I honestly didn't know how long I cried. When was able to sense my surroundings, I saw through the window that it was already night. The two moons shone brightly in the night sky, casting a pale light over the quiety city.

I sat beside the window, looking out into the city. The foot traffic was almost non-existent, with only a few clearly drunk people and knights on patrol walking through the streets. My eyes were dry and burning from how long I had cried that day.

My chest felt like it had an open wound, constantly hurting and, at the same time, feeling empty, as if something had carved a huge chunk out of it. I had killed already, when I first came to Flamecrest, yes, but this time, it felt different. Back then, I wasn't really in control of my own actions. I moved on impulse after seeing those criminals, but now? Now I had actively killed. I had locked my emotions and killed with cold logic.

Deep inside, I knew I had crossed a line. The first step is always the hardest, or so they say. 'I need to level up to heal my soul burn?' That was just a justification. I knew that I would find it easier and easier to just kill than not. The bridge had been crossed and burned already, there was no turning back, even with my control over time. Not even if I tried to travel through time and go back, the nature of the loops makes that impossible.

I glanced through the city once again, finally having enough energy to speak with the presence inside the room.

"How much did you see?" I asked.

"Pretty much all of it," Amity answered.

I looked at Amity. She was sitting on the table where the food the God of Light bought me, and the God of Time kept making it reappear each loop, once stood. It was now only scraps of food, devoured by Amity while I bawled my eyes out.

"So, I guess the contract kept your memories?" I asked as my eyes turned back to the windows, watching the stars glow and the galaxy we were part of paint the night sky.

"Not really, no." She got up and dragged the chair she was sitting on to my side, where she sat back on, looking at me watch the sky. "I was coming to this city after feeling something weird when I suddenly received a contract skill. Checking it, because I'm not stupid, I discovered it was made by myself, with a very strange clause that said it would be nulled if any type of temporal shenanigans made it impossible to be completed. Can you believe it? Oh, right, I guess you can."

I kept silent. Checking my skills, I confirmed that the contract skill was indeed still on my skill list. If I were to guess, as the contract was made by a mixture of my own magicules and Amity's, the contract now also exists partially outside of time, just like myself.

"It is very strange," Amity starts speaking. "Not knowing what I did. I can feel that my part of the contract is being done, which isn't something I ever noticed, you know? These things just poof once you complete your part of the deal, but this feels like I did but didn't yet?"

[Downloading….]

The reason was obviously that [Knowledge Library] was still downloading whatever magical orb Amity had made, it's a weird limbo-like state, if you think about it, but it's not like I deeply cared about it.

I honestly wasn't sure what I should feel about this deal I had made with Amity. I understand why I did it, she was the only person I knew who had the knowledge about some things I was curious about, but if I had my emotions back there, I wouldn't have even thought about doing so.

"Now," Amity got up from the chair, getting closer to my face as she did so. "Would you mind explaining to me…" She grabbed my snout. "WHY I COULD FEEL THE DIVINE ENERGY OF ZWRINIZ IN THE FOOD I ATE?"

She jerked my head in the direction of the table. Her grip was strong enough that I couldn't escape it or resist. If my neck weren't elongated, I knew I would've been thrown around by it.

I turned my eyes towards her and saw that she was pouting a little, her expression was a playful anger, like that of a child. I couldn't help but laugh a little about the situation.

"Hey! What are you laughing at? I want to know why there was a God here!" She protested, but I kept laughing. During that moment, filled with Amity's antics, the cruelties I had done in the previous loop were pushed to the back of my mind.

It took half an hour to calm Amity down from that situation, but once I did, I looked out of the window again.

"You know," I said. "It's been a dozen or so loops since I realized I could break free of them."

"Of what?" Amity asked. I suppressed a sigh.

"The loops," I clarified. "The temporal strand around my soul is part of a very complex knot holding the loop together, but it is also the load-bearing strand. I can easily snap it, and the whole loop crumbles like sand.

"My guess is that it will trigger one last loop and then time will flow like normal once again."

"And why haven't you done it?" Amity asks, tilting her head.

I took a moment to organize my thoughts before I answered.

"I was afraid," I said. "Still am, by the way. Of Jack, of what the criminal organization wants to throw at me, of the future. I am travelling through an unknown world to a destination I barely know where it is to find the friends I had when I was human."

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"YOU WERE HUMAN?"Amity shouted.

'Right, I haven't told her about my past in this loop,' I thought to myself.

"Long story short, the Church of Space used a forbidden ritual to summon people from another universe. My friends got summoned while I was reincarnated into a dragon, as you can see."

If her jaw wasn't fixed to her mouth, it would be on the floor right now. A small smile appeared on my own mouth.

"And that's what I'm afraid of," I continued. "Will they accept me? I'm not even human anymore. Sure, I can become a cat person, but it's not the same thing. For me to become an actual human again, I need to kill and eat one. [Unique] skill and that."

Amity was silent for a few moments. "If they are your true friends, they'll accept you, no matter what appearance you have. Besides, you're a dragon, now! That's very cool! A lot of people, from all the different species, would give their bodies in hopes of becoming one! Why do you think dragonbornes exist in the first place?"

I had no idea how 'dragonbornes' were in this world, but I guess the sentiment is the same.

"But I killed people!" I half-shouted at her. "Outside of the loops, I already killed five, and eleven more during the last loop, even if their deaths were reversed because time itself reverted, it doesn't change the fact that I did it."

"And?" She shrugged. I looked at her with a mixture of confusion and anger. "You said it yourself. Their deaths were erased. Big deal, you killed sixteen people total? I killed so many it would probably decimate a kingdom or two."

I looked at her in shock. I knew she was powerful, but casually telling me she had killed so much that would make Earth's greatest serial killers blush was a lot to take in. I then turned to the window once again.

"I…" I started to say, but stopped to calm my racing thoughts down a little.

"I'm not from here," I continued. "Earth, the place where I'm from, is very different from here. It's not a kill-or-be-killed place. I grew up with the only contact with death being from games and the inte- from fiction. But here? Here, there are people actually trying to kill me. My own hands have taken out lives. It's a horrible feeling. I want to throw up every time I feel it."

"Well-" Amity started saying something, but stopped.

"Don't try to gain sympathy from that child," A woman's voice echoed from behind me.

With widened eyes, I turned to the newcomer. It was a dwarf woman. She had the darkest hair color I had ever seen, short hair, purple eyes, and a crazy facial expression. I glanced at Amity, but she seemed frozen midword.

That's when I noticed a weird feeling all around me. The temporal energy that's usually flowing around me every single moment was gone without a trace. Everything around me was frozen solid, the people on the streets, the ambient magicules, and even the air was frozen. I couldn't breathe, but somehow I wasn't suffocating.

"Don't worry about her," the woman said. "I asked Zwriniz to have a little chat in private with you."

The dwarf woman approached us and jumped on the chair, sitting on it while looking at me with an almost maniacal smile.

"In case it wasn't clear enough with me asking Zwriniz, the God of Time, to stop time itself for me to talk with you, I am Tenessa, the Goddess of Darkness."

My eyes widened. I had suspected it from the moment she said she asked the God of Time to chat with me, but this was direct confirmation.

"Won't you bow to me and show me respect? I am one of those that created the world you're standing on, you know?" She looked at me, her eyebrow raised.

"I-I," I staggered. I didn't know what to say or do. My other encounters with Gods were very casual. I had no idea how I should act when in their presence. Heck, I didn't even know their religion besides their names and what they were gods of.

"BWAHAHAHAHA," She laughed. Her voice sent chills down my spine like the other Gods I've met personally hadn't. "You should've seen the look on your face."

I was a little confused.

"It's simple, small lizard," she said. "I was joking with you. I don't care if you show respect to me or insult my mother or something like that. We're not like those petty gods that were once mortals and can hold a grudge. So you don't need to be all uptight with your actions around us."

She eyed me head to tail.

"I gotta say. I was interested in meeting the tiny lizard that Zwriniz is being so lenient with. Not to mention having already received recognition from him, Vida, and Theo! You're a very peculiar lizard, I will give you that.

"You were on the brink of a mental collapse more than once, and the darkness still lingers in your mind, but you have some light as well. People like you, those who retain their memories after death and are reborn as a different species, are very rare, one in a quadrillion. Those who can hold their sanity after, how long have you been in these loops? A year? Those are even rarer."

"I…see(?)" I wasn't sure of what to do here.

"Don't stress it." She said. "As I said, I'm here just to meet you. You were telling the child here how bad you feel for having killed a few people? She'll just one-up you on that department and try to make you increase those numbers, saying something along the lines of them being 'rookie numbers'. I like her."

I looked at the frozen Amity, in the middle of saying something.

"Here," Tenessa waved her hand in front of Amity. "Now she won't remember what you've said and won't try to turn you into a, what did you think again? a mindless killing machine? Yeah, she won't do it now, unless you want to. That would be fun to watch."

"N-no, I don't think so." I managed to say. I didn't know why I was acting this way with her. Was it because when I met the God of Time, I didn't believe in his title fully, and when I met the God of Light, he didn't tell me who he was?

"Maybe you do, but I won't force anything on you." She said, closing her eyes and lifting a finger. "But I will offer some guidance to you, it is my Authority, after all. If you don't want to kill, good, but don't go out of your way to avoid killing altogether. You said it yourself, it's an already crossed and burned bridge. You need to accept the darkness inside of you, not fight it.

"For your situation, I agree with Luminos. You need to balance the darkness and the light inside of you. Your current path will only drive you deeper and deeper into the dark until you lose sight of yourself completely. Not that I wouldn't be there to accept you, should you lose yourself to the darkness."

She jumped out of the chair, turned to me, and smiled so hard it felt like her mouth would open like that of a snake.

"I'll keep an eye on you. Differently from those 3, we aren't convinced about you yet. Until another time!"

"-You should. Huh? What was I saying again?" Just like that, Tenessa had disappeared in thin air, and time had restarted. Amity looked confused about her sudden loss of focus, but I couldn't say much to her as I was inside my own mind, reflecting on Tenessa's words for me.

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