I just had a revelation that expands on previous theorycrafting, using our newfound knowledge. Bear with me.
So let's say there's this dungeon crawl game. The protagonist and his six siblings have been captured. The protagonist starts out at the bottom of a dungeon, and he has to fight his way to the top for freedom. And, just for fun, let's say there are 8 levels. So, the protagonist goes through the first level, and finds that the exit to the next level is guarded by a big bad boss. A demon of sorts. The protagonist slays it, and goes to the next level. Anytime the protagonist dies, he's reset back to the first level. As he rises through the levels, each boss-demon-devil-thing gets bigger and badder. But, he finds his siblings scattered throughout the dungeon, and they join him. Finally, the protagonist makes it to the final boss. This final boss is one ugly motherfucker. Thousand-yard neck, gaping maw, clearly EVIL, and the only thing standing between him and freedom. He kills it and gets his freedom.
GAME OVER WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE Y/N? >Y
BEGIN LEVEL ONE
And such is the life of this protagonist. Even when he wins, he's just reset back to the beginning, and has to do the whole thing over again. And he does. Except, one time, he gets to the final boss again, and has a thought. Wouldn't it be more fun to extend the game by
not killing the boss? What if he were to become the final boss of his own game? So he instead imprisons the final boss, and recreates the dungeon for his own game.
This is Oric's story. He is the protagonist. We're just one of the siblings.
Which begs the question: What are the cycles? Well, each time Oric died or won, the game reset, and a new cycle begun. And if each cycle was different, one of the cycles could've involved a betrayal by one of the siblings.