VAEL MORAINE

Vael swore under his breath.

The Iron Tide—the Orcs—were moving? On the Southern Gate? How? When? Shouldn’t they be attacking the Murai first? And wasn’t that supposed to happen two years from now in the prior timeline?

It didn’t make any sense.

A commotion interrupted his thoughts, and he leaned against the lacquered railing of the pavilion, watching the spectacle unfold across the street.

Claire Wang was half-carrying, half-dragging her drunken husband out of a tavern—The Blushing Koi, a fittingly sordid place. Known for crooked gambling, painted courtesans, and backroom deals that stank of sweat and coin.

And yet here she was, looking tired and sick.

Such a difference a little regression could make.

This was the same woman who had once ascended past every human limitation—now pale and nauseous, clutching her stomach with one hand while steadying Caleb Zhou with the other. Caleb, red-eyed and glassy, muttered like a spoiled child denied a toy, his weight sagging against her slight frame. She kept her chin lifted, her back straight, but it was effort—Vael could see her trembling under the burden.

He almost laughed. This wasn’t the woman who had haunted him across battlefields, blade dripping demon ichor, eyes burning with fury and self-hatred. This was a housewife. A sick, tired housewife.

And that was where his amusement stopped.

Caleb Zhou.

The name tugged at some faint corner of memory, but nothing solid. Vael knew Claire had been married, yes—but in the last invasion, her husband had been a footnote. A nonentity. A shadow in her story who never once mattered on the battlefield. He couldn’t even recall the man’s name.

But this? This staggering drunk she dragged through the streets? This was not the man she had once been tied to. Of that he was sure. What was his name? He simply couldn’t remember.

He looked again. The contrast was jarring. The circumstances too different to ignore.

Vael narrowed his eyes, suspicion threading through him. If history had shifted enough to hand Claire Wang a different husband, and the Iron Tide was attacking the Southern Gate now, and not attacking the Murai before coming to the mainland—then how deep did the changes go? What else had been rewritten beneath his feet?

Vael remembered her differently. He remembered this time differently. He remembered the first time he’d crossed blades with her—how she had roared like a wildfire unleashed, forcing even vanguard demons to take her seriously. She had died too late for his liking, clawing her way into Transcendence before finally burning out.

And now? Now she walked the streets of this town like any noblewoman weighed down by domestic misery.

Something had shifted. The threads had rewoven differently. The woman who had once been his greatest obstacle was weaker than he’d ever imagined.

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The question was why.

He considered just killing her whole house and being done with it. But that was rash—and Vael was not a rash man. Not until he understood what force had twisted this world into something unfamiliar.

He couldn't kill her yet. Not until he knew why Claire Wang—his nemesis, his storm, his unfinished work—was reduced to this fragile, uncertain thing.

He exhaled through his teeth. He still couldn’t believe he had to do this again.

And then the thought struck him—clear, concise, sharp enough to stop him mid-breath.

This redo, this second time, this reset had to come from someone with immense power. Nothing else made sense. That much was obvous. The thing that just came to him. This certainly not his side of the fight.

When he had first awoken in this world, he had searched for answers, clawing at anyone who might know something, anything. He had pressed demons, scholars, cultists, demanding explanations. But none of them had answers. Not even a whisper. None of the demons in his immediate vicinity seemed to know what was happening—or even that such a phenomenon could occur.

And that was the strangest part.

Because power of this magnitude wasn’t unheard of. Not exactly. Gods and Demon-Gods had always been rumored to possess it: the ability to twist time, fold history, push the world back like clay beneath a potter’s hand. Stories spoke of rituals so catastrophic, sacrifices so immense, that the heavens themselves bent.

But stories weren’t practice. And practice had rules. Rules even gods and monsters obeyed. The debate in demonic ciricles ran rampant on this topic. The scholar had come to certain conclusions.

One: power was never free. It always cost. The power to touch time expecially.

Two: no world survived more than a touch. Push too far, and the plane cracked.

Three: no single will—not god, not demon, not emperor—could hide such an act. The echo alone would ripple across planes like thunder.

And yet here he stood.

Here, in this reset, this impossible do-over. No ripple. No thunder. No acknowledgment from any of the powers who should have known.

That was wrong.

Claire, though—Claire had been a problem. A serious one. Something that while not enough to keep them from accomplishing their goal had created a waste of resources on this transition world. Claire had mattered. Shen she actually settled down to fight time and stopped running, she had been a force. She had destroyed resources, obliterated contingencies, forced them to burn through advantages they could never reclaim.

She had cost them.

That alone had been enough to mark her as special. And so when he came back, when he opened his eyes in this second chance, he had assumed—no, he had known—Claire was the linchpin. She had to be. The fulcrum. The reason for the reset.

It explained everything. Until it didn’t.

Because then she showed up—smiling. Weak. Empty. Pretending.

If Claire was the linchpin, then why was she so ordinary? And if she wasn’t, then the entire premise cracked. If Claire wasn’t the reason for the reset, then the question became far more dangerous: who was?

It gnawed at him. If Claire wasn’t the hero, then she was a distraction. If she wasn’t the one given a second chance, then someone else was. Someone stronger. Someone hidden.

So who?

If it wasn’t Claire, then was it someone behind her? A benefactor? A shadow pulling strings while she played at being significant? Was she simply the mask—meant to waste their time, to bleed resources until the real hand revealed itself?

Or was she something worse—irrelevant?

If she wasn’t the powerhouse, or the strength behind the powerhouse, then she had been miscast entirely. This meant every assumption he carried into this reset was worthless. It meant all his strategies had been pointed at the wrong target.

And if that was true, then everything was in question.

Every plan. Every move. Every expectation of what the future would hold.

If Claire hadn’t been given a second chance—if she wasn’t the one destined to frustrate them, to drag them through familiar battles and weary trials—then the ultimate question remained.

And ironically - it was the only question that mattered.

If Claire wasn’t the hero of the gods and mortals of the Living Realms…

…then who was?

And worse—had he already crossed their path?