Witchbound Villain: Infinite Loop
260 – Unforgotten

In a field thick with clovers, the small potted Yggdrasil floated obediently after the saint as she descended the hill. Below, a sea of unconscious bodies sprawled across the grass, breathing but broken, finally still enough for someone to try fixing them properly.

Unlike the Demon Lord, who treated creation like an artform dipped in nightmare fuel—Blair and Aroche being his pièce de résistance—these people weren’t designed to be masterpieces. 

They were tools. Disposable. Interchangeable. And like all tools, it didn’t matter if they cracked or splintered, so long as they kept swinging.

The enchanted circle etched into the factory floor? That wasn’t mercy. That was maintenance. A rinse cycle for corrupted mana—enough to delay the inevitable fraying at the seams.

Because no matter how many times you scrub a bloodstained rag, at some point it just stops looking like fabric and more like the memory of one.

So now, here they were. Too many washes, too many uses. Minds frayed, bodies failing, souls no longer answering the door when you knocked.

And still, the saint knelt. In a bed of clovers, of all things. As if the universe hadn’t already made it clear that luck was a cruel joke. 

Her knees pressed to the ground, fingers steepled in one last hopeful prayer—north-facing, a final, quiet attempt to pull something—anything—back from the brink.

Because even if they’d long stopped being whole, someone had to try. Someone still believed that broken wasn’t the same as gone.

Even if the world might politely disagree.

And then, the spell began.

Not with thunder or fanfare, no. Just light. A quiet, blooming sort of radiance that didn’t scream holiness so much as suggest it tenderly but firmly.

The light bled from the saint’s fingertips and sank into the earth, slow and stubborn. It spread beneath the bodies like a soft tide, wrapping their wounds and whispering at their splintered souls, coaxing them back into coherence if they were still somewhere nearby.

The field of clovers responded too—not in any showy, miracle-of-nature way, but in a kind of gentle acknowledgment. They rustled despite the wind holding its breath.

And if you bothered to look closely—really look, not just glance like a half-hearted worshipper—every last one had four petals. Not one. Not two. Not three. All of them. A statistical impossibility dressed up as divine intervention.

The kind of detail that begged belief, and yet didn’t demand it. Because that’s what faith was, wasn’t it? Not answers, just an overwhelming number of coincidences that refused to shut up.

And in that moment, under that improbable light, even the potted Yggdrasil stood taller—as if it, too, believed something good might come of all this after all.

***

[Blank] woke up under the eaves of a tree so large it might’ve held a moon or two in its branches just for decoration. The bark alone looked older than regret, and the roots formed natural staircases for the kind of squirrels who paid rent. He blinked. Once. Twice. Thrice. Not because he was sleepy, but because the trees were just that absurdly big.

He thought he was an ant at first, seeing how big the trees were. Well, actually, he might be one. But the question itself, “Am I an ant?” was actually enough proof that he wasn’t. After all, if he was, he wouldn’t question it, right?

That level of introspection was not typically included in their job description.

Still, he couldn’t remember. Either he was an ant who just gained higher sentience, or something else with higher sentience who got shrunk to the size of an ant.

Or, you know, it’s just that the trees were giants.

While he was wondering either he was a tiny something with big thoughts, or a normal-sized something made small for reasons known only to fate, gods, or perhaps a particularly ambitious witch, he tried to move.

Failed.

Back to floating thoughts, then.

Why didn’t he know anything? He couldn’t remember, that’s all. Calling himself a “he” was a stretch too. He wasn’t sure yet. He just felt that he was.

Felt?

Perhaps there was still something he felt about himself—that he might be a he, and he might be… not an ant?

[Blank] suddenly flinched.

“Save… save my… save my… someone!”

He might not remember who or what he was, but he knew he had a purpose. “Save them!”

Great right? Cryptic trauma! Just what his identity crisis needed. He wasn’t sure who needed saving. A person? A people? A goldfish? But the urgency was there, sharp and unrelenting, like a bad song stuck in your head—except instead of lyrics, it screamed, “HELP THEM!”

“Ah… Ahhh…! Please! Save—! Help them—”

He clutched his head, as if dramatic gestures would somehow coax the memory out of hiding. “Save—! Help—”

Tap.

A touch. Simple. Soft. Like a warm blanket of calm thrown rudely over the fire of panic. He turned, expecting—well, he didn’t know what he was expecting. A divine revelation? A talking mushroom? An angry acorn?

What he got was worse.

The single most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

It wasn’t just beauty in the symmetrical sense—it was the kind that made his chest ache, made him forget how to breathe, like his entire soul tripped over itself in awe.

“Your friends are safe,” she said.

Safe?

Really?

Two words in, and he already didn’t trust it. A little optimistic, wasn’t it? But hey, she had the voice of a lullaby wrapped in moonlight, so he followed.

“Come with me,” she said next.

And because logic had clearly taken the day off, he obeyed. Stumbling a little at first, but then realizing—wait, hold on—he could move! Hands? Functional. Legs? Operational. Body? Check. Identity? Still loading, but we take what we can get.

He stared at his fingers. Yes. These were definitely his. Probably. Unless he was borrowing them. But they felt right—like gloves that fit just a little too perfectly. When had he gotten this mobility back? Oh, right. Since the cosmically beautiful woman touched his shoulder. Naturally. Science, who?

Still, something tugged at the back of his mind. An itch. An unease. Something like “Don’t trust strangers, dumbass.” A whisper from a memory that refused to fully form, like déjà vu wrapped in caution tape.

As he followed her down a carved stone staircase that wound through thick cloverbeds, he finally took in his surroundings. Massive trees, the kind that made cathedrals look insecure.

A large tent sat nestled below, alive with movement. Tall, elegant beings moved about—ears long and pointed, beauty unfairly distributed, skin tones like painted canvases, hair as if woven from starlight.

He blinked.

What were they called again? Someone told him… but he still couldn’t remember who—

Elves. Right? Those were elves.

Elves?!

He froze.

“What’s wrong?” the ethereal woman asked, glancing over her shoulder with a brow that was way too perfect to frown properly.

“E-elves…? Where… am I? In heaven?” he asked, completely serious and somehow not sarcastic.

She chuckled, melodic and effortless, like someone who didn’t know the burden of worldly affairs or social anxiety.

“Not yet, my child,” she said, gliding forward.

So he did what any freshly reborn soul surrounded by the cast of a fantasy novel would do—he followed.

“This is the Great Forest.”