Cecilia’s eyes snapped open and the first thing she saw was that accursed cracked beam over her bed.

She’d expected it, but the reality was still there for her to see. She was still in the loop.

She stared at the beam for a moment, then sat up.

She had stopped counting the loop somewhere in the seven hundreds. By the time the number had climbed past that, counting had started to feel like something a different person would do. Someone who still believed the number mattered. She had long since stopped being that person.

She swung her legs off the bed and stood, crossing the room to the cosmetic table without hurrying.

The room was exactly as it always was. The canopy curtains, the golden-trimmed mirror, the collection of hairpins arranged in the same order they always returned to, no matter what she did with them in any given loop.

She picked up her favorite.

She had developed preferences. That felt like the strangest part of it, looking back. That after enough repetitions, even a nightmare was beginning to feel like a routine.

This pin was slightly longer than the others, the point fractionally sharper, and she had learned exactly the angle that made the difference between a wound and a death.

With a weapon selected, she turned to the door, standing there and waiting.

As if on cue, the door exploded.

Wood and splinters, same as always, the force of it carrying that particular sound she had heard so many thousands of times that it no longer registered as loud.

The soldier filled the doorway, and his eyes found her standing in the middle of the room, not running, not scrambling for cover, and not doing any of the things she’d done in the early loops when she had still been surprised.

His expression moved through its usual sequence. She could already predict it. Wariness came first, then confusion at her lack of action. Finally, the performance of authority reasserting itself.

“Don’t try anything funny,” he said, his voice carrying the hard edge he always used.

He walked towards her with the confidence of someone who knew he held the upper hand and relished the fact. Someone who had never once considered that the equation might have changed.

She waited until he was within range.

Then she drove the pin home in an action she’d long since perfected.

She knew the precise angle and the exact depth she needed to get what she wanted. After all, this was the very first enemy she faced in every loop. It was routine at this point.

The man’s expression didn’t have time to change before the pin entered his brain, killing him instantly. He went down and she stepped back and let him fall without catching him.

She looked at the body for a moment. Then she crouched, removed the pin, wiped it clean, and stood.

The corridor outside was the same as always.

The left led to the courtyard. Her mother was there, sitting near the center with her back straight and her fear carefully contained, waiting for a daughter who had spent thousands of loops trying every possible combination of speed and timing and improvised weapons to reach her before the fire did.

It was never enough.

She had made her peace with that somewhere she couldn’t precisely locate. The grief had burned for a long time and then it had burned itself out, and what remained was a cleaner and colder hatred, and was considerably more useful.

She turned right.

The leader of the revolt was somewhere down this corridor, and she had to meet him again.

She walked, and the hatred in her chest burnt brighter in anticipation.

But even with her anticipation, she didn’t rush.

Rushing was something she had tried in the early loops, when the urgency of it still felt real, when she had believed that speed was the variable that needed adjusting.

She knew better now. Speed was not the problem. Knowledge was the only thing that mattered here, and she’d been accumulating it for longer than most people lived.

She reached the bend and stopped, pressing her back against the wall.

The sound of two sets of footsteps reached her ears, the steps slightly out of sync. She knew what it meant. The heavier one was slightly ahead of the lighter.

She had heard this particular patrol so many times she could have drawn their route from memory.

She waited until the sound was exactly right.

They came around the corner and her hands moved before they had time to register her presence.

With a swift motion, the pin found its mark twice in the space of a single breath. The soldiers folded and she stepped around them without breaking stride, already thinking about the next obstacle.

She had mapped this route across thousands of attempts, learning which corridors held patrols and at what intervals, which doors were locked and which only appeared to be, which staircases were watched and which had been forgotten about by everyone except her.

The knowledge lived in her body now rather than her mind, her feet finding the right path without deliberation.

She encountered three more soldiers between the bend and her destination. None of them saw her coming.

Finally, she arrived at her destination. The door to the great hall stood open, just as always.

She slipped inside and pressed herself against the wall, letting her eyes adjust.

The hall was long and with a high ceiling, lined on both sides with armored displays, the suits of plate belonging to kings long dead standing in silent formation.

The light in the hall came from high windows, falling in pale columns across the stone floor.

He was there.

Prince Cecil stood with his back to her, his attention on one of the armored displays, his head tilted slightly as he studied it.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, unhurried in the way that people are unhurried when nothing in the room presents itself as a threat.

She knew exactly what he was. The Demon Lord.

She had tried confronting him directly in the early stages of the loop, back when some part of her had still believed that the right words or the right moment might change something.

Those loops had ended the same way, quickly and badly, and she had stopped trying that approach a long time ago.

His senses didn’t register her. She was too weak to constitute a threat worth tracking.

That was the only advantage she had, and she intended to use it completely.

She climbed the nearest pillar in silence, finding each handhold with care. She settled at the top and waited, watching him move to the next display, tracking his path.

He passed below her, and she dropped.

The pin found the side of his neck and she drove it deep.

Blood spurted into the air and he yelled in pain as he was wounded for the first time in a long time.

Then his hand found her.

The impact of the floor arrived and then nothing did.

***

Cecilia woke up again to the cracked beam.

She laid there for exactly one second, then she started grinning.

She had made him bleed. She had felt the resistance of flesh and the hot spray of blood in her hands.

This was the first time she’d managed to hurt him since the loop began. And this meant he could be killed.

She sat up with more energy than she had felt in what might have been years, the hatred in her chest burning even brighter than before and entirely focused.

She knew what to do now.

She just needed to do it better.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep