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It’s happening again, the cycle is starting. The suffering is starting again. There’s no escape, this is our life. The Tower is in control, it controls our lives, our fates, our deaths. Everything. I hate it, I fucking hate everything about the tower but I can’t fight it, be rid of it. We all can’t, that’s the most depressing thing about this. We can’t fight, we can’t escape, nothing. Trapped, we’re all trapped.
Everyone is stuck in their little loops, some worse others not. My loop is the worst of them all besides my daughter in law’s loop. I am forced by the tower to be rid of all and any children who were foolish enough to come close to it, attacking a secluded house on the outskirts of the Pale City where my son Mono and his other comrades have taken residence in, kidnapping everyone in sight minus Mono for he somehow escaped.
I hate doing this, I hate seeing the faces of youth and innocence being twisted into fear, hatred and betrayal at my presence, I hate seeing the tear streaked face of my daughter in law as I’m forced to pull her away from my son, taking her to the tower, twisting her into a monster like the rest of us. And most of all, I hate being forced to fight against each other, using our powers from our oldest ancestor.
One wins the fight but both of us fall, our fates are different but that hardly mattered. We’re trapped in puppet strings, trapped in the Signal Tower, forced to repeat crimes and chaos created by our captor. Forced into a fate we didn’t want, forced to be alone away from our family and friends, in life and a floating void created by a sack of flesh from the tower. Truthfully I know I’m not alone in this loop but that hardly matters, everything hardly matters anymore.
Yes we have tried to fight the Signal Tower, fate anything. But we can’t, the tower is far too powerful for us to handle. It’s not of this world, it’s far older then anything I had seen and it can control us if we resist its efforts and we had resisted it so much and too long…there is nothing we can do. Well, there is something we can do, for the ruined innocence in our world. My wife, the Maw’s lady, had came up with a plan to evacuate the remaining children from the Pale City. It’s a risky plan but one I happily agreed to atone for my sins and help my family.
Every time a cycle reset, I would bring any children the Tower wanted me to be rid of to abandoned apartments in the city to hide them from the tower’s eye and later lead them to the safety when the Eye wasn’t watching. It’s a hard slow progress considering the children don’t trust me much, but I’m still getting the job done. My mental health is taking a big hit but I’m stubborn and determined, I will not stop until I get the job done much like my son when he’s rescuing his friend. That’s my boy.
Yet despite that, I’m still not entirely happy about the situation. I wish I could do more, I wish I could…no, that doesn’t matter. The cycle is reaching its climax, Six is with me, the Tower is opening its doors, Mono and another boy with raven and snow coloured hair and mismatched eyes, one I’ve never seen before, maybe a friend of Mono’s, had arrived at the Tower. I can’t see Mono’s face from the distance I’m standing, but I swore I saw tears in his eyes, lower lip quivering with the other boy placing a hand on his shoulder in a small comfort.
A pang of guilt and sadness struck me in the chest, my limbs felt heavier, a hollowness filled my form but I walked toward my son and friend with the tower watching my every move. The second boy gasped, head whipping upwards to see me, mismatched eyes wide with fear. He gripped Mono’s shoulder tighter almost like he was trying to drag my son to safety, Mono didn’t move. I reached out, Mono did too. I closed my eyes, fully expecting the same fate to befall me like every cycle before. Memories and flashbacks assaulted my brain, over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over.
Suddenly…it stopped…