The world ended in silence.
Not with a bang, nor a scream, but with the unbearable, hollow quiet of absolute zero. Leonis Vayne had felt it—the snap of the timeline, the unraveling of causality, the death of everything. His death. Again.
And then, the heat.
He gasped, lungs burning as they remembered how to breathe. His eyes flew open to a canopy of dark silk, not the ashen, lightless sky of the world's end. The scent of old books and ozone filled his nose. His hands, unmarked by the final battle's scars, clenched on sheets of expensive linen.
His room. The Academy. Seven years before the end.
Regression. It had worked.
A bitter, tired laugh escaped his lips. Success. The 47th attempt. The weight of forty-six previous failures, forty-six lived lifetimes, settled into his bones like lead. He was so, so tired.
The plan was crystalline in his mind. Step one: eliminate the catalyst. The root of the apocalypse wasn't a demon king or an invading army. It was a person. A woman.
Elara von Vertra.
The Imperial Princess. The nation's jewel. The destined heroine.
And the secret, sleeping vortex of annihilation. In every timeline, without fail, her shattered heart was the trigger. A childhood of hidden brutality, a soul twisted by betrayal no one saw, until one day, she simply stopped caring. And when the person destined to be the world's savior stopped caring, the world broke.
This time, he would stop her before she broke. By any means necessary. Even if it meant killing the "heroine" before her tragedy began. Efficiency, not morality, was the currency of a regressor.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the bed. The familiar ache of his 18-year-old body, weaker than his last timeline's peak, was a dull annoyance. He reached for his mana, the core of power within his breast—and froze.
A second heartbeat thumped against his own.
Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
It was out of sync, frantic and shallow, a rabbit caught in a trap. And with it came a flood of sensation not his own. The sharp, acidic burn of fear. The cold, slick feeling of dread. And… pain. A sharp, stinging pain across his left cheek.
Leonis slowly raised his hand to his own face. His skin was unmarked, smooth. Yet the phantom sting remained. He could almost feel the heat of a fresh slap.
What?
A glitch. It had to be. The regression ritual was ancient, unstable. He'd poured every stolen secret into it, knowing the risks. But this… connection… to what?
The second heartbeat spiked with a surge of humiliation and fury so potent it tasted like copper on his tongue. A location tugged at his spirit, a magnetic pull he instinctively knew to follow. It led out of his dormitory, across the manicured academy grounds, towards the opulent student villas reserved for the highest nobility.
He moved without conscious thought, his regressor's discipline overriding his confusion. The predawn air was chill. He saw no one. The pull led him to the most secluded villa, shrouded by weeping willows. The main door was slightly ajar.
From within, a voice, low and venomous, slithered out.
"You will learn your place, you little monster. Smile for the visitors, or I will carve one onto your face."
A man's voice. Refined. Cruel.
Leonis knew that voice. Baron Klaus Vertra, the Emperor's younger brother. Elara's uncle. And her primary tormentor in the shadows, the one whose "care" planted the seeds of the world's end.
The phantom pain on Leonis's cheek flared again. This time, he understood.
He peered through the gap in the door.
The grand foyer was a masterpiece of marble and gold. And in the center, kneeling on the cold floor, was a girl.
Elara von Vertra. Sixteen years old. Her hair, the color of spun moonlight, was disheveled. One side of her face was flushed a violent red. She held her head high, her violet eyes burning with pure, undiluted hatred as she stared up at the impeccably dressed man standing over her.
"I would rather carve out your eyes, Uncle," she whispered, her voice steady despite the tremor in her slight frame.
The Baron's face contorted. He raised his hand again.
Leonis felt the intention before the movement. A wave of empathetic dread clenched his stomach. He should walk away. This was the villainess. This was the catalyst. Let her break. It would make his eventual kill easier.
But the second heartbeat was pounding against his ribs, a frantic drum of defiance and terror. It was inside him.
The Baron's hand descended.
And Leonis, halfway across the foyer without deciding to move, caught the man's wrist.
Time stopped.
The Baron stared, astonished, at the intruder. Elara's furious violet eyes snapped to Leonis, widening in shock and fresh suspicion.
But Leonis wasn't looking at them. He was feeling.
The moment his skin made contact with the Baron's wrist, a circuit completed. A torrent of sensation roared through him from the point of connection with the girl on the floor.
Her stinging cheek. The ache in her knees. The cold of the marble seeping through her dress. The hot, shaming rush of tears she was refusing to shed. And beneath it all, a deep, resonant power, vast and dark and churning like a starless sea—her mana, unrestrained and wild.
And then, he felt her feel him. Her eyes went wide, not with shock, but with a visceral, horrifying recognition. She felt his regressor's fatigue, the cold calculation, the bone-deep purpose, and the flicker of pity he couldn't suppress.
A silent, screaming feedback loop of sensation and emotion ignited between them.
The Baron yanked his wrist back, breaking the physical contact. "Who are you? How dare you!"
But the connection didn't break. It thrummed in the air, a taut, invisible wire between Leonis and Elara. The phantom sensations settled into a constant, low-grade hum. Her heartbeat was now a steady, angry rhythm beside his own.
Leonis ignored the Baron. His eyes, old and weary in a young man's face, met hers.
"What are you?" she breathed, her voice barely audible.
He had no answer. The plan was in ruins. The catalyst wasn't just a target anymore. She was in his blood, in his breath.
And then, the world shifted. A wave of dizziness hit them both simultaneously. Leonis swayed. Elara slumped slightly, catching herself on the floor. A draining weakness, as if his mana was being siphoned away through the connection.
The Baron saw their mutual pallor, their shared disorientation. His expression shifted from anger to a calculating, hungry curiosity. He knew of ancient magics, of rare bonds.
"A Soul Bind," he murmured, a slow, terrible smile spreading across his face. "A glitch in fate itself. How… useful."
Leonis's mind, the mind that had planned forty-seven apocalypses, raced. A Soul Bind. A connection that shared sensation, and apparently, vitality. To be apart was to weaken. To be together…
Elara pushed herself to her feet, her gaze never leaving Leonis. The hatred was still there, bright and sharp. But beneath it, he felt her frantic calculations mirroring his own. She saw him not as a savior, but as a new chain. An enemy shackled to her soul.
"Get out," she said to her uncle, her voice like cracking ice.
The Baron chuckled. "Oh, I will. But this changes everything, my dear monster. This young man… he is now part of the family. We'll have to make… arrangements." He swept his gaze over them both, a predator with two prizes in his sight. "A marriage, perhaps. To keep such a valuable bond… stable."
The words hung in the air, absurd and horrifying.
Marriage. To her. To the villainess. To the woman he had come to kill.
Her pain was his pain. Her death would be his death. His mission to save the world was now irrevocably, intimately tied to the girl destined to destroy it.
Elara's lips curled into a smile that held no warmth, only a savage, chaotic promise. She took a step closer to Leonis, and the weakness receded, replaced by a surge of amplified power that made the air crackle. She leaned in, close enough that her whisper was for him alone, her breath ghosting over the ear that still rang from the phantom slap she'd received.
"Hello, husband," she hissed, the words laced with venom and a terrifying, giddy thrill. "Let's make each other miserable."
The first echo of her pain faded, replaced by the thunderous, intertwined beat of two hearts that had just become each other's greatest weakness, and only hope.