"I foresee this conflict will end within a week," Mary announced, her voice carrying absolute certainty. Removing her eyepatch slowly, Mary saw the world transform before her into a completely new light. She saw every color that existed out there, colors that took on infinite forms and variations that no normal human could perceive.
She saw the mysterious lines that covered everyone's body like a web; a single line that she could cut would allow her to kill them instantly, regardless of their power level. She saw the intricate strings that connected everyone's fate together, allowing her to trace them down to see into the past, and even catch glimpses into different future possibilities that branched out endlessly.
But her all-seeing eye focused mainly on two specific things that stood out above all else. First was Chu Yin, whose fate was completely swallowed in impenetrable darkness, making it impossible to read clearly. And deep within that suffocating darkness, she saw the faint glimpses of beautiful blue eyes trying to look back at her but failing to find her location.
She had seen these exact eyes before in her visions. Why do you think she willingly followed Chu Yin without hesitation or question? She knew with certainty that those blue eyes belonged to someone she absolutely had to join under… yeah, she wanted to be Seth's subordinate,
Well, the first time she had seen those mysterious eyes... well, I think it's better that you see the full picture of what happened, so let's go back in time a few months to when it all began.
Flashback
Mary took a deep breath, closing her laptop. Man, going through the process and stating her wish wasn't something she took lightly or rushed into without careful consideration. She had spent hours forming a clear picture of the exact type of wish she wanted to make: the power to see absolutely everything that existed.
This ambitious wish came mainly thanks to two separate sources of inspiration that had consumed her thoughts.
One, there were many colors existing out there in reality that humans simply couldn't see with their limited biology. She firmly believed there was an infinite number of colors beyond human perception.
Like how anime colored in aura visually so the viewers watching could see it clearly, aura which the characters living in the anime couldn't actually see themselves, she believed something exactly like that existed in reality, but operating on a far greater and more complex scale than fiction could capture.
Maybe every single apple had a completely unique color signature distinguishing it from all other apples, but it couldn't be seen or detected since human eyes were simply not sharp enough or sophisticated enough to comprehend such fine distinctions.
Maybe every human being had a fundamentally different skin tone from every other human, and no two human skin tones actually looked identical; human eyes simply couldn't grasp or process those subtle differences that existed.
Lastly was the vast amount of anime and manga she had read and consumed over the years. She had seen depicted eyes with the supernatural power to see mystical lines that could be cut to kill something instantly, bypassing all normal defenses.
So, she made the simple but profound wish to be able to see it all without limitation—every color that existed, even the very color of abstract concepts like death, nothingness, infinity, and so on.
So, when the fateful time came for her wish to be granted and the power flooded into her, she instantly regretted her choice. She realized with horrifying clarity that her mind simply wasn't made or designed to comprehend the truly infinite scale of colors that existed out there in reality.
She had gone completely mad from the overwhelming sensory input, her sanity fracturing under impossible information. But her blessing intervened and saved her just in time, rapidly strengthening her mind and expanding its capacity to handle what she was perceiving, slowly pulling her back from the brink of permanent insanity. And to think all of this devastating transformation was simply from the power granted to her one eyeball.
But still, during that critical moment with that one eyeball as she teetered on the edge of complete insanity, she had experienced a vivid and terrifying vision of the future. A hand pierced brutally through her chest from the front, coming out through the back with her still-beating heart clutched in its fingers. An extremely handsome young man looked at her with cold, indifferent eyes as he brought his face very close to hers, his lips getting so close that it looked like they were about to kiss in an intimate moment.
"What a shame, your talent was so useful," Seth said with complete indifference, his tone flat and emotionless. Her future self's eyes were filled with absolutely boundless horror and the terrible knowledge of her impending death.
He lowered his blindfold slowly, allowing her to see eyes which were only slightly less beautiful than her own right eye. She looked at him with a profoundly shocked expression, unable to believe he would just kill her like that… they were allies… where were they not?
Her future self was turning to look directly at her past self across time. As the two versions of herself looked at each other across the barrier of time, it was like they began to fuse and merge with each other, memories and experiences flowing between them.
And when she finally woke up from the vision, she found that at the precise moment of her death in the future, she had somehow regressed backward to the past, given a second chance with full knowledge of what was to come.
[A/N: Originally, Mary would have been part of the harem. Btw, the future self in the original timeline saw a different future. This timeline version of herself only saw her death... which went against what her future self saw...
Also, Chu Yin and both Seth are hidden from Mary's abilities... I wonder why. I can understand why for Seth, but even Chu Yin?]
Within England, Stephen walked through the busy streets with his hands resting casually in his pockets. He was completely calm, not bothered by anything happening around him until he came across a specific door. Pausing for a moment, he knocked on the door, and after a brief wait, a beautiful woman opened the door. Instantly her face turned cold with pure, undisguised hatred upon seeing Stephen standing there.
"That's no way to react to an old friend. It's been like five years since we last met face to face... and the last time we met, we were putting on quite the convincing show together," Stephen said with an easy smile, his words deliberately enraging the woman. Although she looked noticeably different from the past, clearly beaten down by accumulated stress, depression, and the passage of time, this was unmistakably Seth's ex-girlfriend.
"What do you want?" she asked, trying her absolute best to control herself and not let her emotions explode. Unlike many people out there who had made selfish wishes for themselves, she had made a wish aiming to help her little brother.
For her brother's sake, she had sacrificed absolutely everything she had. She had even gone as far as hurting the man she loved deeply, because to her, her own happiness, her own pain, and whatever else she might want didn't come first—her brother's wellbeing did.
"Nothing too complicated. I just came because I recently found out that those without any talent whatsoever hold the statistically best chance of giving birth to SSS-tier talents," Stephen said with a predatory smile. Instantly, she tried to slam the door closed in his face, but was sent violently flying backward into the wall with a simple wave of his hand.
"You would be the mother of my child. I don't care how many children it takes or how many attempts would be needed until I have another SSS-tier talent under my control, but you would make it happen one way or another," he stated with cold certainty. "Although there are other candidates I could choose, I picked you for the simple reason that we have history together. I highly doubt Seth has moved on from you emotionally, so there's that added bonus for me."
"You're sick," she said softly, her voice trembling with disgust and horror. She never understood just why they were all so incredibly cruel to Seth. Just because their parents wanted only one child to focus on, did that really mean they all had to treat Seth so badly throughout his entire childhood and into adulthood?
"Sis?!" A door burst open suddenly, and out came a young man who immediately froze in place, seeing his sister slowly picking herself up from the floor where she'd been thrown. His eyes quickly locked onto Stephen, confusion filling his expression since this was the same man who had helped save his life years ago when he was dying.
"You're Michael, right? I bet your sister never told you exactly how she managed to get me to pay for your expensive medical treatment," Stephen said with a cruel smile, causing Michael's elder sister to scream at him to shut up while desperately moving to physically cover Michael and shield him from the truth.
"Look at you, not wanting him to know the type of slut you really are? Sleeping with your boyfriend's brother for some money?" Stephen asked with a vicious grin, his words causing Michael's pupils to shrink in shock.
Questions that had been buried for years suddenly resurfaced with terrible clarity. What had happened to Seth? Why did he all of a sudden disappear completely from their lives? Why was his elder sister cutting herself back then? Why had she been taking antidepressants and barely functioning?
"Shut up!" she cried through streaming tears, her voice breaking with anguish. She wanted desperately to look up and look at her little brother, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not with the overwhelming guilt and disgust she knew would be waiting behind her, awaiting her gaze.
Seth had been like an elder brother to Michael throughout his childhood. Seth had treated Michael like the brother he had wished he had in his own family, and Michael had treated Seth like the role model he never had growing up.
It was because of Michael's influence that Seth had begun shifting from his naturally arrogant self, and he'd even begun taking a job to support them financially after being disowned by his family... but it hadn't been enough to save them from this situation.
[A/N: By the way, not everyone has a talent. MC ex is one of such people who used their wish for someone else. Although there are others whose wishes annoyed the universe to the point that it just ignored them, leaving them talentless. Such wishes would be something simply beyond the universe's capability.]