Ken woke up face-down in burning sand.
The boat was gone. The river was gone. Everything was gone — again.
He slowly pushed himself up. The sun was brutal. The heat stung his skin, his throat was dry, and there was nothing in sight except an endless desert.
No shelter. No food. No water.
"Again," he muttered. His lips cracked as he spoke.
He started walking. Left foot. Right foot. Again and again. But the sun was faster. His breath got shorter. His legs weaker. His vision blurred.
Three hours later, he collapsed.
He tried to crawl. Didn't work.
You have died.
Darkness.
Then…
He opened his eyes.
Same place. Same heat. Same pain. Same empty sky.
The desert hadn't changed.
But he had — he was already tired. Reset didn't remove exhaustion. Just the death.
"So I'm stuck here… until I figure it out."
Ken stood up again.
Walked again.
Collapsed again.
Died again.
Reset again.
Each loop was torture. He tried walking in a different direction. Same result.
He tried digging with his hands. Nothing.
He screamed for help. No answer.
By the fifth death, his skin was shredded. His body weaker. His hope nearly gone.
And then, after the sixth reset…
He spotted something.
A tiny black shape, far in the distance. It wasn't a mirage.
A man.
Standing. Waiting.
Ken's eyes widened.
"It's him… the man who killed me before."
But when Ken finally got close — his feet barely dragging through the sand — the man looked at him with a blank expression.
"Who are you?" the man asked.
Ken froze.
The man didn't recognize him.
Of course not. This was a different timeline. A different moment.
To Ken, this man was already a murderer.
To the man, Ken was a stranger walking out of the desert.
"Just... passing through," Ken muttered, eyes locked on him.
The man stepped aside. Didn't care.
Ken walked past — this time, he didn't die.
But as he walked further into the dunes, Ken realized something worse:
He wasn't just resetting time.
He was lost in it.