In the Garden Where Nothing Looks Back

Chapter 27: In the Garden Where Nothing Looks Back

(Fragmented Memories–IV)

━━━━━━ʕ• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•ʔ━━━━━━

I stood on what used to be a continent.

Now it was a plain of glass.

Molten sand had cooled into a cracked mirror that reflected a sky with no sun. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, flat and colourless.

At the very centre of that dead plane, there was a tree.

Or what passed for one.

And beneath that tree, leaning against the trunk as if it were a bench in a park, sat an elf in a veil.

Long hair spilled down her back, pale as bones left too long under starlight. The veil hid most of her face, delicate lace that shouldn’t have survived any of the apocalypses I’d seen.

Her ears were long, longer than any elf I’d met, the points reaching almost to the fall of her hair.

I took a step.

Her head turned before my boot made a sound.

A chuckle slipped out from behind the veil.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you again. The little human.”

“Again?” I repeated.

The word hooked somewhere in my chest.

She tilted her head, veil shifting.

“Already forgot?” she said. “Is that why it’s been so quiet? Haa… how rude.”

Her laughter bounced off the glass. Thin. Amused. Tired.

“Have we met before?” I said.

She hummed.

“That’s what you said last time,” she replied. “And the time before that. And the time before that. It doesn’t get any more interesting the thousandth time, you know.”

“Is this mess your doing?”

“What if it is? Now, stop bothering me.”

Before I could speak, she lifted a hand and snapped her fingers.

Just two fingers.

The sound was soft.

My heart exploded.

For a brief, vivid instant, I saw my own blood spraying across the glass in front of me.

Then there was nothing.

[♪♪♪]

· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·

“You called me ‘again’,” I said. “Like we’ve done this before.”

“Hundreds of times,” she said. “Maybe thousands. I stopped counting when the moons changed shape the third time around.”

“Then answer me something,” I said. “There was a woman.”

Her head tilted.

“The one with the bad habit of throwing herself in front of your suicide attempts?” she guessed. “Ah, yes. The little girl who tried to help a broken toy.”

My breath hitched.

She had no right to that memory.

“Where is she?” I asked.

The elf shrugged.

“Here, there. Nowhere,” she said. “Maybe she walked off the stage. Maybe I ate her? Maybe she never existed?” She tapped her chin.

“Maybe she finally managed to cut the string that drags her back. Who knows?”

My grip tightened.

“Did you erase her?” I asked.

“Would it make you feel better if I said yes?” she asked back.

She sounded genuinely curious.

“Would it hurt you if I cut your head off?” I replied.

Her laughter flared bright.

“Try,” she said.

So I did.

I moved.

She didn’t.

[♪♪♪]

· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·

The next cycle I found her, she was standing on top of a cathedral.

The city burned around her. Flames poured through broken stained glass windows, colouring the smoke red and gold.

She was humming.

The tune had no rhythm. Just notes falling out of her, scattered like bones.

I leapt across the gap between two roofs, landed on scorched tiles and skidded to a stop at the edge.

“Hey,” I called.

She didn’t turn.

A streak of magic left her fingertips, drifting lazily toward a distant mountain range.

The rock glowed.

Melted.

Collapsed in on itself.

“YOU,” I said.

This time, there was no confusion.

“Every single time,”

“Every plague that turned flesh to rot. Every child who stopped breathing in their sleep. Every demonic portal that tore reality apart at the seams. The cities that burned so hot the stone itself cried. The innocents who prayed to gods that never answered…”

“It was always you. All of it—my endless suffering, and hers. You.”

She tilted her head back, looking up at the sky.

“What I find curious,” she said. “Is that what took you this long to realize?”

“Hah. What was it this time that made you so busy? Or did that tiny human brain of yours finally pop like a soap bubble?”

“SHUT UP!”

I lunged forward. “I’LL TEAR YOU APART WITH MY BARE HANDS—RIP OUT WHATEVER PASSES FOR—”

Her shoulders shook.

Laughter again.

“Ahaha…”

I walked toward her. The roof tiles crunched under my boots.

“Oh my. He’s doing this part again,” she said, more to herself than to me. “How nostalgic. You’re very consistent, little human.”

She finally looked at me.

The veil hid most of her face, but I could see her mouth.

The curve of it was wrong.

Too wide, too sharp, too amused.

[♪♪♪]

· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·

[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]

“What are you?” I asked her once.

“Lonely,” she said.

Then she laughed at her own answer.

My fingers tightened around the sword hilt.

“And bored,” she added. “Oh, and cursed. That one’s important.”

“Cursed?,” I asked.

She lifted her arms and spun once, letting the hem of her robe flare.

“By the heavens you scream at,” she said. “By that thing you call ‘System’. By whatever sits above all this and moves little pieces around for entertainment.” She made a circling motion around her own head. “I annoyed It, once. Long ago. Or so I assume. I can’t even remember the crime.” She smiled. “Just the sentence.”

“What sentence,” I said.

“To live,” she said. “To stay. To watch. To never leave. To be unseen.” Her hand rose, pointing to the broken sky. “For longer than your empires. Longer than your languages. Longer than your moons. Until even I forget why I’m here.”

“So you started killing everyone to feel better? Really, just a game to you?”

“Hm? No,” she replied. “Games end. But this thing that you call life here, never ends.”

I let that pass.

Up close, the madness was obvious. It clung to her like perfume. The way her shoulders shook at things that weren’t funny. The way her head snapped toward the sky whenever the wind changed, like a dog hearing a whistle.

But under the laughter, under the boredom, something else sat in her eyes.

Emptiness.

She’d been alive longer than any history book. Longer than most myths. Long enough that the crime that earned her this sentence had rotted out of her memory, leaving only the punishment.

Eternal life.

Eternal notice… from no one.

If no one saw her, if no one heard her, if the only thing that ever looked her way was the world’s casual malice, of course anyone’d go mad. Of course she’d start pulling the world apart like a child ripping wings off insects.

I understood that.

Time regression had chewed on me for a handful of worlds, and I’d already tried to end myself more times than I could count.

If not for her, the ‘her’ with the tired smile and stubborn hands, I’d still be throwing myself off towers.

The Elf had no ‘Her’.

No one had ever stood in front of her and said live.

All she had was the thing that cursed her and a planet full of people who walked through her without noticing.

In a way, I understood her.

I even pitied her.

I still couldn’t forgive her.

Understanding wasn’t absolution.

I took another step.

The tip of my sword scratched the tile.

Her veil fluttered as my sword came down.

For a second, there was resistance. Flesh, bone, something harder.

Then her head rolled across the blood‑slick tiles, veil stained, hair fanning out behind it.

Her body remained standing for a moment, swaying like a puppet with cut strings.

Her eyes, what I could see of them through the shifting lace, watched me.

“Ahaha…” her severed head giggled. “That’s one way.”

The city froze.

Sound drained out of the world.

Colour bled away, leaving everything flat and grey.

The sky cracked.

[♪♪♪]

Reset.

· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·

It took me few more cycles to be sure.

Kill the Elf bitch, the world resets.

Let her live, and she destroys it slowly. In fire. In ice. In rot.

She was the one causing the world to reset.

[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]

The loops blurred.

Destruction and screams.

Her laughter somewhere under it all.

Sometimes she stood on a mountain, arms spread, calling meteors down with the same easy boredom someone else might use to call a carriage.

Sometimes she sat on the ruins of a palace, legs swinging, as undead clawed their way out of mass graves at her feet.

Once, she floated above an ocean, humming as she traced circles in the air. The water followed her fingers, rising in spirals. Then she clicked her tongue.

“Fall.”

In every version, people died.

In every version, she was delighted for about five minutes.

Then she went quiet.

The glee drained out of her shoulders. Her laughter thinned. Her gaze drifted somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Why,” I asked once, standing in the crumbling throne room of yet another dead king.

Corpses lined the walls. Some still twitched.

She sat on the throne sideways, legs over one armrest, head tipped back.

“Why what?” she asked.

“Why do all this,” I said. “Why burn it? Why break it? Why destroy the world?”

She regarded me.

Behind the veil, the curve of her mouth stayed playful.

Her voice didn’t.

It took me a second to realise she was laughing.

“Ahaha…”

“Maybe, the world simply deserves it,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “They all walked around me for so long, never seeing, never hearing. Let it all burn.”

“Stop lying, that's not the only thing, you are bored, isn't it.,” I said.

“Very,” she replied. “But that’s not the interesting part.”

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand.

“No,” she said. “I started killing everyone because I wanted Its attention.”

She tapped the centre of her forehead with one nail.

“Up there,” she said. “That eye. That thing. That… whatever it is. If It notices me again, It might change the punishment. So I burn Its toys. Tear Its scenery. Smash Its little timelines. Ahaha… look at me, I’m being such a bad woman. Surely that deserves a scolding.”

I was speechless for a moment.

“Hah. Of course, you would think like that, you are the most twisted elf. I doubt there is a single sane cell left in your brain.”

She was about to kill me but stopped midway.

“Beside.”

She raised her finger.

The floor shook.

Outside, something roared.

The castle walls peeled away like paper, revealing the town below. Streets cracked. Buildings split. People ran with nowhere to go.

Nothing.

No voice.

Just the sound of stone grinding and people screaming.

Her shoulders dropped.

She laughed.

“Aaaha… see?” she said. “Nothing.”

She slumped back on the throne.

She waved a hand.

“What?”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said. “Eventually. You always do. That’s the problem with you.”

“You talk like we’re old friends,” I said.

She snorted.

“I talk like you’re the only cockroach that keeps crawling back,” she said. “It’s affectionate. In my way.”

My sword slid free of its sheath.

“Affection isn’t what I call what you’re doing,” I said.

“What do you call it then?” she asked.

I walked toward her.

“Murder,” I said.

She smiled wider.

“Then murder me, little human,” she said. “Let’s see if it sticks this time.”

· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·

Killing her never stuck.

It didn’t.

That was the point.

If I cut her throat, the world rewound.

If I left her alone, she shattered things at her own pace until the world tore itself apart and still rewound.

Time crawled over itself like maggots.

I learned fast.

I had to.

I watched her patterns.

She always appeared near the weakest point. The thinnest wall between whatever passed for reality and the thing pressing on it.

She liked vantage points. High places. Edges.

She never hid.

There was no need.

No one saw her.

That was the detail that took longest to accept. Why was I the only one?

We were on a battlefield.

Armies clashed below.

She walked between the lines, bare feet splashing through blood, untouched by spells or blades.

Soldiers screamed as they were ripped apart by invisible forces. Limbs twisted. Armour crumpled. Horses reared and fell.

No one turned toward her.

Their eyes skittered past where she stood, as if something in their skulls refused to hold the image.

I landed beside her, sword already mid‑swing.

She tilted her head just enough that the blade missed her throat by a hair and sliced the air at her shoulder.

“Oh?” she said. “You’re early this time.”

“Fight me properly,” I said.

“Ahaha. You’re cute when you pretend you have a say,” she said.

She flicked her fingers.

A line of men in front of us snapped in half at the waist, torsos flung back like discarded dolls.

They died staring at the sky, never once looking at the woman who’d killed them.

“Do you see it now?” she asked softly.

“Yeah, I’m not blind. See what?” I growled.

“What I am to them,” she said. “Nothing. Air. A bad breeze. They choke on their own intestines and don’t even know why.”

I didn’t have time to answer.

She appeared behind me without moving.

Her palm pressed between my shoulder blades.

Heat punched through my spine.

My organs turned to slurry.

I hit the mud and tasted iron.

As my vision dimmed, I saw her upside down.

Her veil fluttered.

Her head cocked.

“Except you,” she said. “You see me.”

Then black.

[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]

I had grown stronger, and she wasn’t fighting me directly anymore.

Maybe it had been mercy.

Mercy bored her.

She used people instead.

My people.

People I once might’ve cared about.

Companions I’d picked up by accident in earlier lives. Men and women I’d dragged screaming from collapsed dungeons. Apprentices who’d latched onto my coat in one cycle and then again in another, never knowing why.

She stepped into their blind spots.

Whispered into their ears.

“If you loved him, you’d stop him.”

“If you followed him, you’d be a hero.”

“If you kill him, the world might live.”

They turned.

Every time, with different faces, different names, they turned.

“Don’t come closer,” I warned one boy once, his sword clutched too tight, eyes too wide.

He’d been twelve in the last loop and died clutching my hand.

This time, he was twenty and carried a captain’s badge.

“There’s something behind you,” I said. “She’s using you. You don’t see her, but she’s there.”

“There’s nothing there,” he said.