Darkness.

That's all I remember between dying and waking.

A silence thick enough to smother one's breath.

A coldness that felt like hands closing around my ribs.

And somewhere far away—the echo of a heartbeat that wasn't mine.

...

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die.

Mine never does.

Not anymore.

I've died too many times for memories to matter.

Usually, when the end comes, the world folds, time snaps, and I open my eyes exactly where my last death anchored me.

A year, a month, a week, a day.

A few hours back.

A few minutes

Sometimes only seconds.

This time, something slipped.

The darkness stretched.

Stretched until it felt like a deep ocean swallowing me whole.

Stretched until I could no longer tell if I was floating or sinking, or dissolving altogether.

And then—

A breath.

Cold stone beneath my palms.

Morning light through tall windows.

The scent of incense and wet soil.

My heart lurched once.

I knew this place.

I had stood here before.

Six years ago.

I staggered to my feet, my hands trembling.

My body—not the twenty-year-old shell stained with blood and grief—but the fifteen-year old girl's limbs I thought I'd outgrown long ago.

This isn't right.

Resets don't jump this far.

They don't leap across lifetimes.

They only rewind to where I last died.

But Max had died in my arms.

And I died right after.

So why was I standing in the palace corridor the day before the Empress' funeral?

Footsteps echoed down the hall.

The same footsteps I remembered from this day—this horrible, unavoidable day.

My breath hitched.

This wasn't a second chance.

This wasn't mercy.

Something had gone impossibly wrong.

And as the heavy doors creaked open and familiar faces stepped out, a whisper crawled up my spine, cold as winter:

Here is the first stitch in your next mourning.

The throne room was drowning in silence.

Not the gentle kind—but the heavy, smothering quiet that settles after something irreparable has happened.

The great iron gates outside had collapsed long ago, their echoes swallowed by the thick air.

Dust drifted through the fractured stained glass like slow-falling snow.

In the center of the ruin, Maximilian lay against the dais–twenty-one years old, a man carved by duty and guilt, yet dying like a boy who never had the chance to live.

His breath hitched shallowly, each exhale trembling as blood spilled from the wound tearing through his side. Crimson spread beneath him, seeping into the marble, creeping its way toward me.

"Your Majesty..."

My voice cracked apart.

He wasn't a child anymore.

He wasn't the quiet boy I met at a funeral years ago.

He wasn't the prince hiding behind grief.

He was my emperor

And he was dying in my arms.

I dropped beside him, knees sinking into the warmth of his blood. My skirts absorbed it instantly. My hands hovered over the wound, disgustingly small against something so fatal. His pulse fluttered beneath my trembling palms—frantic, uneven, fighting for moments he no longer had.

"I read everything..." Max whispered, searching for me blindly until his blood-slicked fingers caught my sleeve. His voice was raw, warped by pain. "Her diary...every word. Every page she wrote about the green-eyed girl she treasured."

His eyes—once bright with stubbornness, with quiet devotion he never dared voice—were dimming. Dark rings circled them, shadows settling like dust on a forgotten portrait.

"I thought she was the most miserable soul trapped in these halls," he rasped. "But I was wrong."

A thin, broken smile curved on his lips.

"You've suffered so much more than she ever did."

I shook my head, tears blurring my sight, but he continued.

"You've died again and again. Lived centuries alone in a world that wasn't yours. And you did it all with that fragile body of a little girl...while pretending it didn't destroy you."

His grip tightened weakly, desperate.

"You shouldn't have come back for me." His voice cracked. "I never wanted to be the cause of your misery."

My chest seized.

"Max—"

"If you reset again," he whispered, "don't look for me. Don't waste another lifetime chasing a future that leads to your death." His fingers trembled against mine. "Live somewhere far away. Somewhere they can't reach you. Somewhere I won't be able to reach you. A place where you can finally...breathe."

I couldn't breathe at all.

Not with the dagger so close.

Not with the world collapsing around me.

Not with the sound of his heartbeat failing under my palms.

My hands moved on its own.

I grabbed a dagger.

The blade gleamed with someone else's blood.

My hand shook as I turned it toward myself.

"Please..." Max whispered. "Not for me. Not again."

But I couldn't lose him.

Not like this.

Not permanently.

I drove the blade into my stomach.

Pain detonated through me, hot and bright.

I waited.

Waited for time to shiver. For the world to lurch. For the universe to drag me backward into another chance, another try, another desperate loop.

But nothing moved.

The air remained still.

The hall stayed broken.

Max stayed dying.

The reset didn't come.

Max's breathing slowed, his chest rising shallowly, sinking quickly. His fingers brushed my cheek, barely there.

"We were cruel to you," he murmured, voice fading. "My mother...the palace...me..."

His eyes flicked, unfocused.

"I'm sorry...Chloe. The promise...it was a cruel curse on you."

His hand dropped.

His chest fell one last time.

He did not rise again.

The boy I met at fifteen—grieving, polite, lonely—the man he grew into, hard and soft in the same breath, the person I died across lifetimes I could no longer count, became a silent corpse.

My scream was silent, swallowed by the ruins.

I pulled him into my arms, clinging to his fading warmth, my tears dripping onto his unblinking eyes.

The marble beneath us grew cold.

My hands shook against his still chest, willing it to rise. Begging. Breaking

The one thing I could always redo was finally gone.

Clack.

A soft, wooden tap against stone cut through the stillness.

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

I froze.

A shadow stretched across the marble.

Slow.

Measured.

Unhurried.

From the dim colonnade, the Pope emerged. His robes were immaculate, untouched by dust or blood. His expression unreadable—not sorrowful, not relieved, not angry.

His gaze settled on me.

"So you were here all this time," he murmured softly.

It was neither a threat nor a mercy for my raw, grieving heart; it was a simple statement—as if my presence were the final word in a question he'd been holding under his breath.

His shadow reached me first, enveloping the blood-soaked marble, slithering toward my trembling hands.

My vision blurred.

My body sagged.

Max's hand slipped from my grasp.

And as darkness pressed into the edges of my sight, my last thought was a hollow, terrible truth:

The reset had finally failed.

And the man stepping toward me...

did not come for the fallen emperor.

He came for me.

I had only been back for a day.

One day since the world snapped, twisted, and flung me six years into the past.

One day since I died and opened my eyes in the same fifteen-year-old body I thought I had permanently escaped.

A day, and I still wasn't used to how small my hands looked.

How light my limbs were.

How my skirts dragged differently.

How the world felt taller again.

The courtyard was draped in white silk and pale flowers that looked bruised by the rain. The morning light was soft, cold, diffused through gray clouds that hadn't moved since dawn.

People gathered in solemn clusters. Servants bowed low. Nobles murmured condolences that sounded more like obligations than grief. The palace, with all its polished stone and gold trim, had never looked colder.

I stood at the back—always the back—and watched as they lowered her casket.

Her face beneath the veil was peaceful.

Softer.

Younger.

Almost gentle.

And that was how I remembered her now.

Not as the woman worn down by fear.

Not as the woman whose hands sometimes trembled with desperation.

But as warmth.

As quiet humming in late afternoons.

As fingers smoothing my hair.

As whispered "You did well" after a long, terrifying night.

As a smile that was fragile but real.

Only that version lived in my memory now—the soft, blurred one.

The one who loved me.

The bells tolled once, twice, three times.

And with the sound, another memory came.

A memory not from this world.

Metal bleachers.

Cold wind cutting through my too-thin school uniform.

The smell of wet asphalt after rain.

The boy's sneakers tapping lightly against the concrete.

We were both twelve.

We sat under the shelter of the old walkway behind the gym. The fluorescent lights buzzed above us. My backpack was soaked from the downpour. His jacket was draped over my shoulders, warm from his body heat.

He nudged my knee gently, trying to make me laugh.

"You look like a sad blobfish," he said, grinning.

I sniffled.

He pulled out a crumpled packet of chocolate biscuits from his pocket.

"Here," he said. "You like these."

I took them with shaking fingers.

He watched me for a moment—really watched—then reached out and took my hand.

His palm was warm.

Always warm.

"Whatever happens," he whispered, "I'll take care of you. Always."

In that moment, under the flickering light, with rain dripping off the metal roof above us, I believed him.

Believed in forever.

Believed in promises.

The bells tolled again, ripping me back to the funeral.

The warmth in my hands vanished.

I blinked hard, forcing down the ache rising in my chest. I stayed only until the final bowing of heads.

Then I slipped away.

No one noticed.

No one ever did.

The palace interior felt colder than the courtyard.

The air was too still, too controlled.

Every footstep echoed like a warning.

My body still remembered being twenty-one.

The weight of armor.

The ache of old wounds.

The heaviness of holding a dying emperor.

Now everything felt too light.

Too raw.

Too fragile.

I drifted the east corridor on instinct, my feet moving on paths I had walked a hundred times before in other lifetimes.

Golden light spilled through the tall windows.

Dust swirled lazily in the beams.

The curtains fluttered softly.

This corridor had been the only gentle place within these halls.

Where the Empress first touched my hair.

Where she first called me "little one."

Where she held my trembling hands and whispered, "It'll be fine."

I pressed a hand to my chest.

That memory—soft and blurry at the edges—hurt more than the truth ever had.

I stood there, letting the warmth of the sun touch my face, grounding myself.

But then—

Footsteps.

Soft.

Measured.

Painfully familiar.

My breath caught.

I knew those footsteps.

Knew them from lifetimes.

Knew them even when he was twenty-one and bleeding out in my arms.

But hearing them at fifteen again...

Relief rushed through me too fast, too warm.

Terror followed immediately.

Cold.

Sharp.

Merciless.

I turned.

Maximilian stood in the middle of the corridor.

Fifteen years old.

Alive.

Breathing.

Eyes swollen from crying.

Hair wind-tousled.

Black mourning clothes too formal for his still-growing frame.

He looked at me with the same expression he always wore on this day: curios, sad, soft.

But to me, he looked like a ghost resurrected.

"You're... Chloe," he said.

The same words.

The same tone.

Everything the same.

As if the world was replaying a scene it refused to let go of.

I forced myself to nod.

"Yes."

His eyes softened at the sound of my voice, just like before. He held a slim journal against his chest.

The Empress' diary.

My stomach twisted.

He stepped closer, his voice gentler than the sunlight.

"My mother wrote about you."

The world tilted, familiar in the worst way.

"I remember," I whispered, before I could stop myself.

His eyes flicked up at that, confused—but he let it pass.

"She wrote..." He frowned slightly, choosing his words carefully. "...so much about you."

A soft ache spread across my chest.

"How kind she was," I murmured.

That was the version that lived in my memory now. The only version I could bear to hold.

Max looked at me with a grief I could not bear to meet.

"She never showed that side to anyone else. But then again, despite being her son, I never truly got to know the person that she was."

I swallowed hard.

"She tried," I whispered. "She really did."

He inhaled slowly and steadily.

"Chloe," he murmured, almost too softly to hear, "she trusted you."

The words echoed perfectly.

Exactly the same as before.

Every detail leading to this moment felt repeated.

Scripted.

Locked into place by fate.

Except—

Max hesitated.

His gaze softened in a way it hadn't before.

Not in this exact moment.

And he said the one line that didn't belong:

"Take care of yourself."

My breath shattered.

He had said that to me once—when he was twenty-one.

When he was dying.

When his hand slipped from mine and his eyes turned glassy.

But he had never said it here.

Not as a fifteen-year-old prince.

Not in this corridor.

Not on this day.

It was new.

Impossible

Wrong.

I forced my voice out.

"I'll try."

My voice didn't disguise the tremble.

Max blinked, puzzled, sensing something he couldn't name.

But he didn't push.

He stepped back, giving me space he didn't understand I desperately needed.

He didn't ask for anything more.

Didn't question me.

Didn't reach for me.

He simply nodded, softly.

Then turned his gaze away.

I walked away with trembling steps, the corridor blurring at the edges.

Relief.

Terror.

Heartbreak.

Déjà vu.

All tangled into one unbearable knot.

A shiver crept up my spine.

Something was shifting.

Something unsteady.

Something new.

And I didn't know if it would save us or destroy everything all over again.