the next reset, Luca decided to try something different. Instead of immediately preparing for combat, he sat cross-legged on the floor of his cell, closed his useless eyes, and deliberately summoned memories of Lilith.
Her voice came first—low and authoritative when addressing the court, warm and intimate when they were alone. He clung to specific phrases, forcing himself to recall them word for word.
"Describe the sunset for me," he had once asked her, shortly after losing his sight.
"The sky is a canvas tonight," Lilith had replied, her words careful and precise. "Deepest crimson nearest the horizon, melting upward into bands of orange and gold. The clouds are edged in fire, their centers dark purple like bruised plums. The mountains are silhouettes, jagged cutouts against the brilliance..."
Luca repeated her description aloud, word for word, a mantra against forgetting. But even as he spoke, doubt crept in—had she really said "bruised plums," or was it "ripened plums"? Had the mountains been "silhouettes" or "shadows"?
Such tiny discrepancies shouldn't matter, yet they terrified him. Each forgotten detail, each altered memory, felt like losing her all over again.
The horn bred, signaling the day's matches. Guards dragged him to the arena as they had done countless times before. As he fought, Luca tried a new technique—associating each combat move with a specific memory.
A defensive parry: Elena learning to write her name, her small hand gripping the quill with fierce determination.
A counterattack: Alden falling asleep against his chest, the rhythm of his son's breathing syncing with his own.
A killing blow: Lilith on their wedding day, describing her dress so he could "see" it through her words.
Memory became a weapon, purpose became technique. For a time, this method worked brilliantly. Luca progressed further than ever before, defeating seven opponents in a single reset before falling to the eighth—a shadow demon whose movements were nearly impossible to track by sound alone.
But there was an unexpected consequence. The more he used memories as combat tools, the more mechanical they became—stripped of emotion, reduced to tactical prompts. Lilith's voice, once so vivid and real, became a signal to attack. Elena's ughter, a reminder to guard his left side. Alden's curious questions, a trigger for counterattacks.
During his hundred-thousandth reset—or perhaps the two-hundred-thousandth, he no longer kept precise count—Luca realized with horror that he couldn't remember Lilith's face. He recalled that she was beautiful, that her eyes were a particur shade of green, that her hair was dark and often adorned with simple silver pins rather than eborate royal jewelry. But when he tried to assemble these features into a complete image, the result was indistinct, like a painting left too long in the rain.
"No," he whispered in the darkness of his cell. "I can't lose this too."
Desperate, Luca did something he had never attempted before. Rather than focusing on defeating his opponents as efficiently as possible, he deliberately prolonged a match against an opponent he had mastered—a massive, lumbering demon with limited intelligence but tremendous strength.
As the demon's club whistled through the air, missing Luca by mere inches, he forced himself to remember pain—not the physical agony of his countless deaths, but the searing emotional pain of his st moments with Lilith. The gods tearing his soul from his dying body. Lilith's scream of anguish. The cold, mocking ughter of Aurelian as he showed Luca his new form.
Pain kept the memories vivid. Pain kept them real.
When the demon finally nded a crushing blow, shattering Luca's twisted spine, the physical agony merged with the emotional torment, burning the memory of Lilith deeper into his consciousness.
With the next reset, Luca refined his approach. Pain became his mnemonic device, his anchor to reality. Each wound he sustained in the arena was paired with a precious memory, the physical sensation creating a pathway through which the past could flow more clearly into his mind.
"My tactic is unusual, but effective," he expined to Duke Razakel, who had paused to observe a match in which Luca was performing far below his actual capabilities. "Pain crifies. Pain reminds."
The duke, believing this was their first conversation, merely raised an eyebrow. "Most seek to avoid pain, not court it. You are a strange creature indeed."
"Pain is real," Luca replied. "When all else blurs, pain remains sharp."
For the next hundred thousand resets, Luca perfected this method of memory preservation. Each day in the arena became a ritual not just of combat but of remembrance. Each reset was an opportunity to reinforce what truly mattered.
Some days were harder than others. There were resets when, despite his best efforts, he couldn't recall the sound of Alden's footsteps running down the castle corridor. Resets when Elena's face blended with those of the orphaned children Lilith had promised to protect. Resets when he called out Lilith's name but couldn't remember why it mattered so much.
During one particurly dark period, Luca began to hallucinate. In the middle of combat, the arena would dissolve, repced by the royal gardens of Highcrest. His opponents would morph into courtiers or servants. He would hear Elena calling for him from somewhere nearby, her voice urgent but just out of reach.
"Father! I'm here, father!"
The first time it happened, Luca abandoned the fight entirely, turning blindly toward his daughter's voice, arms outstretched. The real opponent—a spike-covered demon—impaled him without resistance, sending him into yet another reset.
These hallucinations became more frequent, more eborate. Sometimes he would find himself in the council chamber, engaged in deep discussion of border security while his body in the arena fought mechanically, divorced from his consciousness. Other times, he would be in his and Lilith's private chambers, reading to the children while his physical form bled out on the arena floor.
"You're losing your mind," Vex told him during one reset, after Luca had been talking to empty air.
"Tell me about your daughter's ugh."
Luca paused mid-strike, the demon before him forgotten for a precious second. The voice had come from nowhere—a phantom of his own mind, yet as clear as if someone stood beside him in the arena.
His momentary distraction cost him dearly. The serpent-tailed demon he faced took advantage of his hesitation, driving a poisoned barb into Luca's chest. As the venom spread, paralyzing his already crippled body, Luca desperately tried to recall Elena's ugh. Had it been bright and musical? Low and thoughtful? How could he not remember something so fundamental?
Darkness cimed him, and the reset began again.
Time had lost all meaning. Luca had stopped counting individual resets after reaching one hundred thousand. Instead, he measured his existence in milestones—the defeat of particurly challenging opponents, the acquisition of new abilities, the rare moments of crity when the fog of endless repetition briefly lifted.
But something was happening to his mind, something more insidious than the physical torture or the psychological strain of endless resets. His memories—the precious fragments of his former life that had sustained him through countless deaths—were beginning to blur.
"Your Majesty, I assure you the trade agreement is sound," Luca said aloud to the empty cell during his waking moments of the fifty-thousand-and-something reset.
Vex, who in this iteration had not yet introduced himself, stared at the blind newcomer with confusion. "Who are you talking to, broken one?"
Luca blinked, disoriented. For a moment, he had been in the royal council chamber, advising King Edric on Verrath negotiations. The memory had been so vivid—the smell of parchment, the tension in the air, the weight of responsibility—that he had responded aloud, forgetting where and when he truly was.
"No one," Luca replied. "Just remembering."
But was it remembering, or was his mind creating false memories to escape the unbearable present? This question haunted him with increasing frequency.
In the arena that day, he defeated three opponents in quick succession—Grask, the six-armed whip-wielder, and the fire demon—before falling to the teleporting assassin once again. Each victory was mechanical, performed with the unthinking precision that comes from having done something thousands upon thousands of times.
With the next reset, Luca decided to try something different. Instead of immediately preparing for combat, he sat cross-legged on the floor of his cell, closed his useless eyes, and deliberately summoned memories of Lilith.
Her voice came first—low and authoritative when addressing the court, warm and intimate when they were alone. He clung to specific phrases, forcing himself to recall them word for word.
"Describe the sunset for me," he had once asked her, shortly after losing his sight.
"The sky is a canvas tonight," Lilith had replied, her words careful and precise. "Deepest crimson nearest the horizon, melting upward into bands of orange and gold. The clouds are edged in fire, their centers dark purple like bruised plums. The mountains are silhouettes, jagged cutouts against the brilliance..."
Luca repeated her description aloud, word for word, a mantra against forgetting. But even as he spoke, doubt crept in—had she really said "bruised plums," or was it "ripened plums"? Had the mountains been "silhouettes" or "shadows"?
Such tiny discrepancies shouldn't matter, yet they terrified him. Each forgotten detail, each altered memory, felt like losing her all over again.
The horn bred, signaling the day's matches. Guards dragged him to the arena as they had done countless times before. As he fought, Luca tried a new technique—associating each combat move with a specific memory.
A defensive parry: Elena learning to write her name, her small hand gripping the quill with fierce determination.
A counterattack: Alden falling asleep against his chest, the rhythm of his son's breathing syncing with his own.
A killing blow: Lilith on their wedding day, describing her dress so he could "see" it through her words.
Memory became a weapon, purpose became technique. For a time, this method worked brilliantly. Luca progressed further than ever before, defeating seven opponents in a single reset before falling to the eighth—a shadow demon whose movements were nearly impossible to track by sound alone.
But there was an unexpected consequence. The more he used memories as combat tools, the more mechanical they became—stripped of emotion, reduced to tactical prompts. Lilith's voice, once so vivid and real, became a signal to attack. Elena's ughter, a reminder to guard his left side. Alden's curious questions, a trigger for counterattacks.
During his hundred-thousandth reset—or perhaps the two-hundred-thousandth, he no longer kept precise count—Luca realized with horror that he couldn't remember Lilith's face. He recalled that she was beautiful, that her eyes were a particur shade of green, that her hair was dark and often adorned with simple silver pins rather than eborate royal jewelry. But when he tried to assemble these features into a complete image, the result was indistinct, like a painting left too long in the rain.
"No," he whispered in the darkness of his cell. "I can't lose this too."
Desperate, Luca did something he had never attempted before. Rather than focusing on defeating his opponents as efficiently as possible, he deliberately prolonged a match against an opponent he had mastered—a massive, lumbering demon with limited intelligence but tremendous strength.
As the demon's club whistled through the air, missing Luca by mere inches, he forced himself to remember pain—not the physical agony of his countless deaths, but the searing emotional pain of his st moments with Lilith. The gods tearing his soul from his dying body. Lilith's scream of anguish. The cold, mocking ughter of Aurelian as he showed Luca his new form.
Pain kept the memories vivid. Pain kept them real.
When the demon finally nded a crushing blow, shattering Luca's twisted spine, the physical agony merged with the emotional torment, burning the memory of Lilith deeper into his consciousness.
With the next reset, Luca refined his approach. Pain became his mnemonic device, his anchor to reality. Each wound he sustained in the arena was paired with a precious memory, the physical sensation creating a pathway through which the past could flow more clearly into his mind.
"My tactic is unusual, but effective," he expined to Duke Razakel, who had paused to observe a match in which Luca was performing far below his actual capabilities. "Pain crifies. Pain reminds."
The duke, believing this was their first conversation, merely raised an eyebrow. "Most seek to avoid pain, not court it. You are a strange creature indeed."
"Pain is real," Luca replied. "When all else blurs, pain remains sharp."
For the next hundred thousand resets, Luca perfected this method of memory preservation. Each day in the arena became a ritual not just of combat but of remembrance. Each reset was an opportunity to reinforce what truly mattered.
Some days were harder than others. There were resets when, despite his best efforts, he couldn't recall the sound of Alden's footsteps running down the castle corridor. Resets when Elena's face blended with those of the orphaned children Lilith had promised to protect. Resets when he called out Lilith's name but couldn't remember why it mattered so much.
During one particurly dark period, Luca began to hallucinate. In the middle of combat, the arena would dissolve, repced by the royal gardens of Highcrest. His opponents would morph into courtiers or servants. He would hear Elena calling for him from somewhere nearby, her voice urgent but just out of reach.
"Father! I'm here, father!"
The first time it happened, Luca abandoned the fight entirely, turning blindly toward his daughter's voice, arms outstretched. The real opponent—a spike-covered demon—impaled him without resistance, sending him into yet another reset.
These hallucinations became more frequent, more eborate. Sometimes he would find himself in the council chamber, engaged in deep discussion of border security while his body in the arena fought mechanically, divorced from his consciousness. Other times, he would be in his and Lilith's private chambers, reading to the children while his physical form bled out on the arena floor.
"You're losing your mind," Vex told him during one reset, after Luca had been talking to empty air.
_*]:min-w-0 !gap-3.5">Had it been anyone else, Luca might have dismissed the observation. But Vex, in his many iterations, had become something of a touchstone—the one constant presence at the beginning of each reset. If Vex noticed his deterioration, it must be real.
Fear gripped him then—not fear of pain or death, which had long since lost their power to terrify, but fear of forgetting. What if, after millions more resets, he no longer remembered why he fought? What if Lilith's name became just another sound, stripped of meaning? What if his children faded from his memory entirely?
What would remain of Luca without the memories that defined him?
In his desperation, Luca developed a new technique. Between arena matches, he would sit in his cell and methodically catalog every memory of his former life, organizing them into patterns and associations. Family memories were linked to sensory experiences—the texture of Elena's hair, the sound of Alden's ughter, the scent of the oils Lilith used in her bath.
Court memories were connected to specific knowledge—trade agreements with Verrath, disputed forest boundaries with Karthia, the price of grain during the summer drought. Each memory was a thread in an intricate tapestry, and Luca worked tirelessly to keep the pattern intact.
During one reset, after defeating nine opponents in succession—a new record—Luca experienced something unexpected. As he absorbed the essence of the ninth demon, a tangle of alien memories flooded his consciousness, as always happened during these absorptions. But among the demon's memories, he found something impossible—a fragment of his own past, viewed from outside himself.
It was a scene from the royal court of Highcrest, observed through the eyes of a minor noble who had been possessed by a demon observer. Luca saw himself standing beside Lilith's throne, dressed in formal attire despite his blindness, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder as she dispensed justice. The noble/demon had watched with disgust at this dispy of affection between queen and consort, but the image was crystal clear—Lilith's face rendered in perfect detail, exactly as she had been.
The shock of seeing her—truly seeing her, through borrowed eyes—nearly overwhelmed him. Her features were both familiar and startlingly new. He had remembered her beauty correctly, but had forgotten the tiny scar above her right eyebrow, the slight asymmetry of her smile, the intensity that radiated from her even in repose.
As the reset continued, Luca fought with renewed purpose, seeking out demons who might have observed the mortal realm, hoping to absorb more borrowed glimpses of his past life. Most yielded nothing but alien ndscapes and incomprehensible experiences, but occasionally, he would find fragments—a demon who had watched the royal procession through town, another who had attended the presentation of Princess Elena in disguise, a third who had observed the castle from afar during the attack that separated him from his family.
These borrowed memories became his most precious possessions, more valuable than the combat skills or magical knowledge he absorbed from his opponents. They were proof that his past had been real, that Lilith and their children had existed beyond the increasingly unreliable ndscape of his own memory.
After five hundred thousand resets—though the exact number was impossible to know—Luca had accumuted dozens of these fragments, piecing them together into a mosaic of his former life. It wasn't complete, would never be complete, but it was enough to remember why he continued to fight through the endless cycle.
"I fight for Lilith," he would whisper before each reset began. "I fight for Elena. I fight for Alden."
Sometimes, in the rare quiet moments between death and awakening, Luca would imagine Lilith searching for him across the vast cosmos. Had she found a way to track his soul? Did she even know he still existed in any form? The gods had been cruel enough to separate them across dimensional barriers that even a vampire queen might not be able to breach.
Years might have passed in the mortal realm while he experienced countless resets in the demon pne. Decades. Centuries, perhaps. Time flowed differently between realms. His children might have grown up, grown old, died of natural causes while he remained trapped in his endless cycle.
This thought threatened to crush his spirit entirely. What was the point of fighting to return to a world where everyone he loved might be long dead?
During his darkest moment, when this despair nearly consumed him, Luca absorbed the essence of a particurly ancient demon—a chronicler who had observed the multiverse for millennia. Among its vast store of knowledge was a critical piece of information: Vampires were immortal. If Lilith had indeed transformed as his fragmented memories suggested, she would still exist, no matter how much time had passed.
This knowledge rekindled his determination. Lilith would wait for him. Lilith would search for him. Lilith would never abandon hope, and neither would he.
In his cell, preparing for yet another cycle through the arena's familiar gauntlet, Luca pressed his twisted hands against the cold stone floor and focused on a single memory—the most important one, the one he had reinforced through countless resets.
Lilith, her voice steady despite the gods tearing his soul from his body, making a vow: "I will find you, my love. No matter how long it takes, no matter what powers stand in my way. This is not the end."
Luca smiled in the darkness, his blind eyes fixed on nothing, seeing everything.
"Begin!" shouted the arena master for the millionth time.
And Luca rose to fight again.
