Through Their Eyes

The Loop of the Damned

Silence. There was no screaming. The earth was not shaking and the sky was no longer collapsing. There was just silence.

When Emby opened her eyes, the world was still. The air was heavy and cold, carrying the faint smell of damp earth and smoke. She lay on her back, staring up at a blackened sky that seemed frozen in time. The stars no longer moved. The world had stopped or perhaps it had reset.

She sat up slowly, her breath forming clouds in the frigid air. “Skylar?” she whispered.

A voice came from behind her. “I’m here.”

Emby turned and froze. Skylar stood a few feet away, alive and unharmed with her skin pale but whole. She also had on the same dress from the day she was kidnapped many years ago.

The altar, the cult, and the menacing beast were all gone. They were standing in front of the cemetery gates once again, just as the night before the kidnapping.

“Emby…” Skylar’s voice trembled.

“What’s happening? I—I remember everything. The chanting. The creature. The end.”

Emby’s heart raced.

“We weren’t supposed to survive,” she whispered.

“We were supposed to die when the world ended. But somehow…We didn’t. I think we were brought back somehow.”

The air shifted. The faint sound of wind brushed against the gravestones; carrying with it faint whispers and echoes of the future that had already happened.

Skylar clutched her arm. “We can stop it this time. Right? We can stop them.”

Emby nodded, but doubt churned in her gut. The world felt off. The moon hung too low, and the shadows of the gravestones stretched unnaturally far, bending in directions that defied light.