"Hey! Raziel! Wake up!"
A sharp hit to the ribs yanked him out of the void.
Raziel shot upright, his hands flying to his chest, searching for the wound the sword had left.
His heart was pounding and his breathing came out in short gasps.
'Where is she? Where is Zion? Where are the bodies?'
But there was no blood, just his novice robe, wrinkled and stained with ink.
He blinked.
Wooden benches, colored stained glass, and the smell of cheap incense.
A classroom.
"Dreaming about Judgment Day?" Lucian was looking at him with one raised eyebrow and that smug smile he was known for.
"You were mumbling weird stuff, something about forgiving someone."
Lucian.
The name hit him somewhere deep, in a place that remembered things his mind didn't.
Lucian Valerius Nyxian, dead in the Invasion, pierced by a black crystal spear while trying to protect civilians that couldn't be saved anymore.
Except that hadn't happened yet.
Raziel stared at him. The noble in front of him was young, fifteen, same as him.
Arrogant, shallow, annoying, but alive.
And that's when it all started to settle.
He was fifteen again. Four years before Zion would arrive in Phaedra and turn everything to ash.
Twenty years before the war she started would kill him at thirty-seven, tired and broken and full of regrets about people he couldn't protect.
He'd lived an entire life after the Player showed up.
Watched the world burn in a war they couldn't win, died a man who knew too much and could do too little.
And now he was back just a kid in a classroom, staring at a dead man who didn't know he was dead yet.
"What's your problem?" Lucian lost his cool under that stare. "You're freaking me out, Celeste."
"Sir Raziel."
Sister Elena's voice cut through the moment.
The instructor was glaring from the front of the room, textbook closed, patience clearly gone.
"Since your conversation with young Valerius is so important, would you like to share it with the class?"
Raziel lowered his head.
"Sorry, Sister. I just had a nightmare."
"Nightmares are for nighttime, not for my class, so don't let it happen again."
The lesson kept going but Raziel wasn't listening. His mind was working on overdrive, trying to process the impossible.
'I remember dying, I remember Zion and I remember other lives?'
The fragments were messy and contradictory. A battle here, a betrayal there, faces he recognized but couldn't name.
He looked at his hands. Young hands, no calluses nor scars.
The hands of a teen who'd never held anything heavier than a practice candelabrum.
But inside his skull, something had changed. He could feel it, a weird presence sitting under his skin.
Zion's "gift."
He closed his eyes and searched inside himself the same way he'd search for the flame of faith during a prayer, and he found it.
'How many times have I regressed?'
The system in his head blinked an answer.
[STATUS: RAZIEL CELESTE]
[AGE: 15]
[CLASS: NOVICE (NO SPECIALIZATION)]
[TITLE: THE REGRESSOR]
[UNIQUE SKILLS]
→ [ETERNAL REGRESSION (PASSIVE)]: When you die, you return to the last save point. Cost: Sanity Fragment. Memories from previous cycles: CORRUPTED.
→ [ECHOES OF THE FUTURE (PASSIVE)]: Fragments of past timelines remain as instinct. Accuracy: 8%.
→ [PARAGON'S LIGHT (SEALED)]: Unawakened potential.
[WARNING]
[Multiple regressions degrade mental stability.]
[Full memories from previous cycles: INACCESSIBLE]
He processed that.
'I don't remember how many times I've died. I only know it's happened before.'
The thought should have been terrifying, but there was also a mercy in it.
If he remembered every death, every failure, every person he couldn't save, he'd already be insane.
The bell rang, marking the end of class, and students started packing their stuff and chatting with each other.
"Hey, Celeste."
Lucian blocked his path, flanked by his two usual friends: Gideon, the big guy with more muscle than sense, and Mark, the quiet one who laughed at whatever Lucian said.
"That dead face you had..." Lucian tilted his head, studying him. "What did you dream about, exactly?"
Raziel weighed his options.
In his previous life, he'd treated Lucian as a minor obstacle, an arrogant noble who didn't deserve his time.
He'd been wrong.
Lucian would die at twenty-three trying to be a hero, charging into a battle he had no business being in to protect people he barely knew.
There was something real under that privilege mask.
"I dreamed about the end of the world," Raziel said, totally honest.
Lucian blinked, thrown off by the direct answer.
"What?"
"Fire falling from the sky, demons walking the streets, everyone we know, dead." Raziel looked him in the eyes. "It felt real."
Silence stretched out. Gideon traded an awkward look with Mark.
Lucian let out a forced laugh.
"You're nuts, Celeste. Too many prophecy books before bed."
"Probably," Raziel admitted. "But just in case, you should learn how to use that practice sword for real, Lucian."
Raziel stood up and something weird happened.
He saw Gideon raise an ink jar behind Lucian, predicted the angle of his arm and the likely path, and his body moved before the jar even flew.
He turned on his heel, caught the jar in midair, and set it down on the nearest desk.
The classroom went silent.
"How did you do that?" someone asked.
Raziel looked at the jar in his hand, just as shocked as everyone else.
[ECHO ACTIVATED: Combat Reflexes (Fragment)]
[Origin: Unknown Timeline]
[Duration: Temporary]
"Good reflexes," he said, and left the classroom before they could ask more.
He walked through the cloisters of St. Celeste, his mind sorting what he knew.
'Now I know that I've died before, probably a lot of times too.'
'My memories are fragmented but my instincts survive and I have four years before Zion arrives and everything goes to hell.'
'What I don't know is how many times I've regressed, why I keep failing, or how to stop a being that treats this entire world as her personal game.'
Four years wasn't a lot of time, but it was more than he'd ever had before.
In his last life he'd been nineteen when the chaos showed up, completely unprepared, and spent sixteen years losing a war he never understood until it was too late.
This time he understood, and he was starting earlier than before.
He reached a fountain in the central garden and knelt, hands together.
"Zhalyr, Mother of Light," he said, low enough that only the water could hear.
"I don't know how many times you've given me this chance. I don't know if I deserve it but I promise you I won't waste it."
[PRAYER DETECTED]
[SINCERITY: 100%]
[RESONANCE WITH PREVIOUS TIMELINES: HIGH]
[BONUS APPLIED: +1 WILLPOWER, +1 MENTAL STABILITY]
When he opened his eyes, he saw an extra message:
[MEMORY FRAGMENT RECOVERED]
[Timeline #???]
[Content: A familiar voice.]
And then he heard it, deep inside his mind.
A female voice, warm but broken by pain:
"The key isn't being stronger than her, Raziel. It's being smarter. She expects you to play her game. Don't—"
The voice cut off hard.
Raziel went still.
There was no face, only the voice. An echo of someone who, in another life, had given him advice that mattered.
'Change the rules. Don't play her game.'
"Got it," he muttered to the air. "Whoever you are, thanks."
He stood up and looked toward the library in the distance.
[QUEST UPDATED]
[OBJECTIVE: Infiltrate the Restricted Section]
[NOTE: In previous timelines, this objective had... varied results.]
[PROCEED WITH CAUTION]