The Altar

Ryan entered the pitch-black cave entrance in the middle.

The silence inside the cave was unnaturally dead. The Glory cast a pale white path ahead, and the only sound around was the crunch of his feet stepping on bones. Skulls, ribs, and fractured spines—countless human remains piled up like mountains here, nearly filling the cave to the brim.

As he walked, Ryan suddenly stopped in his tracks.

In the pile of yellowing bone fragments ahead, a set of bones appeared that had been deliberately arranged. Interlocking with one another, they spelled out a crooked word under the light of his lantern:

【TIME】

Ryan frowned slightly. Was it a warning, a remnant of a ritual, or some kind of prank?

He warily lowered his lantern. As the Lantern's glow swept over them, there was no foreign extraordinary pollution, no active residue, and not even a trace of aspect fluctuation. It was just a pile of weathered bones from ordinary people after death, completely normal.

But in the rift of the imaginary realm, the more normal something seemed, the more abnormal it usually was.

Ryan stepped over the pile of bones and continued forward. After dozens of meters, another set of finger bones appeared, wedged forcibly into the crevices of the rough bone wall.

It was still that word: 【TIME】.

Then came a third, a fourth, a fifth...

Countless identical words repeated like a nightmare in every corner of the cave's depths. It was as if some lunatic trapped here had used the last of his strength before dying to frantically recreate the same concept on the island.

Just then, Ryan suddenly felt the ground give way beneath his feet, and the brass lantern in his hand shook violently.

He looked down.

In that instant, a chill rushed from the soles of his feet straight to his head—his left hand was rotting.

The skin and blood vessels were decomposing, bit by bit.

Ryan's pupils contracted sharply. Before he could react, an inexplicably violent headache exploded in his mind.

A massive, almost terrifying torrent of information, carrying countless unfamiliar memories, swept into his consciousness with brute force—

...He was running in despair on the bone island, surrounded by endless gray fog.

...He fell into a pitch-black crack, hearing the sound of his own bones snapping.

...He was dragged into the darkness by pale tentacles stretching out of the waves, his lungs filled with black seawater.

...Holding a burnt-out lantern, he laughed maniacally in front of countless spires, his sanity completely wiped out.

...He knelt weakly on the ground, carving words into the bones over and over again with bleeding fingernails.

He died.

Then he opened his eyes on the beach again.

Entering this cave entrance once more.

Dying in despair once more.

Once more... and once more...

“Ugh—!!”

Ryan suddenly propped himself against the bone wall beside him, his stomach churning violently.

Those were not some stranger's memories at all. It was himself, all of it was him! It was the “Ryan” who had entered this cave countless times and died here countless times!

At this moment, he finally understood the deepest, most terrifying essence of this path—the 【Lantern】 never feared death; the price of the 【Lantern】 had always been “knowing.”

When you saw what you shouldn't see, when you remembered the truths you shouldn't remember, a mortal's sanity would be completely burned through, like a moth staring directly at the sun.

Along with the backflow of memories, the light from the lantern in Ryan's hand instantly surged out of control, expanding wildly and illuminating the entire pitch-black cave as bright as day.

Under this inescapable light, the surrounding bone island finally revealed its true, complete form.

Ryan looked over, his face pale. On those scattered, layered bones, every single pale bone was covered in dense, extremely sloppy handwriting carved with sharp tools or fingernails:

【The left is a dead end.】

【Don't trust the light.】

【Turn back.】

【Don't look at the sea.】

【Failed seven times already.】

【Failed thirty-four times.】

【Don't continue, go back quickly...】

Ryan's breathing stopped completely, his body beginning to tremble slightly from sheer terror.

Because that crooked handwriting, those quirks of cursive and abbreviations... they were all in his own hand.

He was not here for the first time; he had been here hundreds, thousands of times. Every time, he thought he was exploring it for the first time; every time, he thought he was heading toward the exit.

In countless loops of history, he had left his own bones here, piling up to form this island, and then used his own ribs to spell out the words all over the ground.

The speed of his body's dissolution grew faster and faster. A transparent sense of nothingness began to emerge on his right hand, his shoulder, and even half of his chest. He was being completely erased from this Secret Histories. Yet, in contrast, even more memories flooded back into his mind like a tide.

The hundredth death, the three hundredth death, the five hundredth death...

“Move... Move!”

Ryan suddenly let out a loud roar, his eyes bloodshot as he began to sprint desperately through the pile of white bones. He had remembered from those pre-death messages that at the end of a loop, right before he completely vanished, a light would appear in the deepest part of the cave.

As long as he caught up to that light, he could obtain the answer to breaking the loop!

He stumbled forward like a madman through the dense pile of skeletons, his body disintegrating, his consciousness repeatedly tearing between reality and the illusions of countless deaths. In his ears, countless voices of his own even began to overlap—they were the tens of thousands of Ryans who had died here, simultaneously roaring, screaming, and crying out to him in the darkness, telling him to turn back, telling him to stop, telling him to give up.

But Ryan did not stop. He crashed headfirst through the end of the thick fog.

Finally, he rushed into the deepest part of the cave.

In the center of a pale altar built from the keels of shipwrecks, there was indeed a glaring, pure white glow.

Dragging his nearly dissolved body, Ryan shuffled forward step by step until he clearly saw the person's front.

Then, he froze completely in place.

It could hardly be called a complete person. It was a bare head, without a body, floating eerily in midair. An extraordinary glow, fierce to the point of near blindness, burned in the eyes of that head, and its face was exactly the same as Ryan's.

It was himself.

The floating head quietly looked down at Ryan, a twisted smile that was tired, numb, yet relieved to the extreme appearing on its face.

It spoke slowly, its voice raspy, like two bones grinding together:

“You're finally here... This time, you were a bit faster than last time.”

Ryan felt cold all over, a dry sound escaping his throat: “Who are you...”

“I am you. Don't go any further, Ryan. There is nothing ahead.”

The head closed its eyes, which flowed with glow, its voice growing softer and softer.

Ryan watched the rot that had already spread to his neck, his lips trembling.

“Go back. While you still remember who you are, before you turn into a monster like me.” The head's voice began to crack and fade along with the surrounding bone walls. “Go back and find Simon, find Alvin... Leave this place. There isn't much time left.”

In the next second, the entire pale altar collapsed with a crash.