He smiled wider.
“Wrong.”
Silence.
Then he leaned closer.
“I’m the reason for it.”
Amara’s breath caught.
“No… that’s not possible. I’ve lived this day hundreds of times. You were never here before.”
“Exactly,” he said softly. “Because I wasn’t supposed to be.”
A crack split the wall behind them. The sky outside flickered between day and night in seconds.
“This loop…” he continued, “was never meant to last this long. You were supposed to forget. Start over. Like all the others.”
“All the others…?” Amara repeated.
His expression changed—just for a second.
“There were many before you. But you… you remembered too much.”
Amara stepped back.
“So you trapped me here?”
“I protected you,” he corrected. “From what’s outside this loop.”
The ground trembled.
“What’s outside?” she asked.
For the first time… the boy stopped smiling.
“An ending.”
The world around them began to collapse—desks fading, walls dissolving, voices vanishing into silence.
Amara looked around, then back at him.
“So what happens now?”
He extended his hand, just like in a memory she didn’t understand.
“You choose,” he said.
“Stay here… and live forever in a broken moment.”
The space around them turned into darkness.
“Or leave… and face the truth you were never meant to remember.”
Amara stared at his hand.
The loop.
Or the end.
And for the first time…
She didn’t know what would happen next.
