The first thing I did after climbing out of that bath was sit on the cold marble floor and breathe until my heartbeat stopped trying to escape my chest.
Steam clung to the mirrors. Water dripped from my hair onto a towel I didn't remember reaching for. My skin felt too smooth, too young—soft in the way a body becomes when it's pampered and unused.
Fourteen.
Not thirteen. Not sixteen. Not Earth.
And the worst part was that my mind didn't have the mercy to blur anything. It was all there. Every scene from the game—only now it wasn't "the game." It was my life. My failures. My death in the mud. Her smile as she turned to ash.
I pressed my palms to my eyes, hard, until stars bloomed behind my lids.
This is real.
I repeated it like an oath.
This is real. I'm here. I'm alive. I have time.
Time—before I broke the engagement publicly. Before I humiliated her in front of half the capital. Before I pushed her down a path that ended with the world calling her evil.
The door creaked.
"A-are you all right, Young Master?" a timid voice asked.
I lowered my hands.
A maid stood in the doorway, eyes darting between the spilled water, the towel clutched in my grip, and my expression—probably the expression of a man who had just crawled out of his own grave.
Her name surfaced automatically.
Lina. Not a major character. A background servant who would later cry quietly when my funeral procession passed.
"I'm fine," I said, and my throat rasped like I hadn't spoken in years. "Just… slipped."
She blinked, clearly expecting screaming, curses, or demands for punishment.
Because that was what I used to do.
"Oh—yes, Young Master. I'll… I'll call someone to clean this." She hesitated, lips parting as if she wanted to ask what was wrong.
I could see the fear in her posture, the way her shoulders drew inward like she was bracing for a blow.
Something bitter twisted in my stomach.
"Lina," I said, softer.
She froze.
"Yes, Young Master?"
"Thank you."
The word landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Her eyes widened. For a second she just stared, uncomprehending, as if my mouth had spoken in a language she'd never heard before. Then she bobbed into a hurried bow.
"You're… welcome, Young Master."
She backed away and shut the door gently, as if afraid any sudden sound would break whatever strange spell had fallen over me.
I stood there for a long moment in the steam-filled room, listening to my own breathing.
So it's started.
Not the system. Not yet.
The consequences.
For the next few days, I didn't do anything dramatic.
No grand speeches. No sudden declarations of love. No charging to my fiancée's estate to beg forgiveness I hadn't earned yet.
I did the one thing I had never done in my first life:
I watched.
I watched how servants flinched when I approached. How they spoke with careful politeness, always ready to retreat. I watched the way my tutors looked at me with resigned disappointment. I watched the way the guards avoided meeting my eyes, because a duke's heir was still dangerous even when he was pathetic.
I watched my family too.
My father ate breakfast like a man carved from iron—upright posture, controlled movements, expression unreadable. He didn't berate me. That would require the belief that I could improve. Silence was worse.
My mother's gaze lingered on me longer than usual, sharp and measuring, as if she were trying to decide whether I was ill… or whether I'd finally grown up in the span of a single night.
My older sister—two years older, brilliant, bright like a blade—spoke to me with formal civility that burned more than any insult.
My younger sister still greeted me with the same eager warmth, as if she didn't see the rot I'd become.
All of it made my skin crawl.
Because I remembered what I would do to them.
Not with a knife. Not with blood.
With disappointment. With shame. With the slow erosion of trust.
On the fourth day, I finally stopped pretending I could think my way out of this.
I needed to move.
I needed to change physically, because my body was one of the cages the curse used. Weak body, weak mind. An heir who couldn't even lift a practice sword without wheezing.
And if I stayed this way, it wouldn't matter how much I regretted the future.
I would die again.
So I rose before dawn.
The estate was quiet at that hour, the sky outside the windows still a deep blue-gray. I dressed myself without calling a servant. The simple act of fastening my own clothes felt like rebellion.
In my old life, I would have demanded someone else do it.
Now, my fingers fumbled clumsily. Buttons resisted. Fabric tugged. My hands shook with impatience.
Good. That meant I had something to build.
I left my room and made my way toward the training grounds.
The guards at the corridor junction stiffened when they saw me.
One of them, an older man with a scar along his jaw, cleared his throat. "Young Master… do you require anything?"
"Yes," I said.
His expression tightened, ready for orders that would make his day worse.
"I need the yard opened."
A pause.
"…The training yard, Young Master?"
"Yes."
He blinked twice. "At this hour?"
"Yes."
He hesitated, then bowed. "As you wish."
The fact that he didn't argue told me something: I had tried this before in the original timeline. Once or twice. A tantrum exercise spree that lasted a day before I quit and blamed everyone else for it.
That wasn't what this was.
The yard was cold. The ground was hard beneath my feet. The air bit my cheeks. My breath puffed out in white clouds as I stepped onto the packed dirt.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the practice dummies and weapon racks as if they were relics from another life.
Then I started.
Ten push-ups.
I made it to three.
My arms trembled violently. My elbows threatened to collapse. My chest burned like it was filled with molten lead. On the fourth attempt, I fell flat on my face.
For a second, I just lay there, cheek pressed against dirt that smelled faintly of damp earth and old sweat.
Humiliation rose up in me automatically—hot, familiar, toxic.
In the original timeline, that humiliation would have turned into anger. I would have screamed at someone. Broken something. Blamed the servants for "not motivating me," blamed the tutors for "poor training," blamed the world for being unfair.
Now, I swallowed it.
I pushed myself up onto trembling hands.
"One," I whispered.
My arms shook like a newborn foal's legs.
"Two."
By "five," my vision blurred.
By "seven," I was panting like a dog.
By "ten," I collapsed again—this time onto my back, staring up at the paling sky.
My heart hammered so violently it felt like it was punching my ribs from the inside.
I laughed once—short and breathless.
"Pathetic," I muttered.
But the word didn't carry hatred.
It carried instruction.
I forced myself upright, ignoring the dizziness, and moved to the next thing.
Squats. Walking laps. Then laps at a faster pace. Then running, which quickly became a limp jog, which became a wheeze-filled stumble.
The body I had been given was not just weak—it was unused. Spoiled. Neglected. A noble's body that had never been demanded to suffer.
But I demanded it anyway.
And when I finally staggered back toward the manor an hour later, sweat freezing against my skin, I noticed something:
The staff were watching.
Not openly. Never openly.
But through half-cracked doors, from behind pillars, from the corners of the courtyard—eyes wide, whispers beginning.
The duke's disgrace of an heir… waking early?
Training?
Not shouting?
Not quitting after five minutes?
I kept my face blank and walked past them as if I hadn't noticed.
Inside, I cleaned myself up without calling for help.
My muscles ached in places I didn't know could ache. My lungs felt scraped raw.
I should have been proud.
Instead I felt… restless.
Because no matter how hard I pushed this body, there was still a ceiling over me.
A ceiling called talent.
A ceiling called awakening.
At thirteen, I had awakened with the lowest possible potential. It was written in stone. It was the reason my father stopped looking at me like an heir and started looking at me like a burden.
Even if I trained, I would always lag behind the geniuses.
Unless—
The thought stopped mid-sentence.
Because something had been tickling the edge of my awareness since I returned.
A sensation like static behind my eyes. Like the world was waiting for a cue to speak.
It hit that night.
I was sitting alone at my desk, staring at a candle flame, when the air in the room suddenly felt… thinner. Not colder. Not hotter.
Lighter.
The flame stretched upward as if pulled by an invisible breath.
And then a sound echoed in my head that was not a voice, not quite.
It was more like an idea forced into shape.
[WORLD AUTHORITY DETECTED]
[ANOMALOUS SOUL REINTEGRATION CONFIRMED]
[COMPENSATION PROTOCOL: INITIATE]
My blood ran cold.
I stood so abruptly the chair scraped the floor.
"What…?" I whispered.
The candle flickered violently.
A panel of light unfolded in front of me—clean lines, pale letters, hovering in the air like a slice of reality had been peeled open.
I stared at it, barely daring to blink.
Then the status screen appeared.
Exactly as if someone had stamped my existence into a ledger.
.===Status=== Name: Aurelian von Edevane Potential : D rank Rank : G Strength : G Agility : G Stamina : G- Intelligence : G Mana capacity : G Luck : E Charm : G- ==========
My breath caught.
D-rank potential?
That was impossible.
No—wait.
I leaned closer, scanning for the detail I knew had to be there.
And there it was—small text beneath the potential line, faint as if the world wanted to hide it.
[SEALED]
[WORLD CURSE: ACTIVE]
[TRUE POTENTIAL: UNDISCLOSED]
My hands curled into fists.
"So it's real," I whispered.
The curse.
Not metaphor. Not fate. Not "bad luck."
An actual mechanism.
A restraint placed on my existence.
My heart pounded as another box appeared beneath the status screen, sharper, more deliberate.
[SYSTEM: UNIQUE ACCESS GRANTED]
[NOTE: SYSTEM ACCESS IS EXTREMELY RARE]
[KNOWN OTHER USER IN THIS GENERATION: THE HERO]
My stomach dropped.
The hero had a system too.
Which meant…
This wasn't a random blessing.
This was the world fighting itself.
A third panel opened—this one bordered by a thin golden line that made my eyes sting to look at.
[WORLD COMPENSATION – ONE TIME AUTHORITY]
Effect: 2× Talent Amplification (Permanent)
Limit: ONE USE ONLY
Target: Choose any mortal within this world
A pulse of heat rushed through my chest.
Two times talent.
Permanent.
One use.
The world wasn't gifting me power out of kindness. It was compensating for something that should not have happened—my soul returning, my memories intact, the timeline bending.
I could almost feel something watching me, waiting to see what choice I would make.
Who would I choose?
The obvious answer—the safe answer—was my fiancée.
Give it to her, and she becomes untouchable even among SSS+ monsters. A living guarantee she won't fall to anyone's schemes.
Or my older sister. She was already SSS+; doubling that would make her a legend.
Or even the hero—no, never that.
But my fingers trembled as I hovered over the selection.
Because I knew the truth.
If I stayed cursed, if I stayed sealed, it wouldn't matter how much I wanted redemption.
I would still be weak.
I would still be manipulated.
I would still die.
And in the aftermath of my death…
She would become the villainess.
I swallowed.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the unseen watchers—whatever they were, whatever rules they served. "But you don't get to decide this for me."
My hand rose.
My target selection box opened—names, identifiers, the world making it easy.
And I chose—
Aurelian von Edevane.
The moment the selection finalized, the candle flame froze in mid-flicker.
The air went utterly still.
Then something invisible shattered—not glass, not sound, but a pressure that had been wrapped around my soul like chains.
My entire body convulsed.
Pain flooded every nerve, white-hot and pure, as if my veins were being rewritten.
I bit down on a scream, tasting blood.
In the space between heartbeats, I saw it.
Not with eyes.
With something deeper.
A web of rules around me—threads of fate, bindings of suppression—straining like ropes pulled too tight.
And beyond them… silhouettes.
Vast, indistinct beings made of authority and distance.
They had been watching.
They had expected a certain outcome.
They had expected me to choose someone else.
I felt their shock like a thunderclap.
Impossible.
He chose himself.
The World's Authority has been consumed.
We cannot interfere—rule binds us.
Mortals must not be touched.
The last thought hit like a gavel.
Then the silhouettes recoiled, not in fear of me—but in frustration at the boundary they could not cross.
The pain eased into a low, simmering heat beneath my skin.
The status screen flickered once.
Not changing fully—not yet.
But the words beneath my potential line trembled, as if the world itself hesitated.
[SEALED – DESTABILIZING]
I exhaled shakily.
I didn't smile.
Not because I wasn't satisfied.
But because I understood the weight of what I'd done.
I had taken a gift meant to preserve the "proper" flow of fate…
…and used it to arm the villain it was supposed to restrain.
Outside my window, the manor slept peacefully.
Inside my chest, something ancient and limitless stirred—still chained, but no longer helpless.
And somewhere far above mortal skies, unseen beings stared at the broken rule they could no longer fix.
I leaned back in my chair, blood drying at the corner of my mouth.
"Good," I whispered.
"This time… I'll save her."
"And if the world wants a villain…"
My red eyes reflected faintly in the dark glass.
"…it can try to stop me itself."