The heavy clinking of chains echoed through the dark, opulent underground chamber.
Asher coughed, tasting the metallic tang of blood as he leaned against the cold stone wall. The dungeon was lavishly decorated—plush velvet carpets, gilded birdcages, and silk sheets draped over a massive, unyielding bed—but a golden cage was still a cage.
‘Where did it all go wrong?’
He had reincarnated into a famous fantasy romance novel. In the original story, he was nothing but a background character, a commoner mage destined to die early as collateral damage in the war against the Evil Dragon’s Domain. But Asher knew the plot. He knew the impending wars, the political betrayals, and the tragic fate of the novel's heroine, Elara de Artois.
Elara. The sole daughter of the Duke of Artois. She was supposed to be the cold, tragic, and perfect Female Lead who sacrificed her own happiness for the greater good of the Kranian Empire.
To survive this world, Asher had dedicated his life to protecting her. He had changed the tragic plot, destroyed the villains, and offered her his unwavering devotion. He had played the perfect supporting male lead, believing that once the novel’s timeline ended, he would earn his peaceful, happy ending.
He was entirely, fatally wrong.
The heavy iron door creaked open. The damp air was instantly overwhelmed by the suffocatingly sweet scent of blooming roses.
“Asher, my love.”
Elara stepped into the dim light. She wore a pristine, flowing white dress that contrasted violently with the dark, twisted look in her mesmerizing violet eyes. Her lush silver hair cascaded over her shoulders like spun moonlight as she knelt beside him. Her delicate hands, soft and unblemished, reached out to cup his bruised cheek.
“Why do you keep trying to leave me?” she whispered. Her voice was dripping with an eerie, desperate sweetness that made his skin crawl. “I gave you everything. I became the perfect, benevolent noblewoman you wanted me to be. I smiled when you wanted me to smile. I played the saintess to perfection… all so you would look only at me.”
Asher glared at her, his gray eyes trembling as his ragged breath hitched. “You… you orchestrated everything. The assassination attempts on my friends, the treason charges against my mentor… it was all you.”
Elara giggled. The sound was melodic, light, and utterly devoid of sanity.
“Of course it was,” she said, her thumb gently stroking his lower lip. “They were trying to take you away. They kept demanding your time, your attention, your smiles. You belong to me, Asher. Only to me. Now, in this beautiful room, you’ll never have to look at anyone else. I will keep you safe here forever.”
She had never been the tragic heroine. The Elara written in the novel had been a lie. She was a monster, a sociopath who had become obsessed with him from the very beginning. She had perfectly mimicked the "heroine" persona just to trap him in her web, manipulating the entire empire to isolate him.
But Asher hadn't spent the last three years in this dungeon simply accepting his fate. While chained to the wall, he had secretly, painstakingly gathered his mana, condensing it drop by drop until he had mastered the highest tier of forbidden time magic.
There was only one way to escape a woman who controlled the entire world.
He had to erase this timeline entirely.
“Elara,” Asher whispered, forcing his voice to soften.
She leaned in closer, her violet eyes sparkling with manic joy at his gentle tone. “Yes, my love?”
“Goodbye.”
A blinding, pure white magic circle erupted from Asher’s chest, shattering the heavy mana-restricting chains around his wrists.
Elara’s beautiful face contorted into pure, unadulterated terror as she recognized the arcane formula spinning in the air.
“NO! Asher! You can’t leave me! I won't let you!” she screamed, lunging forward, her hands outstretched to grasp his clothes, her fingernails tearing into his flesh.
But it was too late. The forbidden regression spell activated, tearing the fabric of space and time apart.
Asher closed his eyes as his physical body dissolved, his soul entering the ‘Void’—the pure, silent space between moments. He felt the weight of time rushing past him, carrying him back to the past. He was finally free. He could breathe.
But suddenly, the pristine white silence of the Void shattered.
CRACK.
A violent, sickening wave of crimson mana crashed into his spell. The serene silence was instantly replaced by the deafening, agonizing shrieks of a thousand voices. The metallic stench of fresh blood invaded Asher’s soul.
In the Void, mana laid bare its history. Asher felt the horrifying truth crashing into his consciousness.
In the final fraction of a second before the portal closed, Elara had not just reached for him physically. Refusing to lose him, the Duchess of Artois had utilized her monstrous power to slaughter the greatest mages on the continent simultaneously. She had used their souls and their blood as raw, volatile fuel to forcefully pry open his regression spell and tether her soul to his.
Through the bloody storm of corrupted time magic, Elara’s voice echoed in the Void, wrapping around his soul like a barbed-wire embrace.
“If you run to the end of time, Asher, I will burn time itself to ashes to find you.”
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