Ethan Graves did not expect to die that day.
The morning started like any other. Gray skies. The stale hum of fluorescent lights. Coffee that tasted like cardboard. He stood before the mirror in his small apartment, adjusting his collar, mindlessly brushing down the sleeves of a shirt that barely fit right.
A conference. Another one. He was supposed to speak on military theory. Tactics through history. The rise and fall of empires. Irony, in retrospect.
He didn't make it there.
The explosion hit at 10:32 a.m.
A flash. Then heat. Pressure. Then the deafening roar of steel and concrete folding inward, shrieking like beasts in pain. Glass shattered around him. The floor gave way.
He remembered falling.
He remembered the silence afterward.
Then came the darkness. But it wasn't empty. It wasn't final. It was... waiting.
Something pulled. Not gently. Not kindly. It reached inside his chest and dragged something out of him, something deeper than bone or breath. A memory, maybe. Or a soul.
When Ethan opened his eyes, the world was wrong.
He lay on a bed of ash and charred roots. Smoke clung to the air like a living thing, curling around his limbs, entering his lungs. His body ached. His vision swam.
The sky above him wasn't Earth's.
Stars pulsed like open wounds in the fabric of space. They shifted and shimmered, too close, as if watching.
He tried to sit up, groaning. His fingers dug into the scorched ground.
That was when he heard the screaming.
It came from every direction. Human voices—somehow he knew that—but they were distorted, broken by pain, twisted by fear. Metal clashed. Horses cried out. Something roared, something massive and inhuman.
Ethan turned his head and saw the battlefield.
He was at the edge of it, hidden by the twisted remains of a burnt tree. The field stretched far, a torn patchwork of dirt, bodies, and fire. Warriors in mismatched armor fought with crude swords and spears. Others were already dead, their faces frozen in agony.
Above them loomed creatures he could not name.
Twisted, black things. Like smoke given shape. Their limbs moved wrong, and their eyes—if they had eyes—glowed with something ancient and cruel.
One of them turned toward him.
Ethan froze. He couldn't breathe. The thing stepped forward, dragging a massive, rusted blade behind it.
He crawled backward, fumbling for anything—a rock, a stick, a weapon. His hands landed on a broken shield, half-buried in the dirt. He raised it just as the creature lunged.
A blur of gold intercepted the strike.
Flames erupted.
Ethan stared, stunned, as fire coiled through the air like a living serpent. The creature screamed, its form unraveling under the heat. It melted, then vanished into a trail of ash.
The one who cast the flame stood just ahead of him.
She was barely older than twenty. Dirty, bruised, and burned—but her presence was like a spear driven into the earth. Her hair was wild, dark blonde at the roots, glowing like molten copper where it caught the firelight.
Flames curled around her fingers, answering her breath like they were alive.
She turned her head slightly, eyes locking onto Ethan's.
"You're not from here," she said, voice rough, tired.
He swallowed. "No."
She didn't ask anything more.
The two of them moved quickly after that, ducking behind broken wagons and overturned siege engines. She moved with purpose. He followed with questions dying on his tongue.
They didn't talk much that night.
Eventually, when the sounds of battle faded, and the glow of fire dimmed to embers on the horizon, they stopped.
They camped in the ruins of what looked like a granary. The roof was gone. The walls were cracked. But it was shelter.
The girl knelt by the ashes and ran her fingers through them, eyes distant.
Ethan sat a few feet away, still gripping the sword he'd taken from a corpse. His knuckles were white.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Lira," she said, without looking at him.
"I'm Ethan."
She finally turned toward him. Her eyes were a dull amber, but something in them burned with quiet rage.
"You have no mark," she said.
"Mark?"
"No Soulpath. No elemental trace. No crest. You're not from any house. You're not even bonded."
"I don't know what any of that means."
"That's what makes it worse," she said, standing. "You shouldn't be alive. You're not part of this world."
He stared at her, trying to make sense of it.
"What happened here?" he asked.
She looked away. "The last city fell. We tried to hold the pass. The others died buying time. I was too late."
Her hand closed around a small charm hanging at her side. A fragment of something glasslike, cracked in the center, flickering faintly.
"I ran," she said quietly. "I don't even know why I ran. Maybe I thought someone would still be alive."
She met his eyes again. "But you're not supposed to be."
Ethan didn't sleep that night.
The ground was cold. The air colder. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blast. The fire. The void.
But he also saw her. Lira. Standing alone, flames dancing at her fingertips, facing monsters that looked like nightmares given form.
He didn't understand this world. But he understood war.
And war was coming.
Over the next few days, they moved across ruined roads and quiet villages. Ethan learned quickly.
He scavenged weapons. Studied maps. Memorized patrol routes.
He asked Lira questions, and she answered only when she felt like it.
This was Verathune.
A world locked in endless cycles. A thousand years of growth, then collapse. Every time the clock reset, the world forgot. People lived and died without knowing it had all happened before.
But sometimes, a relic survived.
A Crown.
A mark left behind by the ancient ones—gods, maybe, or something worse. They chose candidates. Gave them memory, power, purpose. And a choice.
Lira didn't have a relic. Not yet. But she was descended from one of the great Flameborne houses. That was enough to draw enemies.
Ethan had nothing. No relic. No power. No purpose.
And yet, he survived.
They were ambushed in the forest by raiders. Twice. Ethan dodged a spear he shouldn't have seen. He read formations in seconds. He moved faster than he should have.
Lira noticed.
She said nothing.
Then came the fifth day.
A ruined outpost. Six enemies. Outnumbered. Outmatched.
Ethan saw it all before it happened.
He moved through the field like he'd been there before. He shouted to Lira where to cast. When to hold. Where to fall back. The air shimmered. Her flames struck where he pointed. Not one of them survived.
After the battle, he stood in the quiet.
Blood on his hands. Smoke rising behind him.
A voice spoke, not aloud, but inside his mind.
"You've done this before."
He turned. No one was there.
Then he saw it.
Floating above him.
A thin, dark ring of metal. Etched in runes. Flickering between visible and invisible.
The Crown.
Lira stepped forward, her breath catching.
"You have one," she whispered.
Ethan didn't move.
The moment he saw it, everything changed.
Memories crashed into him like a wave breaking over jagged stone.
He fell to his knees, clutching his head.
A thousand lives.
A thousand battles.
A thousand deaths.
And in every one, he had failed to stop what was coming.
He remembered Lira dying. In fire. In ice. In silence.
He remembered cities crumbling, mountains falling, the sky cracking open.
And every time, he had tried to change it.
And every time, he had failed.
The Crown of Regression didn't give him power.
It gave him knowledge.
And knowledge was a curse.
Lira knelt beside him.
"Ethan."
He opened his eyes.
"They'll come for you now," she said. "They always come for the Crownbearers."
He nodded slowly, still shaking.
"I remember," he whispered.
"Then you know what's next."
He stood, sword in hand, firelight dancing across steel.
"Yes," he said.
The Spiral had begun again.
And this time, he would break it.