It took what felt like an entire day to recover from the after-effects of the mesfera. I woke up in Sensi's attic and watched the shadows dance along the ceiling. The tallow candles burned impossibly large, gleaming with all the colors of the rainbow. I tried to sleep it off but in the darkness I hallucinated monsters covered in accusatory eyes.

After several hours sensation returned to my face. I cried with relief when Sensi wrung a wet cloth onto my lips. The dryness in my mouth was a greater torture than anything I had ever experienced. Eventually I could wiggle my fingers and toes; once that hint of movement returned the rest followed shortly after. I sat on the floor, chin resting on my knees, focused on the candle-flames.

Sensi said nothing that whole time. Or at least I heard nothing. It had been a long, long time since anyone had treated me with such gentleness. I thought of my mother---maybe dead, maybe alive. I preferred not to know, letting her exist in that state somewhere between worlds.

Full consciousness returned by degrees. The first thing I said to her was, “Never again.”

She nodded. “Did it work?”

“I know everything.”

She nodded again, silent. She was part of Astaroth’s plan and had been able to allow demons to infiltrate her establishment. Even with Paimon’s power there was nothing I could do about it. He said I could nullify the powers of others, but even if I took away her control of shadows she could probably still kick me around.

I was the first to speak again. “I may be able to unravel the tesseract. Paimon seems to think so. Not while I'm like this, though.”

“Take your time,” she said. “Mesfera is particularly unforgiving to beginners. There are more mild hallucinogens but I have developed too much of a tolerance to keep them stashed away here.”

“I think I may be able to do without them in the future.” I stood, bracing myself against the wall. The world spun around me.

“When you are recovered we shall try to make our escape. Increate bless us.”

“Where is Felix?” I said.

She offered her best smile. “I let him sleep in one of the bedrooms. A few Amelies have been sleeping here, though one agreed to let him stay in her bed for the time being. She, of course, doubled up in one of the other bedrooms."

We spent the next hour in silence. She meditated on the floor, shadows swirling around her. Finally, my body felt normal again and the fog in my head disappeared. I emptied my mind, reflecting on what little I had retained of the void. It had all made sense when Paimon had grabbed my hand. Now it felt like a dream remembered in the morning. That was enough.

The tesseract still blocked my control over time but it had no power over the void. I extended my hand and squeezed it into a fist. The void begged to rush out of me, a wave of nothingness. Releasing this power felt like it would be effortless; it was not my own, after all, but something borrowed from a being that made me look like an insect.

I reined the void back in, unwilling to reveal the power yet. I wished I could experiment with the void and the barrier before it was time to escape, but that would be foolish. If the Captain sensed it, we were not prepared for its attention.

Now that I could think properly, we planned.

"The most obvious course of action is to go to the first floor and break through the barrier," said Sensi. "Once we do that, hopefully we have an exit into the real world. Fortunately for us Vasely is the Archon of Sound. If we scream the instant we emerge he should come to our rescue quickly. There is still a limit to how fast he can travel and the Captan will not be pleased. We’ll have a few seconds at most.”

“Do we tell the others?” I said. “They should help if they know there’s a chance to escape.”

“No,” said Sensi. “The Amelies will come with us. The others are not our allies. The Captain is not the only minion of Astaroth’s here. Some are already loyal to him, here to ensure nothing interferes with their master’s design. I’ve discovered four of them but they may have only been the ones inferior at shielding their presence.”

"Are you sure the Captain can't hear us planning all of this?" I said.

"If so, we never had a chance in the first place. If we act like we have lost before even trying, the outcome will be inevitable. We wait until you and Felix are able to travel quickly. Then we make it out of here. Another day or two should not make a difference."

"No," I said. "Paimon told me the purpose of the tesseract. It's not exactly a tournament to the death, but it is a challenge to see the last person standing at the end. The survivor becomes an Echo of Astaroth. Was that your plan this whole time?"

Sensi stood from her meditative position and stalked my way. "If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it while you were under the mesfera trance. Likewise, I could have finished Felix at any point. I was mistaken to allow this to happen. When we make it out of here, ask anyone who knows me if they have ever heard me admit to weakness. Well, I will admit it now. I am weak. The fate for everyone in here is unspeakably cruel. So, yes, I want you to save us, even if this is only the consequence of our actions."

I snorted but said nothing. She ruffled my hair.

Condescending, but I did kind of enjoy it.

Time to let the others know. Sensi knocked on each of the closed doors in a specific pattern. Three Amelies emerged, two from one room, like she had said before. None of them wore their masks but I recognized them. Dragon-Amelie, with her tanned skin and long, dark braid. Fox-Amelie with her auburn hair and smattering of freckles. The third was the girl I saw when I first entered the tesseract. Short brown hair and a sad face. She looked to be in her early twenties, a couple years younger than the other Amelies.

When Sensi knocked on Felix's door, I was relieved to see my friend's steady gait. He looked like his normal self, though he held his bandaged right arm stiffly.

We explained the plan to the others. They listened without comment. At the end, my friend stared at me as if he was looking at a stranger. None of them knew about my power over time, but I had declared myself as an Echo of Paimon. An enemy to mankind. It was a bold declaration even if they had no room to judge.

"Should we wait until Felix has recovered?" said the Dragon-Amelie, taking all of this remarkably in stride. If I had to guess, she was the real one.

I reached my magical awareness out towards her. Nothing from what I could tell. That did not make me wrong, though.

"No," said Felix. "I can fight well enough with my left hand. Even if I was at my best, nothing I do will matter against the Captain. The goal is to make it as far out of here as possible and hope for the Archon to save us."

"We do it now, then," said Sensi. I nodded in agreement.

There was nothing more to be done but make the attempt. I left my pack behind. Taking anything unecessary would just slow us down.

We took a few minutes to steady our resolve. If I failed, all of us were dead. At least it would not be a drawn out suffering.

"Ready?" said Sensi.

Everyone made some sound of acknowledgement.

The black door materialized.

I walked out first with the others trailing behind me. The demon remained at the table in the center of the room, head bent over as it wrote another of its seemingly endless letters. The other prisoners closest to us noted such a conspicuous group emerging in their midst. None of them made a move to intercept us.

I walked so quickly I may as well have just sprinted. Eyes focused ahead, I spread my awareness through the room. Nothing from the Captain, but two different figures started to head in our direction as we approached the stairs. Not time to draw my sword. Not yet.

I thought we had escaped the area unhampered until we reached the stairway. Someone cleared their throat behind us. A hard-looking man with a scar bisecting his left eye, hand on the hilt of the sword at his side.

“Heading somewhere?”

None of us responded. Sensi pretended she hadn’t seen the woman and began to descend. The man followed, baring a few inches of steel. Halfway down the stairs Sensi turned and lashed out, grabbing him by the head and smashing it into the wall once, twice, until the swordsman crumpled to the stairs, unconscious. A trickle of blood leaked out of his ear.

Shouts from the other prisoners.

“Quickly,” said Sensi.

We rushed down the stairs after her.

Some of the mad and sick lounged on the beds on the first floor, watching the violence unfolding around them. We ignored them and continued on until reaching the barrier in front of the door. The Amelies spread around me like some sort of shield.

“Let’s see it, Leones,” said Felix. He faced the stairs, sword drawn in his left hand.

Time to go. Adrenaline set my heart pounding in my chest. My vision sharpened, piercing the gloom of the moonlit first floor. I struggled to slow my breathing and clear my mind.

“Remember your father,” Sensi whispered.

Yes, I remembered him. How could I not? How many times had I dreamed about the day he died? Everything that had happened to me sprouted from that moment. I stopped trying to clear my mind and instead focused on that knot of rage throbbing in my heart. Fuck clarity. I will be great.

I stretched my hand out until it collided with the barrier. The power of nullification pulsed out. It was easy, remarkably easy, to access this reflection of Paimon’s power. The void and my anger mixed into something new and assaulted the barrier. I could feel the invisible force of the prison tremble beneath my hand. Trembled, but did not give.

“Oh,” I said.

The Captain appeared at the top of the stairs, head cocked to the side. Black lips stretched into a smile. It descended the stairs with a practiced grace, like a lady making her entrance at a ball. The swordsman stirred as the demon walked past. Without a glance it stomped on his head. Flecks of red and grey sprayed across the walls and the demon’s robes.

“Try again.” The calmness in Sensi's voice stilled some of my rising panic. She slipped a pair of throwing knives from her sleeves and flung them at the Captain. One thudded into its neck, the other into its left eye. Ichor leaked from the demon’s wounds as it continued its descent. Its long tongue wiped away the blue from its cheek.

I placed my hand against the barrier again and willed the void back into my hand. Another burst of nullification slammed into the barrier with even less effect than the first. We had made a terrible mistake.

Shadow flared around Sensi like dark flames. “Huntress, grant me your---”

As she spoke the Captain reached the last step then sped forward, crossing over twenty feet in an instant. Its hand lashed out and skewered her though the chest. The demon looked into her eyes as the life gasped out of her. Her hands looked ridiculously tiny as she wrapped them around the demon’s arm. A wave of shadow crashed into the Captain; the demon’s purple robes billowed but it looked otherwise untouched.

With a flourish of its arm the Captain tossed Sensi’s body across the room. The Amelies cried out as their mistress crumpled against the far away. A random madman’s scream was abruptly cut off as someone covered his mouth.

I watched, frozen, as the demon advanced on Felix and swiped at him with one hand. Lucky as always, he managed to parry the blow with his blade. The impact threw him off his feet and slammed him into the barrier.

“I smell Paimon’s taint upon you.” The Captain's sinuous tongue licked the blood from its hand. “He has no power here.”

Here came death. I had become too reliant on my control over time to overcome any adversity. Without it I was nothing more than an overconfident boy. Paimon had not claimed the power he granted me would overcome the tesseract with certainty. We made our attempt too soon...the Amelies held their ground in front of me, though they would be dead in moments.

The ivory sword impaled through the Captain’s heart. The keystone that held the tesseract together.

Hope blossomed in my chest.

I saw the strands of time that converged on that sword, the impossible knot they formed.

"Run," I told the Amelies.

They followed with order without a second thought, heading as far from the demon as they could.

Once more I reached for the void. It came even more naturally than my time magic. I formed the nullification energy into a thin layer across my hands.

The demon flickered forward and, before I knew what was happening, wrapped its hand around my head. It squeezed, increasing the pressure until I was sure my skull would implode. The scent of rot choked me. Crushing, impossible strength.

I fumbled blindly for the sword. For a frantic moment I grabbed only the air, then I grasped something solid. A handle. I wrapped my other hand around it. Nullification magic rushed into the sword.

The weapon emitted a sound like a bell chiming.

In my mind’s eye those threads of time unraveled, infuriatingly slow, as the demon’s hand sank into my skull. Its claws drew forth trickles of blood.

Do not unravel the knot. Cut through it.

Yelling, I released all of the remaining nullification power I could muster. Through my hand, into the sword.

White light flared from the ivory blade, a short-lived supernova that dimmed to nothingness.

The Captain released my head.

“What have you done?” it squealed.

I stumbled back, expecting to hit the barrier, instead passing through empty space. Blood coursed from my head where the demon’s fingernails had penetrated deep. The Captain roared, a sound of terror and remorse that reverberated through the room.

“I have failed, I have failed, I have failed.” The Captain shook its head like a dog. “Oh, the Lord will punish me. He will punish me. There is one hope to escape him. Only Morningstar may reach through the Gate of Death and bring me back.” It stopped shaking. “Oh, you have triumphed today, child of Paimon. But the game is endless and so are the players. Remember that.”

I won’t forget, I thought.

The Captain examined its claws, giggled, and skewered itself through the head in an explosion of gore. The demon sank to its knees. Its chest heaved in what must have been a silent laugh until the Captain stopped moving completely.

People emerged from their hiding spots. Even the mad ones ventured forward. A half-dozen men and women gathered around the demon, maintaining a healthy distance. The Amelies held each other tightly.

Everyone was looking at where I sat, beyond the perimeter of the timeless loop.