Caelum didn't leave the penthouse for the rest of the day. He needed time to think, not because he doubted his return, but because certainty was dangerous without confirmation.
Memories alone weren't enough; he had learned in his first life that assumptions killed faster than monsters.
He started with the simplest test.
A financial report appeared on his tablet, automatically updated every morning. He scanned the numbers quickly, eyes narrowing when he reached a familiar figure. A mid-sized logistics company was still operating at a loss, exactly as he remembered.
In six months, it would collapse.
In his first life, its bankruptcy had disrupted regional supply chains during the early disaster phase. Food shortages followed shortly after. Millions blamed panic and mismanagement, never realizing how fragile everything had already been.
Caelum made a note and closed the report.
Next, he checked the news.
A minor chemical spill in a coastal city had made the headlines, treated as an unfortunate but contained incident. He remembered this too. In the future, the spill site would become the first confirmed monster emergence zone, long before the world admitted something was wrong.
His fingers paused above the screen.
Everything matched.
That realization was heavier than relief. It meant the future was still intact, waiting patiently to repeat itself. It also meant that changing it would not be easy.
Caelum leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
"So it really begins the same way," he murmured.
He stood and walked toward the study, where an old safe was built into the wall. After a brief scan, it opened with a soft click. Inside were documents he hadn't touched since before the collapse—identity records, sealed contracts, and a thin notebook filled with handwritten notes.
He opened the notebook.
Names filled its pages.
Some were crossed out.
Some were circled.
Some had dates written beside them.
In his first life, this notebook had been useless. He had started it too late, when most of the world was already burning. This time, every name was a possibility rather than a regret.
Caelum turned to a page near the front.
A single sentence was written there.
The world doesn't change all at once.
He remembered writing that after watching a city fall without warning.
People always imagined the apocalypse as a sudden explosion, a single moment where everything ended. The truth had been far crueler.
It crept in quietly.
Ignored.
Dismissed.
Normalized.
Caelum closed the notebook and returned it to the safe. Large moves could wait. For now, he needed control, liquidity, and silence. If he acted too loudly, attention would come far earlier than it should.
His phone vibrated.
A message from his secretary had arrived.
Liquidation has begun. Some partners are asking questions.
Caelum typed a brief reply.
Let them ask. Delay where possible. Avoid patterns.
He sent the message and turned off the screen.
Money was only a tool. What mattered was positioning himself where he couldn't be easily removed later. In his first life, the powerful died first—not because they were weak, but because they were visible.
This time, he would be invisible until the moment it mattered.
As night fell, the city lights flickered on one by one. From this height, everything looked stable, orderly, permanent. Caelum watched it in silence, knowing how quickly order could become illusion.
Far away, in a cramped apartment, a teenage girl finished cleaning blood from her knuckles without understanding why her chest felt heavy.
In a prison cell, a man stared at the ceiling, unaware that his sentence would never be completed. Across the world, lives continued along paths that were already beginning to bend.
None of them noticed it yet.
But something had shifted.
High above, beyond the reach of satellites, a presence lingered for a fraction longer than it should have. The flow of possibility resisted slightly, like water meeting an unexpected stone. It wasn't alarming enough to intervene, but it was unusual enough to remember.
Stories weren't supposed to start this early.
Caelum turned away from the window and reached for his coat. Tomorrow, he would leave the city for the first time since his return. Not to save anyone, and not to play the hero.
Just to confirm one more thing.
Whether fate could still be touched.