The first thing Caelus felt wasn't the softness of his bed or the warmth of the morning sun.
It was the blade.
It was the cold, absolute pressure of steel biting through the back of his neck, severing muscle, crushing bone, and disconnecting his brain from the rest of his body.
"Ah—!"
The scream tore out of his throat, raw and wet.
Caelus thrashed, his hands flying up to his neck. He expected to feel a stump. He expected to feel hot blood jetting out between his fingers. He expected the wet thud of his own head hitting the executioner's basket.
He felt skin.
Intact, warm, unblemished skin.
His lungs heaved, sucking in air that smelled of lavender detergent and expensive beeswax, not the copper stench of the execution grounds.
Caelus scrambled backward, his heels catching on the silk sheets. He fell off the bed, hitting the floor with a heavy thud that rattled his teeth. The impact was real. The pain in his hip was real.
He curled into a ball on the thick rug, his hands still clawing at his throat, checking, checking, checking.
It's there. It's still attached.
"Why?" he wheezed. "Why am I...?"
His stomach lurched. The phantom sensation of death—the sheer biological horror of his body shutting down—caught up to him. He gagged, doubling over, and vomited pure bile onto the expensive Valerius family carpet.
It tasted like acid and iron.
He stared at the mess, his vision swimming with black spots. He was shaking. Not a little tremored shake, but a violent, bone-rattling vibration that made his teeth chatter.
I died.
He remembered it perfectly. He remembered the rain plastering his hair to his forehead. He remembered the jeering crowd. He remembered the Second Prince, Lucas, looking down at him with that practiced, holy sadness. And he remembered her.
Sylvia.
The Sword Saint's daughter. The woman he had loved in secret. The woman who had looked at him with eyes devoid of light and swung the executioner's blade herself.
She killed me.
Caelus squeezed his eyes shut, trying to banish the image of her face right before the swing. She hadn't been smiling. She hadn't been crying. She had looked like a statue carved from grief.
A sharp, electric hum buzzed inside his skull.
It wasn't a sound. It was an intrusion. A cold, alien presence drilling directly into his frontal lobe.
Welcome back, Host.
Caelus froze. The voice didn't come from the room. It came from the meat of his brain.
Narrative Reboot Complete. Timeline Reset.
He opened his eyes.
Floating in the air, right above the pile of vomit, was a translucent blue window. It looked innocent. It looked like a game interface.
But the text burning across it was a death sentence.
Current Role: The Villain.Objective: Maintain the Persona.Condition: Failure to act according to the Villain Script will result in immediate termination.
Caelus stared at it. He tried to blink it away. It stayed, anchored to his retina.
"What is this?" he whispered, his voice raspy. "I don't want to be the villain. I did that. I did that for twelve years and you people cut my head off!"
The text shifted. It didn't care about his complaints. It didn't care about his trauma.
Life Force Initiated.
A searing pain shot through his left wrist.
Caelus yelped, grabbing his arm. The skin sizzled, turning red, then black. It smelled like burning meat—his burning meat. The pain was precise and surgical.
When the smoke cleared, numbers were branded into his flesh. They weren't ink. They were etched into the dermis, glowing with a faint, dying black light.
04:00:00
Four hours.
Time flows forward. Life flows out.
The System's voice was devoid of malice, which made it infinitely worse. It was just stating a fact, like gravity.
Good deeds consume Life Force. Evil deeds replenish Life Force.You have four hours to prove your nature.
The numbers on his wrist flickered.
03:59:59
03:59:58
Caelus stared at the countdown. Every second that ticked away felt like a drop of blood leaving his body.
"You have to be kidding me," he breathed. "I just died. I just... I just want to rest."
Rest is for the righteous.
The text vanished, leaving only the timer on his wrist and the lingering smell of ozone in the room.
Caelus sat there for a long time. The vomit was drying on the carpet. The sun was rising outside, casting long, cheerful beams of light across the room that felt mocking.
He had two choices. He could sit here, wait four hours, and let whatever "termination" meant happen. Maybe it would be peaceful. Maybe his heart would just stop.
No.
He touched his neck again.
He didn't want to die. Even after everything, even after the betrayal, the humiliation, the execution... the survival instinct in his gut was screaming, loud and wet and ugly.
I have to live.
He forced himself to stand. His legs were jelly. He grabbed the edge of his mahogany dresser to steady himself and looked in the mirror.
The face staring back was younger than he remembered. He was eighteen again. His skin was pale, unscarred. His black hair was messy from sleep. But the eyes...
The eyes were wrong.
They weren't the eyes of an eighteen-year-old noble. They were the eyes of a dead fish. Dull. Flat. Exhausted beyond measure. They were the eyes of a man who had seen the end of the world and was forced to watch the reruns.
"Okay," he whispered to the reflection. "Be the villain. That's what they want? Fine."
He opened his wardrobe.
He ignored the colorful casual clothes. He reached for the suit. The black one with the gold embroidery—the signature look of the Valerius family, the look of arrogance and old money.
He dressed mechanically. Shirt. Vest. Jacket.
He didn't tie the cravat. He left the top button undone. He looked like a nobleman who had just come from a debauched party or a funeral. It fit.
He splashed cold water on his face from the basin, trying to wash away the phantom feeling of blood.
The timer on his wrist ticked.
03:45:12
He had wasted fifteen minutes panicking.
"Evil deeds," Caelus muttered, stepping into his boots. "I need to do something evil. I need a victim."
He looked at the door. Beyond it lay the Academy dorms. Hundreds of innocent students. The Saintess. The Princes. The commoners.
In his past life, he had tormented them because he was trying to push them away, to save them from the political crossfire targeting his family. He had played the villain to be a secret martyr.
Fat lot of good that did me, he thought bitterly. They cheered when my head rolled.
He opened the door.
The hallway smelled of floor wax and optimism.
Caelus stepped out, his boots clicking loudly on the stone floor. He forced his spine straight. He forced a sneer onto his face. It felt unnatural, like a mask that was too tight, but he clamped it down.
I need to find someone weak, he thought, his mind racing. I need to bully someone. I need to steal something. I need to survive.
He didn't notice the shadow watching him from the end of the hall. He didn't notice the faint scent of ozone following him, distinct from the System's smell—a scent of magic being gathered and held, tight and trembling.
------------------------------------------------------------------
[LOCATION: FEMALE DORMITORY - ROOM 304]
Sylvia von Aethelgard woke up gasping.
She didn't scream. She didn't thrash. She woke up with the immediate, disciplined alertness of a soldier in a trench.
Her hand shot out, grabbing the hilt of the sword she kept by her bedside. Her fingers tightened around the leather grip until the leather groaned.
She sat up, her chest heaving, sweat plastering her silver hair to her neck.
The room was quiet. The calendar on the wall showed the date.
The Entrance Ceremony.
Twelve years ago.
Sylvia stared at the date. Then she looked at her hands. They were trembling. Not from fear. From the aftershocks of the swing.
She could still feel the resistance of his neck.
She could still feel the way the blade had shuddered when it hit bone.
She could still see Caelus's eyes in that final moment. He hadn't looked at the crowd. He hadn't looked at the priest. He had looked at her. And in those dead, tired eyes, she hadn't seen the malice of a villain.
She had seen relief.
"You idiot," she whispered. Her voice broke.
She swung her legs out of bed. She walked to the window and looked out toward the boys' dormitory.
She remembered everything.
Not just the execution. She remembered what came after. The journals they found in his room. The letters he had never sent. The truth about the Prince. The truth about who had actually protected them from the shadows for a decade.
They had killed the only person who had ever truly loved them.
And then the world had ended. Demons. Fire. The collapse of the Empire. Without Caelus—without the real villain to hold the darkness back—the "heroes" had crumbled like wet paper.
Sylvia pressed her hand against the cold glass of the window.
"I killed you," she said softly. The guilt was a physical weight, a stone in her gut that she knew would never dissolve. "I cut your head off."
She closed her eyes, and a single tear leaked out. It was hot and angry.
"But you're back. I can feel you. The world feels... heavier."
She turned away from the window. The grief on her face vanished, replaced by something much darker. Something manic.
She walked to her door and locked it. Then she dragged her heavy oak desk in front of it. Then she cast a sensory warding spell.
She needed to think. She needed to plan.
Caelus was alive. He was in that building across the courtyard.
He was probably terrified. He was probably planning to run away, or hide, or maybe... maybe he would try to be the villain again. To push them away again. To make them hate him so that when he died, they wouldn't mourn.
Sylvia's lips curled into a smile that wasn't a smile. It was a baring of teeth.
She walked to her sword stand. She began to sharpen the blade that had killed him.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
The sound was rhythmic, soothing.
"Not this time," she murmured to the steel.
She wouldn't let him push her away. She wouldn't let him play the martyr. And she certainly wouldn't let him die.
If he tried to run? She would cripple him.
If he tried to make the Prince kill him? She would kill the Prince first.
If the world tried to take him away from her again? She would burn the world down and sit on the ashes with him.
"I'll break your legs, Caelus," she promised the empty room, her eyes burning with a terrifying, possessive light. "I'll break your legs and keep you in my room and feed you soup until you learn that you aren't allowed to leave me."
She sheathed the sword.
Snap.
She checked the time.
He would be awake now. He would be moving.
Sylvia unlocked the door, shoved the desk aside with supernatural strength, and stepped into the hallway.
She moved silently, a ghost in a nightgown, heading toward the one place she knew he would go.
The hunt was on.