Chương 15: Error on the Ceiling

Ren opened his eyes and caught the scream halfway out. It hit the back of his teeth with the cellar still inside it. Smoke. Heat. Tessa's hand around his wrist. Elna screaming above. The beam cracking. The ceiling dropping flame into the dark. No. The ceiling held still above him: seven beams, thumb knot, smoke stain, blue charm whole and quiet. Fever heat wrapped his skin. Cloth stuck to his legs. Elna's hand rested on his forehead, cool and alive.

"Bren," she called, voice tight with the old fear.

"He's awake." His body tried to throw the sound into the room. Ren clamped down. Air escaped anyway.

"Khh." The noise came out tiny, furious, and humiliating. His back arched. His heels kicked under the blanket. His arms jerked once, hit cloth, and flopped uselessly at his sides. The rest of him went limp after the effort, as if the universe had picked him up by the ankles, slammed him into the floor, and left only rage and infant joints behind. Elna leaned over the crib.

"Ren?" He stared back. At her warm, worried expression. Her face had no soot on it. No blood. No orange light from a burning ceiling. The blue charm hung whole above the crib. Morning lay soft against the beams. Tessa slept in the next bed with one arm thrown over her head and her hair stuck to her cheek. His family, alive and well. He almost cried in relief. The scream tried to climb again, but Ren just shoved it down harder. This time the result was a wet little squeak. Elna's hand touched his cheek.

"Bren." Footsteps moved below. Ren breathed through his nose in sharp little bursts and forced the room to stay in order. Seven beams crossed the ceiling. The blue charm hung from the same hook. The blanket folded over his legs. The crib rail pressed against his shoulder. Milk-sour cloth warmed beneath his face. Elna stood above him, alive enough to worry. Tessa slept close enough that Ren could hear her breathing. The second raid had happened. The warning had worked, but it had come too late.

That was the part that hurt. Tessa had believed him. Elna had acted. Bren had barred the door. Mara had moved with the room instead of against it. Tovin had found tracks. The guard had arrived with confirmation. The village had been awake, starting to get armed and prepared. Already nearly fighting in the lane. The small goblins had died in mud. The street had held. For a while, the street had held. Then the larger ones arrived, and the fight changed weight.

The first wave of big goblin variants made the line bleed. The second wave broke it apart. The house lasted little longer. Tessa reached the root window sooner. Ren threw the apple. Someone above killed the goblin at the hatch. The loop had bought seconds, shape, and resistance. But it failed to bring survival. Ren's tiny hand clenched hard enough for his nails to bite his palm. Tessa had died holding him again. Elna lifted him before the memory could finish cutting through him.

She tucked him against her shoulder and rocked once, then twice.

"There, little spark," she whispered.

"You scared yourself awake." Bren entered the room, hair loose and tunic half-fastened.

"Fever?"

"He does feel feverish." Ren pressed his face against Elna's collar and breathed through wool, skin, and life. His family was alive. For now. The System opened. Ren went cold. A window flickered at the edge of his sight, bright and clean for one heartbeat. [Notice: ████ Irregularity Detected] The letters tore at his mind. Symbols crawled through the panel. Lines overlapped. Text broke into blocks, rebuilt itself, and broke again before Ren could make sense of more than pieces.

And then it stopped, just as suddenly, rearranged into signs he could barely parse. [Attachment: ████-State Conflict/████] [Notice: $%@#█$!] [Error: ██ Memory Record ██] The System had noticed the loops? Then what was causing them? And– His heart started beating faster, anxiety driving his pulse up. His mind ran faster than his body could ever move. What would the System do now? It could erase the loops. It could strip the memories out and leave him as a clever infant with terror-shaped holes.

It could revert all his gains so far. It could do anything, lock Status, collapse the menus, corrupt his mind, send something to purge him from existence, or flag him for whatever passed as divine maintenance in a world where babies received skill notifications between naps. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Ren's heart hammered. … But nothing happened. Did it mean the axe had been raised and no one had explained where it would fall?

Or maybe the System had never been built for this. Maybe dying once was data, dying twice was contradiction, and remembering both times was a problem looking for correction. Maybe the reset belonged to something outside the System, and the System was only now catching up to the impossible thing riding inside its records. Maybe it would remove the impossible thing. Maybe it would remove him. His fingers clenched in Elna's collar. The blue charm clicked once above the crib. He called up his status.

[Status: Full] Name: Ren Marric Level: 3 [273. 1/400 EXP] Unspent Stat Points: 2 Resources: HP: 30/30 Stamina: 33/33 Mana: 34/34 Stats: Strength: 4 Dexterity: 5 Vitality: 4 Intelligence: 8 Willpower: 7 Skills: Discipline Lv. 7 Observation Lv. 7 Listening Lv. 5 Memory Lv. 6 Calculate Lv. 3 Athletics Lv. 9 Language Lv. 10 – Initiate Expression Lv. 8 Interpretation Lv. 4 Mana Sense Lv. 1 Appraisal Lv. 4 Sleeping Lv. 6 Composure Lv. 6 Analysis Lv. 4 Planning Lv. 5 Body Conditioning Lv. 5 Resting Lv. 4 Throwing Lv.

4 Then the window vanished. Ren stared at the empty air. Elna rubbed his back.

"There now." Bren touched Ren's forehead with two fingers.

"He feels normal." Normal. Ren almost laughed, which would have come out as another broken baby noise and alarmed everyone in the wrong direction. The System had noticed memory, death, and continuity. It had panicked in blue text. Then it had returned to offering Status like a clerk tidying papers after a building collapse. He waited. Nothing burned through him. No skill vanished from his mind. No cold hand reached into his skull. No punishment window opened.

No god arrived to complain that an infant had violated the intended use of mortality. Would he even have noticed anything missing if they did? It felt like such a pointless worry. Especially when he had his whole family to save! Elna rocked him. Bren stayed beside her. Tessa shifted under her blanket, alive and annoyed by morning in the usual harmless way. Ren waited longer because optimism had already killed him twice. The room continued. His memories remained. His mind remained his.

His body still held the familiar weight of earned skills. Maybe the System was still deciding. Maybe it lacked authority. Maybe it recorded contradictions and left the judgment to something else. Maybe the loop sat outside the part of reality that handed out skill levels. Or the System did not care about something as silly as a baby time-looping. Ren waited for that thought to get him killed. It did not. He released the breath he had been holding. Fine. He was alive.

The System had noticed something, but for some inscrutable reasons had not ended him for the transgression. … Were time-looping babies just common here? He stopped at that ridiculous thought. … But no, it wouldn't have been so confused if that were the case. Maybe. Hopefully? Probably. Elna carried him longer than usual. Bren remained by the crib until she gave him a look and he went downstairs muttering about firewood that did not need him yet.

Tessa rolled over in the next bed and mumbled into her blanket, completely unaware that another version of herself had died with soot on her face and Ren's wrist in her hand. Ren's throat tightened so fast he nearly choked on it. Elna felt the change and shifted him higher.

"Easy." Unfortunately, easy was unavailable. All he had was grind. He made himself breathe anyway. The blue charm above the crib clicked faintly as Elna turned. Ren felt it with his poorly developed Mana Sense. A cool thread brushed the edge of attention, thin as spider silk and steady as breath. Fear made it blur. Discipline made it return. The sensation was not sight, sound, or touch, but it had enough shape for comparison. It was a welcome distraction from his jumbled thoughts.

Elna's hand carried warmth, round and soft around the edges. Bren, moving below, felt denser when he passed beneath the nursery, hearth-coal and iron filings wrapped in living heat. Tessa, half awake under her blanket, flickered quick and bright, a candle behind paper. The memory of goblins rose against them. Sour pressure, jagged hunger, rot under bark. The charm was cool and ordered. His family was warm and alive. The goblins had been wrong in a way that made fear feel like evidence. Ren held the contrast. Charm.

Elna. Bren. Tessa. Goblin. How each of them differed. How the mana around them shifted. How– [Skill Level Increased: Mana Sense Lv. 1 -> Lv. 2] The message appeared cleanly, as if the System had not just coughed up broken script and threatened an existential audit. Ren almost laughed again. The System truly was the greatest clerk there was. It could panic over time-looping, then resume stamping papers during the apocalypse, as if nothing happened. Elna drew back.

"He's quiet."

"Is that bad?" Bren called from below.

"After the noise he made? I do not know." Ren stared at the blue charm. Mana Sense widened when his focus held steady and thinned when fear surged. Discipline was the handle. Mana Sense was the edge of contact. It did not explain the world, but it separated signals that fear tried to smear together. It told him things. … It also hurt his brain. After a few breaths, his eyes burned. The charm's cool threads blurred. Elna shifted him to her other shoulder, and the change in angle scattered the sense entirely.

Baby body. Baby neck. Baby attention span. The grand investigation of invisible forces had been defeated by being burped. Ren endured this with almost no dignity left. Then he smiled. Divine intervention did not come to smite him. His family was alive and well. And all he could do now to keep that from changing was… Grind.