It continued.

  And San lost track of the number of times. Had his life repeated ten times? A hundred? A thousand?

  His mind had become like a broken machine. The emotions that once burned within him—regret, sorrow, anger—had turned to cold ash. His feelings changed, but not as they once did. His gazes toward himself, his family, everything in his past life, had become dark, boring, hateful.

  He began to see the moments differently.

  He saw his childhood friend steal a pen from him and laugh. And he thought: I could have strangled him. I should have pushed the pen into his eye.

  He saw his hospital supervisor ignore his first mistake, not to protect him, but because correcting the error meant extra work. And he thought: If I had pushed him from the tenth-floor office window, the world would be cleaner.

  He saw the family of the man who died accusing him. The mother crying, the son pointing accusing fingers. And he thought: I want to really do it. I want to become the murderer they think I am. I want to show you the true meaning of death.

  He even thought sometimes... about his own family.

  He saw his mother asking him to visit and him refusing. And he thought: What use are you? You were just a birth canal. Just the reason for my existence in this hell.

  He saw his father getting angry with him for not succeeding enough. And he thought: I want to show him real failure. I want to burn down our old house with him inside.

  These thoughts destroyed him. This wasn't him. This wasn't the man he thought he was. This was pure brutality, hatred born from the infinite repetition of pain. And he realized: regret had been a luxury. Anger at himself had been weakness. This... this was the real progress in torment. To hate everything. To want to destroy all you ever loved.

  And he wanted to kill himself to end this torment. He tried to direct the thoughts toward himself. You are the one at fault. You are the reason. You are the one who deserves death. But he couldn't. He couldn't harm himself, even in his imagination. His mind refused to allow it. The prison was complete: imprisoned in his memories, imprisoned in his hatred, imprisoned even in his desire for death which he couldn't fulfill.

  After more times—he didn't know how many—he screamed.

  It wasn't an ordinary scream. It was an explosion from the depths of what remained of his humanity. He screamed with terrifying force, to the point that in this silent world of observation, he felt as if his voice tore, shredded from sheer intensity. Scream, and scream, and he bit his tongue until he tasted blood that wasn't there. Phantom pain in a phantom jaw.

  I want to kill everyone! I want to destroy my old world! I want to end everything!

  He reached the peak of despair. A black, dense despair, impervious to light. San thought that he was forced. Forced to watch. Forced to relive the sensations and emotions again and again. He had no will. No choice. He was a captive audience in an endless film.

  How many times has my life repeated before me now? A thousand times? Ten thousand times?

  He stopped. He breathed—if what he was doing could be called breathing.

  It doesn't matter. No matter how many times... one thing is certain. This torment has an end. The System said: tax. And reward. There is an end.

  He looked at his childhood on the screen. Saw himself wrong his mother. Saw her sorrow.

  And suddenly... he no longer wanted to destroy her. He no longer wanted to hurt her.

  They are... human. They make mistakes. As I made mistakes. This is inevitable.

  The thought was simple, but it was like lightning in a black night sky.

  The past is over. The past is dead. The past tortures me because I cling to it. But... I will forget it. I will let it go. I will forgive.

  The forgiveness wasn't a surge of love. It was a surrender of another kind. Surrender to human nature. To inevitable failure. To life being a series of mistakes.

  I will focus only on what comes next. Next... what? I don't know. But anything is better than this.

  And at that moment, as he watched his adult self enter his room to see the black halo for the... millionth time?... the Light appeared.

  But this time... it was different.

  The white Light that always transported him to the beginning usually spread like a fast fluid, washing over the scene. This time it was less diffuse. It was more pure, more dense. And with the Light... there was a voice.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  A voice he had heard before. In the Void.

  Or... he thought he'd heard it. Or was it just a familiar voice from somewhere else?

  And without knowing how, he asked: "Who are you?"

  The person—the luminous form—still had his appearance shrouded in light, but his presence was more tangible.

  "It seems you have forgotten me."

  San's pupil dilated—the pupil of the observer, the eye of the trapped consciousness.

  Then he exploded.

  Anger, grief, despair—all the emotions he had buried beneath the layer of surrender appeared on his virtual face all at once. Facial expressions forming and shifting at a mad speed. Then... other emotions appeared. Surprise. Suspicion. Then... the first glimmer of something resembling hope, but warped from long suffering.

  "Is it over?" San's mental voice whispered. "Is my tax over? Finally?"

  "Yes." The person's voice was calm, emotionless, but the word was the most beautiful San had heard since... since forever.

  "Are you ready for the reward?"

  "Of course I'm ready!" San burst out. "But... wait. You said fourteen and a half years. Why... why did my life repeat thousands of times? What is this nonsense?"

  "Thousands?"

  "Don't tell me a hundred or something! I calculated—at least—more than several thousand times my life repeated!"

  The voice paused for a moment. Then said, as if stating a simple mathematical fact: "Because the Void does not obey the concept of time you understand. I was, after each time, adding an infinitesimally small portion to your tax."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You did not repeat your life thousands of times, Mr. San."

  "Then how many? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?"

  "You repeated your life..." The voice paused, not for drama, but for accuracy. "...more than seven million times."

  Silence.

  San's mind, which had endured through millions of cycles, refused to comprehend.

  Seven... million?

  "I lived the 29 years of my life... seven million times?"

  "Yes."

  "How... how did my mind not explode? How did I not go completely insane?"

  "Because when you were repeating your life, everything returned to the beginning... except your memory. You remembered what happened, after each time. Gradually, you built resistance. Your consciousness adapted. If this were your first, tenth, or thousandth time hearing this number, you would have shattered. Now... you are strong enough to bear it."

  The word "strong" shook San. Strength here wasn't something he wanted. It was a deformity. A scar.

  "What happens now?" San asked, his voice hoarse in the mental realm.

  "Your reward, Mr. San."

  And after the person said this, the black halo—that same halo that had swallowed his body in the real world, that had haunted him at the end of every cycle—suddenly appeared in the observation space. But it wasn't there to swallow him. It was waiting for him.

  And San looked at the person shrouded in light. And in a fleeting glimpse, as the halo began to coil around his consciousness, he saw... a smile.

  Was he smiling? The smile was faint, ambiguous, impossible to tell if it held sympathy, mockery, or was just a reflection of the light.

  And he had no time to think.

  The halo swallowed him anew.

  ---

  San opened his eyes.

  He wasn't in his old room. He wasn't in the hospital. He wasn't in any place he knew.

  He was standing, wearing the same clothes he had on in his room when it all began—the faded grey t-shirt, the sweatpants. But the air... was different.

  There were trees. Not like city trees. They were tall, lush, with leaves a rich, gleaming emerald color. And birdsong—but their chirping was complex, melodic, like music. And greenery... everything was vibrantly green and alive. And the atmosphere... was wonderful. Pure. Saturated with an energy he felt in his bones.

  He began to walk. His feet carried him on soft grass. Every step was real. Solid. His body was whole. His arms. His legs. He felt every muscle.

  He reached a building.

  It wasn't an ordinary building. It was a massive stone structure, with towering spires, walls covered in intricate carvings of mythical beasts and geometric patterns. It looked ancient and powerful at the same time.

  And suddenly, one of the guards on the wall shouted: "Another Lost One has arrived!"

  The guards wore gleaming metal armor and carried long swords. The scene was taken from a historical fantasy novel.

  "Lost?" San thought. Why that word?

  He looked at the guard. The man had a strong build, sharp eyes. His sword wasn't for show. His armor had real scratches and dents.

  San entered the building through a large gate, and the guards ushered him into a spacious room resembling a clinic. A doctor—or at least, a man in a white robe—came and performed quick examinations on him. The doctor was friendly, but professional.

  "Everything seems fine. You are free to roam the courtyard. Get to know people. You have survived, young man."

  The word "survived" stuck in San's mind. Survived what? The tax? The cycles? His past life?

  San smiled at the doctor—a small, real smile, the first in... in seven million cycles?—and walked out into the courtyard.

  And he found many people.

  Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Of all ages: elderly with faces carved by experience, young men and women in their prime, children, teenagers. They wore a chaotic variety of clothes—some simple and rustic, some strange and elegant, some resembling attire from completely different eras.

  The people gathered around a platform. On it stood an old man, but he stood erect. He wore noble clothes—a long coat adorned with golden embroidery, more like garments from "Lord of the Rings" stories. His dignity was palpable.

  The old man began to give a speech. His voice was resonant, clear, carrying natural authority.

  "New Lost Ones, welcome to the Academy of the New Existence. You are here because your previous world ended, or left you, or because you chose to leave it. The past does not matter now. What matters is what you will become."

  San was analyzing the words, analyzing the people. "The Lost Ones"... had they come from other worlds? From distant lands? From different time periods? The name meant they had lost something, or that they were lost relative to this place.

  "Here, in this Academy, you will study. You will train. You will discover who you can become. Civilians, fighters, adventurers, traders, craftsmen... the choices are many. This is a new world. With new rules."

  Everything was new. The air, the land, the people, the system. But there was something else... something inside San.

  It wasn't calm. It wasn't peace.

  It was... excitement.

  A hidden, modest, but real excitement. And curiosity. Curiosity to learn about this new world, the rules of this new game.

  He raised his head, breathed the pure air deeply.

  I will not live like my past life.

  It was a decision. Not out loud, but as a truth settled in his heart.

  The past life was a shadow. Torment. A prison.

  This... was the beginning.

  And the black halo that had swallowed him, that had tortured him, that had made him live seven million cycles of regret... was now quiet inside his chest. It hadn't disappeared. He could feel it. Like a black ember, cold, in the place of his heart.

  But it wasn't swallowing him now.

  It was... waiting.

  And as he heard the old man's final words—"Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives"—San knew one thing.

  The reward wasn't survival.

  It was the second chance.

  And he wouldn't waste it.