Kaelan woke up again.

  He didn’t gasp.

  He didn’t scream.

  He didn’t sit up in a panic.

  He simply opened his eyes.

  The ceiling was the same.

  The time, similar.

  The world, intact.

  And for the first time… it wasn’t relief.

  It was suspicion.

  He remained still, breathing slowly, revisiting the previous death the way one carefully probes a wound.

  The building collapsing.

  The dragon fully formed.

  The absolute indifference.

  The final impact.

  And then… something.

  A sensation that didn’t belong to death.

  Kaelan frowned.

  “Wait…”

  He closed his eyes tightly.

  He didn’t think about the pain.

  He didn’t think about the fear.

  He thought about the exact instant before disappearing.

  There it was.

  It had always been there.

  A light.

  Not white.

  Not violet.

  Green.

  Faint.

  Intermittent.

  As if someone were turning on a flashlight behind a wall that was far too thick.

  Kaelan sat up abruptly.

  “No…”

  His heart began to race—not from panic.

  From recognition.

  “It’s not me…”

  He brought a hand to his chest.

  The Resonance vibrated softly, almost approving.

  Kaelan spoke in a low voice, as if saying it out loud might break something.

  “Every time I die…”

  “I don’t come back because of me.”

  He closed his eyes again.

  The green light.

  The strange pressure.

  The inverse pull.

  Not moving forward… but backward.

  “Someone else…” he whispered. “…is pushing time.”

  The idea was absurd.

  Impossible.

  Magical heresy.

  But coherent.

  Kaelan rose from the bed with slow movements, as if the world might shatter if he hurried.

  “Who…?”

  The answer arrived before he finished the question.

  Not as a word.

  As a memory.

  A boy.

  Pale.

  Shut in.

  Afraid of everything.

  A Sacred Gear that should not exist.

  “Gasper…”

  The name left his mouth as a thin thread of sound.

  Kaelan leaned against the wall.

  “Of course…” he murmured. “Of course it’s you.”

  Everything snapped into place at once.

  The imperfect rollback.

  The incomplete repetitions.

  The details that never reset exactly the same.

  The feeling that the world wasn’t restarting cleanly—but exhausted.

  Kaelan felt a knot form in his throat.

  “You’re bringing me back…” he whispered. “Every time.”

  The Resonance stirred a little more.

  Not like an alarm.

  Like sorrow.

  Kaelan clenched his teeth.

  “And every time, it costs you more.”

  He remembered the last iteration.

  The green light had been weaker.

  Later.

  Almost nonexistent.

  Like a muscle forced too long past its limit.

  “You’re at your limit…” he said, his voice breaking. “And you don’t even know why you’re doing this.”

  He let himself fall onto the edge of the bed.

  His hands were trembling.

  “You’re not conscious of it…” he continued. “It’s instinct. Survival. Fear.”

  He closed his eyes tightly.

  “And I’m using you.”

  The word weighed a ton.

  Kaelan took a deep breath. Once. Twice. Fighting not to break right there.

  “You’re not the cause of the dragon,” he said. “Neither am I.”

  He opened his eyes.

  There was something new in his gaze.

  Not hope.

  Worn determination.

  “But you’re the reason I’m still here.”

  The Resonance vibrated.

  This time, clearly.

  Not as an alarm.

  As confirmation.

  Kaelan stood up.

  “If I keep failing… I’ll kill you,” he whispered. “Not with a sword. With exhaustion.”

  He ran a hand over his face.

  “So I can’t keep testing.”

  He looked toward the window.

  Toward the campus that was still standing.

  “If I’m going to break canon…” he said, “…it has to be only once.”

  “With purpose.”

  “With intent.”

  And for the first time since the loop began…

  Kaelan didn’t think about how to stop the dragon.

  He thought about how to reach Gasper before his body did it by reflex.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I promise that this time…”

  “If I use you… it’ll be so you never have to do this again.”

  The Resonance calmed.

  Not because the danger had passed.

  But because the plan finally existed.

  Morning advanced like any other day.

  Too normal.

  Sunlight poured through the windows of the Sitri building with almost offensive clarity.

  The monitoring seals rotated in their usual rhythm.

  The night reports were filed away.

  Kuoh, for now, was breathing.

  And yet… Kaelan stood in front of the operations room as if expecting an imminent attack.

  He wasn’t carrying his backpack.

  He wasn’t hunched.

  He didn’t look tired.

  He looked ready.

  Saji was the first to notice.

  “Hey…” he murmured. “Does he always stand like that, or is he possessed today?”

  Tsubaki looked up from her tablet.

  And stopped.

  Because Kaelan wasn’t restless.

  He was still.

  Too still.

  “Arverth?” she said. “Is something wrong?”

  Kaelan took a deep breath. Just once.

  “Yes,” he replied. “And we don’t have time.”

  That was enough to silence the room.

  Reya Kusaka stopped checking the sensors.

  Yura crossed her arms, attentive.

  Momo lifted her head from her support circle.

  Kaelan walked to the board without asking permission.

  He took the chalk and began writing. Three circles. Four arrows. Time markers.

  “Today,” he said without turning around, “before nightfall, at least six rituals will be attempted within Kuoh’s territory.”

  Saji let out an incredulous laugh.

  “Six? Come on, man. Is this some new joke?”

  Kaelan kept writing.

  “Three failed. Two incomplete.”

  “One…” —the chalk paused for a second— “…nearly functional.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Tsubaki frowned.

  “That doesn’t appear in any report.”

  Kaelan nodded.

  “I know.”

  He turned around for the first time.

  His gaze swept over everyone.

  He wasn’t asking for trust.

  He was demanding it.

  “They’re not high-level rituals,” he continued. “They’re not expert summoners. They’re irritated people. Minor contractors. Humans with remnants of inherited circles. Ex-demons frustrated by canceled contracts.”

  Momo’s eyes widened slightly.

  “Irritated…?”

  “Yes,” Kaelan answered. “Because they think no one’s watching today.”

  Silence.

  Kaelan pointed at the board.

  “The pattern is the same in all of them: ‘punishment’ invocations. Intimidating entities. Nothing specific. Nothing precise.”

  Reya spoke for the first time, slowly.

  “That creates… noise.”

  Kaelan looked at her.

  “Exactly.”

  The Resonance vibrated faintly, as if approving the word.

  “They’re not trying to summon something specific,” he continued. “They’re trying to scare. To force a response. To feel heard.”

  Yura tapped the floor with the tip of her boot.

  “That shouldn’t cause a calamity.”

  Kaelan shook his head.

  “Not once. But all together? Yes.”

  He stepped closer to the board and drew an incomplete figure.

  A poorly closed circle.

  “The problem isn’t the ritual,” he said. “It’s the overlap.”

  Saji swallowed.

  “So… they’re calling something without meaning to?”

  Kaelan didn’t answer immediately.

  He erased part of the drawing.

  And wrote a single word, large:

  ANCHOR

  “They don’t know what they’re calling,” he said. “But something responds when the noise is sufficient.”

  Tsubaki was the first to speak.

  “Arverth,” she said with professional firmness, “I need you to stop for a moment.”

  Kaelan didn’t respond.

  “You’re proposing a total mobilization based on assumptions,” she continued. “I understand your concern, but—”

  Kaelan turned.

  And hurled the eraser at the board so hard it bounced and fell to the floor.

  “THESE AREN’T ASSUMPTIONS!”

  The shout exploded through the room.

  Momo flinched.

  Reya stepped back on reflex.

  Saji blinked, startled.

  “THIS ISN’T A HUNCH! IT’S NOT ANXIETY! IT’S NOT ‘THE ATMOSPHERE FEELS OFF’!”

  Kaelan slammed his hand on the table.

  The runes misaligned.

  A glass tipped over.

  The sharp sound rang out like a gunshot.

  “THIS HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!”

  Absolute silence.

  “Kaelan…” Tsubaki tried.

  “NO!” he cut her off. “DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!”

  His breathing was broken.

  His eyes shone—not with tears, but with pure rage.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve heard ‘relax’?”

  “How many times someone told me ‘it won’t be that bad’?”

  He pressed a hand to his chest.

  “IT’S ALWAYS THAT BAD.”

  Saji stepped forward.

  “Hey… slow down. You’re—”

  Kaelan looked at him.

  And laughed.

  A broken laugh, without humor.

  “Crazy?”

  “That’s what you’re going with now?”

  He yanked up his left sleeve.

  “DOES THIS LOOK NORMAL TO YOU?”

  Cuts. Many of them.

  Some forcibly closed. Others still red. Twisted marks, like a body that had been reconstructed without time.

  Momo covered her mouth.

  “Kaelan…”

  He rolled up the other sleeve.

  “AND THIS?”

  Burns. Circular scars. Marks that didn’t match any training.

  Then he raised both hands.

  The palms were ruined.

  Hardened skin.

  Cracks.

  Marks of someone who had clung to the ground while dying.

  “MY HANDS REMEMBER!” he shouted. “MY BODY REMEMBERS!”

  His voice cracked.

  “I REMEMBER.”

  A chill ran down Tsubaki’s spine.

  “How many times…?” she asked quietly.

  Kaelan looked at her.

  And for the first time, there was no control in his expression.

  “ENOUGH.”

  He slammed the table again.

  “ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IF WE WAIT UNTIL NIGHT, THEY DIE.”

  Reya swallowed.

  “D-die… who?”

  Kaelan turned, pointing around the room.

  “YOU. THE STUDENTS. HALF THE CITY.”

  He was breathing hard.

  “And me with you.”

  Saji lowered his gaze, serious for the first time.

  “Kaelan… I’ve never seen you like this.”

  Momo whispered, without realizing she’d said it out loud:

  “Was Kaelan… ever like this?”

  Yura clenched her fist.

  “No.”

  Reya shook her head slowly.

  “Never.”

  The weight of that truth crashed down on Tsubaki.

  Kaelan heard them.

  And that broke him even more.

  “DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE LIKE THIS?!” he shouted. “DO YOU THINK I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE WORLD SOUNDS LIKE WHEN IT ENDS?!”

  He ran both hands through his hair.

  “I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS.”

  He looked at the board.

  At the maps.

  At his own hands.

  “But I’m not going to sit around waiting for it to happen again.”

  He grabbed his backpack.

  “If you’re not coming… I’m going alone.”

  Tsubaki stepped forward.

  “Arverth, wait—”

  Kaelan looked at her one last time.

  Not with respect.

  Not with fear.

  With urgency.

  “If you believe me, act now. If you don’t… don’t follow me.”

  And he left the room, slamming the door hard enough to make the seals on it vibrate.

  Silence.

  No one moved for several seconds.

  Finally, Saji spoke in a low voice.

  “…I make jokes when I’m nervous.”

  He looked at the door.

  “But that wasn’t nerves.”

  Tsubaki closed her eyes for a second.

  “No,” she said. “That was someone who’s already lost too much.”

  Reya clenched her teeth.

  “If he’s telling the truth…”

  Momo swallowed.

  “Then we’re already late.”

  Tsubaki opened her eyes.

  There was no doubt in them now.

  “Sitri Team,” she said. “We move now.”

  She looked at the door Kaelan had disappeared through.

  “And we’d better catch him.”

  The sky was gray.

  It wasn’t a storm. It was a warning.

  Kaelan ran through Kuoh’s alleyways, his body still trembling.

  Not from fear—

  from overload.

  The Resonance burned under his skin, absorbing every emotion in the air: anxiety, rage, teenage desperation, the hunger for power from the idiots opening seals.

  Each feeling was a needle punching through his chest.

  He stopped in front of one of the side plazas.

  A summoning tear was half-formed: a circle drawn in dried blood and chalk, pulsing in spasms.

  Three human students were kneeling, unconscious, their bodies shaking in rhythm with a murmur that wasn’t coming from their mouths.

  “Not again,” Kaelan muttered.

  He extended his hand.

  The Resonance expanded like a pale blue wave, cracking the circle with a burst of light.

  All three collapsed to the ground, freed.

  But something kept breathing inside the broken symbol.

  Kaelan took a step back.

  “…no,” he whispered.

  An eye—formed of smoke and veins of violet light—opened in midair.

  It wasn’t looking at him.

  It recognized him.

  Kaelan raised his arm and dumped energy point-blank.

  The eye shut, but the echo remained suspended.

  “Found.”

  The word wasn’t heard.

  It was stamped directly into his mind.

  Kaelan breathed in broken bursts.

  “They know I’m here…”

  And he ran.

  “Yura, north! Tomoe, with me!” Tsubaki shouted as the team descended from the central building.

  Reya extended both hands. Circles floated around her like rotating mirrors, and each showed a different point in Kuoh.

  “Eight active nodes! Four in the residential zone, three on campus, and one… under the river!”

  “Under the river?!” Saji repeated, sprinting beside Tsubaki.

  “Yes! The water flow is acting as a catalyst! They’re using the current to amplify the seals!”

  Tsubaki clenched her fist.

  “Top priority: cut the magical current! Momo, barrier support! No one makes direct contact with the energy!”

  The rain began to fall.

  First as a thick drizzle.

  Then like a metallic curtain.

  And with every drop, the air vibrated more.

  Kaelan turned onto the central avenue.

  His breathing was a constant rasp.

  His body was on fire.

  The Resonance wasn’t guidance anymore—

  it was a roar of overlapping voices, thousands of emotions stacked from every panicked person, all screaming at once.

  Pain.

  Guilt.

  Desperation.

  Faith.

  He stopped dead.

  A figure stood in the middle of the street, back turned, on a glowing red circle.

  A student from the alchemy club.

  Holding a knife.

  His hands shaking.

  “Stop!” Kaelan shouted.

  The boy turned, crying.

  “I didn’t want it to go like this! I just… I just wanted to see him one more time!”

  The circle exploded.

  Kaelan managed to leap toward him, cover him with his body, and force out a defensive seal—

  but the ground split open.

  From the center emerged a claw the size of a tree.

  The air warped.

  A blue-and-violet shadow began spreading across all of Kuoh, like a storm made of void.

  Reya screamed through the communicator:

  “THE DIMENSIONAL FLOW IS COLLAPSING! THEY’RE NOT ISOLATED RITUALS ANYMORE—THEY’RE SYNCHRONIZING!”

  Tsubaki gritted her teeth.

  “Coordinate with Momo and raise global barriers!”

  But Momo, several meters behind, could barely stay upright.

  The emotional weight of the chaos was crushing her.

  “Too much…” she gasped. “There are too many fears…”

  Her Sacred Gear, Applause Wall, fractured, dispersing the protective fields into shards of light that disintegrated before touching the ground.

  Yura and Tomoe arrived just in time to intercept a second summoning attempt.

  Tomoe drew the Darkness Samurai Sword; the black energy blade cut the circle in two.

  But the cut left a fracture in the air.

  From that tear, a tongue of shadow slid out and wrapped around her from behind.

  “Tomoe!” Yura shouted, raising her Twinkle Aegis shield.

  The shield returned the energy like a lightning strike, shattering the shadow—

  but half of Tomoe’s arm vanished in the process.

  Her muffled scream echoed across the entire communications net.

  Kaelan heard it.

  And the Resonance overflowed.

  There was no roar.

  Only the sound of the sky breaking.

  The ground trembled.

  The lights went out.

  And from the center of Kuoh, a spiral-shaped tear began expanding like an opening eye.

  The sky was no longer sky.

  It was an open wound.

  The rift over Kuoh grew like an eye opening from the inside, pulsing with violet light. The dragon still hadn’t fully manifested, but it was already there. Present. Breathing between dimensions.

  Kaelan ran.

  He didn’t think.

  He didn’t plan.

  He didn’t calculate.

  He ran like someone who knows he already lost—

  but refuses to accept the result.

  The Resonance screamed inside his chest, saturated with fear, guilt, and collective desperation. Every human emotion was a blade. Every sloppy intention, every twisted desire, every failed invocation… all of it passed through him.

  “I can’t make it…” he gasped. “Not in time… not again…”

  A silent roar shook the air.

  The dragon’s violet heart beat once.

  THM.

  Kaelan stopped dead.

  Not because he was afraid.

  Because he understood something he’d been avoiding since the first iteration.

  It doesn’t matter how many rituals I break.

  It doesn’t matter how many people I stop.

  It doesn’t matter how many times I die.

  This has already started.

  And then he felt it.

  Not from the Resonance.

  Not as danger.

  As… light.

  A green flash—faint, almost nonexistent—leaking from a specific point on campus.

  The old building of the Occult Research Club.

  Kaelan’s eyes went wide.

  “…you…”

  It wasn’t a deduction.

  It was bodily memory.

  Every time he’d died.

  Every time the world had come apart.

  Every time the day snapped back.

  That color.

  That weight.

  “Gasper…”

  Guilt stabbed through his chest like a knife.

  It hadn’t just been Kaelan dying.

  It had been someone else holding the rollback—unconscious, wearing down to the limit.

  Kaelan spun on his heel and ran.

  Not toward the rift.

  Not toward the dragon.

  Toward the ORC.

  The door to the old building exploded when Kaelan kicked it in.

  “GASPER!”

  He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the tremor of the ground, ignoring the sky splintering. The Resonance wasn’t trying to read the future anymore.

  It was panicking.

  He reached the hidden hallway.

  Shoved the false piece of furniture aside.

  Ripped off the seals without care.

  “GASPER!”

  The room was dark.

  And there he was.

  Gasper Vladi.

  Curled up in bed, pale, drenched in cold sweat. His hands trembled even in sleep. His eyes moved under closed lids as if trapped in an endless nightmare.

  The air around him didn’t flow right.

  Time… slipped.

  Kaelan froze for a second.

  He saw him.

  For real.

  Not as a character.

  Not as a piece of canon.

  As someone destroyed by holding something he didn’t understand.

  “…all this time…” Kaelan whispered. “…it was you…”

  Gasper whimpered weakly.

  “N-no… not again…” he murmured, half-conscious. “…I can’t… not anymore…”

  Kaelan squeezed his eyes shut.

  This was crossing a line.

  If he did this, there was no going back.

  This wasn’t deviating from canon.

  This was smashing it with a hammer.

  The building shook violently.

  Outside, the dragon’s roar began to form.

  Kaelan opened his eyes.

  “Sorry.”

  He grabbed Gasper by the collar and yanked him up out of bed.

  “GASPER!” he shouted. “LOOK AT ME!”

  The vampire’s green eyes snapped open, wide and terrified.

  “W-what…? Who…?”

  Kaelan was trembling.

  Not from fear.

  From fury and contained desperation.

  “Listen to me,” he said, voice broken. “I don’t want you to roll it back anymore. I don’t want to go back. I want you to stop it.”

  Gasper shook his head, terrified.

  “I-I can’t… stop it… that… that kills me…”

  Kaelan clenched his teeth.

  “IT’S ALREADY KILLING YOU!”

  Outside, the roar became real.

  The walls vibrated.

  The air folded.

  Kaelan pressed his forehead against Gasper’s.

  “Please…” he whispered, shattered. “…just a moment. Just… hold it. I’ll handle the rest.”

  Tears fell before he even realized.

  “I don’t want to die again,” he confessed. “I don’t want to watch you break because of me.”

  Gasper looked at him.

  And for the first time, he understood he wasn’t alone in this nightmare.

  He swallowed.

  “…j-just… an instant…”

  He raised his hand.

  The Sacred Gear glowed.

  Green.

  The roar cut off. It didn’t fade. It didn’t leave.

  It froze.

  The cracks in the sky hung suspended like shattered glass in midair.

  The rain stopped in mid-drop.

  People, screams, fire… everything was trapped in an impossible instant.

  Time stopped advancing.

  The silence was absolute.

  Kaelan released Gasper just as the boy collapsed against him, unconscious.

  He caught him before he hit the floor.

  Breathing.

  Weak—but alive.

  Kaelan laid him back on the bed carefully.

  Straightened slowly.

  Looked out the window.

  The dragon was there.

  Half-manifested.

  Frozen in the middle of an incomplete birth.

  Kaelan clenched his fists.

  The Resonance was still active.

  And for the first time since it began… the world didn’t move.

  “…good,” he murmured, low and trembling. “Now.”

  He turned toward the door.

  “Now… I fix it.”

  And he ran out of the room—alone through a stopped world—with the broken sky behind him and a single certainty in his chest:

  If this goes wrong, there won’t be any more resets.

  The world was still.

  Not peaceful.

  Still like a body that stopped breathing without actually dying yet.

  Kaelan walked.

  Each step felt like carrying the entire campus on his back.

  Now it whispered routes.

  The Resonance let him feel frozen intentions. Half-formed desires. Incomplete rituals, poorly drawn, suspended like open wounds.

  “…all at once…” he muttered, throat dry. “That’s why I never make it.”

  He ran.

  There wasn’t time… but there also wasn’t rest.

  An empty classroom, seals drawn in chalk on the floor.

  Four students frozen, hands still outstretched.

  Kaelan didn’t hesitate.

  He stepped into the center of the circle and discharged the Resonance like an inverted emotional overpressure: raw fear, absolute rejection, denial.

  The circle cracked.

  It didn’t explode.

  It came undone—like a memory that couldn’t hold itself.

  Kaelan staggered out.

  “One…”

  Second point.

  The back courtyard.

  A makeshift altar with candles hanging in midair, wax suspended mid-drip. A minor demon contractor, frozen with a nervous smile.

  Kaelan broke the contract by ripping out the intention.

  Not elegant magic.

  Not a seal.

  Pure emotional imposition.

  “This isn’t what you wanted,” he spat. “They lied to you.”

  The bond snapped.

  The altar dismantled itself.

  Kaelan dropped to his knees for a second.

  “Two…”

  Third point.

  The underground.

  The worst.

  Five overlapping rituals. Layers of bad summoning stacked, resonating like taut strings. Not one. Many.

  And there he understood the full truth:

  They weren’t summoning a dragon.

  They were summoning a response.

  Kaelan screamed.

  Not words.

  An emotional scream that tore through the stopped space.

  The Resonance detonated inward.

  He felt чуж fear, rage, frustration, hunger for power, resentment over unfair contracts, hatred of hierarchy, envy, desperation.

  Everything ran through him.

  “ENOUGH!” he roared.

  He slammed both hands into the floor.

  He didn’t try to seal.

  He didn’t try to correct.

  He destroyed the pattern.

  The rituals collapsed in a chain, one after another, like mirrors shattering in an infinite room.

  The building cracked.

  Kaelan crawled out.

  Blood streamed from his nose.

  His hands shook uncontrollably.

  “…no… more…”

  He couldn’t move time.

  But he could move bodies.

  He dragged students out of critical zones.

  Shoved people away from collapse points.

  Smashed windows to create exits.

  Every civilian he moved was one less intention feeding the thing that wanted to be born.

  Kaelan wasn’t thinking about heroes.

  He was thinking about damage reduction.

  The stopped sky began to creak.

  The frozen dragon began to lose coherence.

  It couldn’t form.

  There wasn’t enough anchor.

  But the excess energy didn’t disappear.

  It accumulated.

  The rebound—Kaelan felt it before he saw it.

  “…shit…”

  The stopped world trembled.

  And then—time returned.

  Not gently.

  All at once.

  The sky burst.

  Not a birth.

  Not a roar.

  A failed implosion.

  The energy that should have sustained the dragon collapsed into itself and detonated outward.

  Kuoh was hit by a brutal shockwave.

  Buildings split.

  Streets torn up.

  Windows reduced to dust.

  But there was no form.

  No core.

  No dragon.

  Only destruction… and then silence afterward.

  Kaelan was thrown into a wall.

  He felt bones break.

  Lungs empty. He rolled across the ground through rubble.

  The Resonance shut off abruptly—not by control. By total exhaustion.

  “…it worked…” he whispered, breathless. “…it worked…”

  He crawled.

  He didn’t know how he was still conscious.

  He only knew where he had to go.

  The ORC building was wrecked, but standing.

  Kaelan climbed the stairs however he could, leaving a dark trail behind.

  He entered the room.

  Gasper was on the bed.

  Breathing.

  Alive.

  Kaelan smiled.

  A tiny, broken smile.

  He gave a thumbs-up.

  “…we did it…”

  He took one more step.

  And fell.

  Not dramatically.

  Not with final words.

  He fell like someone who has nothing left to give.

  The world was still standing.

  Kuoh was wounded. But alive.

  And for the first time since it began…

  There was no rollback. No green light.

  Only silence.

  

  From here on, the story changes: the enemy isn’t just what appears in the sky… it’s the state of the world that makes something answer at all.

  If you’re enjoying Volume 2: please consider following, leaving a rating, or dropping a quick comment. It helps a lot more than you think—and it tells me you want more of this descent.