Being stuck in a time loop until the day you died was a strange experience. It definitely had its ups and downs. On the one hand, you had to relive the absolute worst moments of your life over and over again for eternity. On the other hand, you've seen so many different things happen in your life that nothing really surprises you anymore.

Or that's what Terrence thought, anyway. No matter how painful watching his past self suffer through his sister's inevitable death was, he'd seen it happen in so many different ways that he was never really caught off-guard, never surprised. He had just assumed that nothing different would ever happen. Call him a pessimist, but Terrence had believed for a long time that the outcome of Dipper's visit to the Dreamscape could never change, that nothing could ever happen differently.

That is, until a fireball blew up his house.

When he came to, he had no idea how much time had passed. Maybe hours, maybe minutes. The last thing he remembered was telling Dipper his life story in a last-ditch effort to try and change history. He remembered seeing Dipper's pain and disbelief over the fate of his beloved twin sister, and he remembered trying to console him, telling him that he could change that future. And then his world set on fire.

Terrence sat up shakily and looked around, assessing the damage. The fact that he could see the rest of the campsite from where he was standing was definitely a bad sign, since his walls normally blocked any view of the campsite. What little remained of his home was scattered in heaps around him; the only part of his tiny brick house that hadn't been burnt to ashes or blown apart was the floor.

Suddenly a single thought pierced through his haze of disbelief. Dipper! Where was he? Terrence quickly scanned the remains of the bedroom, eventually finding the boy lying unconscious a few feet from where the bed used to be. Terrence crawled on his hands and knees to Dipper and grabbed him in his arms. He didn't freak out at first, since Dipper simply looked unconscious. But when he noticed that Dipper's chest wasn't moving or showing any signs of movement, Terrence began to panic. He held two fingers to Dipper's neck, feeling desperately for a pulse.

C'mon, Dipper, don't die on me! Terrence thought.

Finally, Terrence felt a weak pulse. He looked down and saw Dipper's chest rise and fall slowly, and he saw Dipper shift slightly in his arms. Terrence breathed out a sigh of relief, letting a slight smile creep briefly across his face.

As he looked at what was left of his home, Terrence felt something he hadn't felt for a very long time: uncertainty. One of the very few upsides to being in his position was that he always knew exactly what was going to happen next. He always had a plan of action. But this had never happened before. For the first time in a long time, Terrence had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.

And in some strange way, that fact made Terrence very happy. Yes, he knew that this was a terrible thing to happen, but it meant hope. It meant that the timeline was changing, that maybe things could happen in a way that kept Mabel alive. And that filled Terrence with an ill-timed sense of joy.

He tightened his grip on Dipper and ran out of the ruins toward the campsite, hoping to get Dipper to someone, anyone, who could help him. But as he got into the camp, what he saw made his blood run cold.

It gave Terrence a slight sense of deja-vu when he entered the camp. Almost every single tent was ablaze, the bright white flames reaching up to touch the night sky. He almost lost his footing on the ground after a large wave of heat pushed on him from the camp. The one thing that he hadn't seen back when his house exploded was a swarm of demons speeding through the sky, blasting balls of their powerful fire at the tents below. Their bright colors and shapes provided a stark contrast to the dull and dim landscape of the Ruins.

Terrence's breathing sped up rapidly as he scanned the campground for any survivors. He wasn't too hopeful after seeing the vast amount of houses and tents that had burned to the ground or were still on fire. It had to be at least a hundred homes gone, and that was just at first glance. God, if they lost that many people... the human resistance wouldn't stand a chance.

The grim portrait of the burning campsite was interrupted when Terrence noticed a man running toward him. He tensed up, wrapping his arms even tighter around Dipper, unsure whether he was encountering a friend or foe.

"Terrence!"

Terrence relaxed when he heard the voice of Stanley Pines yelling desperately toward him. He jogged toward Stan, careful not to jostle Dipper too much. When Stan saw Dipper lying in Terrence's arms, a weary grin stretched across his face. He laughed slightly, then covered his mouth.

"Sorry," Stan grunted. "I'm just really glad you found him." He moved closer, reaching out his hands to touch Dipper, but the smile faded from his face when he saw that Dipper was unresponsive. "He's not-"

"No, Stan," Terrence said softly, giving a small smile. "He's alive. He's just unconscious." Upon hearing this, Stan sighed in relief, wrapping his cloak tighter around him in protection. Terrence continued, saying, "What's happening, Stan?"

"We don't know." Stan turned his head frantically, making sure there were no demons around. "The attacks only started around ten minutes ago. One minute, everything's quiet and we're all getting ready for the invasion, and the next, demons are raining fireballs from the sky."

"I don't get it," Terrence murmured. "How could they even know our location?"

It only took the two of them a few seconds to realize who was behind this and shout together, "Bill!"

They ran as fast as they could to the dark dungeon underneath the ruins of the dining hall. And if Terrence thought the wreckage of his house was bad, he was in for a shock when they reached the dungeon. The entire place looked like a bomb had gone off. Pieces of the walls were missing, and what remained of the walls and the floors was covered in burn marks and chips. Possibly the most gruesome part, though, was when they noticed the bodies of the two men who were guarding Bill sprawled in a corner in an awkward angle, lying in a pool of their own blood.

Terrence swallowed back the small amount of vomit that had worked its way into his throat, staring at the intense damage that had been done to the dungeon. "I should've known," He muttered angrily. "I should never have trusted him!"

"Why?" Stan said in a weak voice. "What happened here?"

"That." Terrence pointed at the area where Bill's cell used to be. The cell bars were nothing but a heap of twisted metal on the left wall, and the bricks on the walls were smeared with ash and heavily worn down. "Bill must have escaped and contacted the demon forces."

"That scumbag!" Stan said loudly. "How could he have done this?"

"I don't know, but we've got to get Dipper somewhere safe, and fast." Dipper shifted in Terrence's arms as he spoke. "If they catch us now... All of this will have been for nothing." They broke into a run out of the ruined dungeon.

Once they exited the dungeon, the two noticed something very strange. They had expected to walk into the middle of a massive battle, with humans and demons shooting wildly at each other and screams of rage and pain filling the air. But when they emerged from the doors leading into the dungeon, they heard nothing except the crackle of flames from the tents around them and the night wind whistling through the air.

"What's going on? Where is everyone?" Stan asked frantically. "You don't think-"

"No, Stan, I don't." Terrence suddenly remembered something that filled his weary heart with some small amount of hope. "Underneath the Main Hall there are a series of trenches and tunnels that we dug in case the Demons ever found us. We haven't used them in so long that I forgot they were there." He chuckled to himself. "Thank God I was the only one who did."

"Well then, what are we standing here for? We have to get Dipper down there!"

They took off at a sprint toward the Main Hall, but they never made it into the trenches. They had just reached the doors to the Hall when five demons approached them from the back. Terrence turned slowly, assessing the danger. They varied in color and shape, which Terrence had come to expect from these creatures, but what Terrence hadn't expected was their remarkable similarities in that one moment. All five of the demons had their skinny black arms pointed at the humans with orbs of blue fire surrounding their fists, and all five of them wore the same menacing grin as they prepared to strike.

And as the demons all at once surrounded their prey with a harsh blue fire and right before Terrence passed out, two words clearly ran through his head.

What now?