Time kept looping. At first, he had taken this thing for an Obscurus, but only after being dragged underwater did he realize that both the black mist around it and the main body of black mist deep at the bottom of the lake constantly had eyes appearing and fading out of nowhere across their surfaces, irregular and patternless, just like the wounds that had covered his body before.
Dragged down into Star Lake again, Matilda could no longer remember how many times this had happened. When he first woke on the shore, these memories would be sealed away, and the instant that strange black mist touched him, they would all rush back into his mind at once. The sensation made his head feel as if it were splitting open and left him half-mad—but once the black mist at the bottom of the lake completely wrapped around him, everything returned to calm. After that, when he regained consciousness, he would wake on the shore of Star Lake and fall into the cycle all over again.
The memories of being dragged beneath the water again and again made him understand that this was doomed to be futile, but he still refused to give up. Matilda, appearing once more at the bottom of the lake, dug the fingers of both hands into the mud, trying to slow the speed at which he was being pulled down. Then, in the silt near the shore, he suddenly saw several familiar objects. They were some of the statues and divine emblems of the gods worshipped by the centaurs that he had originally placed in his tent. They had been washed down by the water of Star Lake and had sunk into the mud—and it seemed that, just like him, these things had also been duplicated. One