Chapter 2: Regression

Craig’s eyes snapped open, his lungs expanding in a violent, desperate gasp.

His hands immediately flew to his chest, fingers clawing frantically through whatever he was wearing, searching for the cold, jagged edge of the steel that had ripped through his sternum.

He searched for the gaping hole.

He searched for the hot, slick gush of his own arterial blood.

There was nothing.

No steel. No shattered ribs. No copper stench of death.

Only the crisp, cool touch of fresh silk clinging to his damp skin.

Craig lay frozen on his back, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

The silence in the room was deafening—so quiet it made his ears ring.

Where was the screech of the abominations?

Where was Chaosbringer’s roar?

Where were the dying screams of the men he had marched into the meat grinder?

Slowly, painfully, he forced himself to sit up.

His head throbbed, heavy with the vivid, excruciating memories of the end.

He remembered the sight of the West burning.

He remembered the tide of abominations swallowing city after city until the streets ran thick with crimson mud.

He remembered plunging from the clouds, swinging his blade until his arms went numb, ready to die alongside the continent he was sworn to protect.

And then... the cold steel from behind.

The crest of the Darkstar direct bloodline.

The long, crimson hair spilling from beneath a ghostly white mask.

Betrayed.

He had been executed by his own blood while the world died around them.

Craig swallowed hard, his throat dry and tight.

Was this what came after?

Was this hell—a cruel illusion crafted to mock him with peace before the torment began?

His golden eyes darted around the space, taking in the faint rays of morning light slipping through heavy velvet drapes.

The vaulted ceiling.

The polished mahogany wardrobe. The silver-stitched banners hanging against the stone walls.

A sharp, suffocating realization hit him right in the center of his chest, knocking the breath straight out of him.

He knew this place.

It wasn’t the rugged, ink-black tent of an Archduke on the front lines.

It wasn’t the cold, empty hall of the Western stronghold.

This was his bedchamber in the Lucerion Barony’s estate.

The barony gifted to him as a successor candidate and this was the room of the Seventh Young Master—a time when he was just another prince of the "Von" bloodline, competing with his ruthless siblings for a sliver of the Darkstar Duchy’s power.

"No..." he rasped, his voice sounding shockingly clear, devoid of the gravelly rasp decades of breathing sulfur and ash had left behind.

Craig threw the sheets aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

His feet hit the cold floorboards, and he staggered instantly, his body feeling unnaturally light, almost fragile.

He didn’t walk to the bathroom; he stumbled, his shoulder clipping the doorframe as he shoved his way inside.

He stopped right in front of the vanity mirror hanging on the marble wall.

The breath caught in his throat. Craig recoiled, hitting the edge of the washbasin as he stared at the face in the glass.

The deep, jagged burn scars across his jaw were gone.

The blind, clouded film over his left eye was gone.

The harsh, hollow lines etched into his skin by twenty-five years of unrelenting grief and war had completely vanished.

Staring back at him was a youth. His long crimson hair was messy but vibrant, falling loosely over a face untouched by tragedy.

His golden eyes, though wide with absolute terror and disbelief, burned with a pure, unblemished light.

Craig lifted a trembling hand, pressing his palm against his cheek, then down to his neck, and finally over his heart.

He felt the steady, uninterrupted beat beneath his ribs.

He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t in hell.

He had been dragged back.

Twenty-five years into the past.

A quarter of a century before the sky tore open, before the second apocalypse erased humanity, and long before the Darkstar family threw him to the wolves.

As the shock began to settle into the marrow of his bones, the horror of the past timeline twisted into something else entirely inside his chest.

A dark, quiet heat started to burn behind his golden eyes.

He had twenty-five years.

Twenty-five years to rewrite the fall of the West—and to ensure every traitor in his bloodline bled before the apocalypse ever got the chance to touch them.

Twenty-five years to stop the second coming of the Apocalypse!