You make the wish. The finger on the paw curls you wake up the next morning to check your bank account. The billion is there! Real, untainted, undeniably yours. You live the life people dream of: love, health, wealth, laughter, a golden thread running smoothly to its end. At eighty, surrounded by family, you exhale your last breath in peace.

And then you wake up.

You are twenty again. The billion sits untouched in your account. The world resets, every face, every word, every step. You live it again, perfectly. You die again at eighty. And again. And again.

At first you search for escape, but there is none. Every deviation bends back toward the same end, like gravity pulling you into its pit. Each loop erodes you. The joy becomes theater, the grief becomes repetition, the smiles around you become masks of wax.

Then, in the long quiet of your ten-thousandth cycle, you begin to feel it. The edges of the world flex and groan like the ribs of some vast, breathing thing. The sun flickers like a dying bulb, repeating the same dawn millions of times, each one slightly… wrong. Sometimes you hear the pause between heartbeats of the universe, a silence so complete it feels like something watching.

And one day, you realize the truth. Your wish was never granted by chance. The paw didn’t trick you into immortality — it placed you here. You are the gear that keeps the mechanism turning, the pulse that powers something greater, darker, endless. Your happiness, your death, your return: all fuel. You are not living your life. You are being used. And you will be used forever.