At the Imperial Dining Hall: The Following Morning
Cassian looked like a corpse.
He hadn't slept a single wink. How could he? Knowing that the Empire's greatest killing machine was standing directly outside his bedroom door like a silver gargoyle of doom and he had kept Cassian's anxiety spiking until dawn.
Now, sitting at the breakfast table, Cassian was a vibrating mass of raw nerves. His jet-black hair was slightly messy, and his crimson eyes were clouded with dark, exhausted bags. Because he was running on zero sleep and maximum paranoia, he didn't have the energy to filter out his thoughts properly.
Cassian slammed his teacup down, glaring at a terrified servant who had poured the milk a millisecond too slow.
"Get out," Cassian muttered, his voice cold enough to freeze water. The servant bowed frantically and practically fled the room.
Standing like a flawless statue by the dining hall entrance, Sir Lucien Arden watched the exchange. His eyes narrowed. 'He is unraveling. The guilt of his secret plots is clawing at his psyche, making him lash out at the innocent staff.'
Crown Prince Adrian, sitting across the table, took a delicate bite of his pastry. He was still green with envy that the Emperor's Sword had been assigned to his useless, bratty younger brother. While knowing Lucien was a peak swordmaster with superhumanly heightened senses, Adrian decided to play a little game. He wanted the righteous knight to see just how unworthy Cassian truly was.
"Honestly, Cassian," Adrian chuckled loudly, making sure his voice carried across the room. "You treat the servants like garbage, yet you're granted the protection of Sir Lucien. It's almost a tragedy. A man of such chivalry, honor, and peerless martial skill, reduced to being a babysitter for a fragile incompetent prince who fakes sick leaves to avoid his duties. It's a complete waste of the Empire's talent."
Normally, the original Cassian would have taken the bait and screamed his lungs out with fury.
But this current Cassian was too sleep-deprived to care about Adrian's petty sibling rivalry. He didn't even look up from his plate. "If you want him so badly, Adrian, then go ask Father to wrap him in a bow for you. I certainly didn't order a six-foot-tall anxiety trigger to stand outside my door."
Adrian choked on his tea. Lucien's jaw tightened by the door, his ears turning a sharp tint of red from the sheer, unbothered disrespect coming from the prince.
Before Adrian could fire back, a royal attendant stepped into the dining hall, bowing deeply. "Your Highness, Prince Cassian. Count Malakor, a mid-line noble of the Eastern territory, has arrived at the palace. He has brought a rare, specialized medicinal tonic as a gift to aid in your recovery."
The name *Malakor* echoed in Cassian's mind like a gunshot.
Suddenly, a violent wave of déjà vu slammed into his brain. **Timeline Nine.** In Timeline Nine, Cassian had accepted a "medicinal tonic" from this exact midline noble. It had been laced with a slow-acting poison that systematically rotted his magical core over a month, making him look like he was succumbing to forbidden shadow magic, which ultimately gave Lucien a textbook reason to execute him.
Malakor was Adrian's closest corrupt dog. And looking at the gift box the attendant was describing, Cassian realized the trap was already being set.
A dark, dangerous fire lit up in Cassian's exhausted crimson eyes.
'He's trying to do it again. The future hasn't happened yet in this timeline, but I am not sitting around waiting to get decapitated a fifteenth time. It's time to uproot the trouble before it even begins.'
*****
After an hour Later.
Count Malakor stood proudly in the reception courtyard, a smirking, arrogant mid-line noble who thought he was entirely untouchable because of his ties to the Crown Prince.
Thank goodness Lucien had briefly stepped out to the training grounds outside the palace walls, leaving Cassian momentarily unattended by his shadow. Cassian sat on a stone bench in the courtyard, Elias standing nervously behind him, as Malakor presented a gleaming crystal vial.
"Your Highness," Malakor jeered, his fake, oily smile oozing with insincerity. "I brought this rare elixir specifically for your fragile health. I do hope it cures whatever... *ailment* is plaguing your mind."
Cassian stared at the vial. He stared at Malakor's smug, punching-bag of a face. Just then the sheer rage of a dozen past betrayals flared up all at once. Cassian didn't want to scheme. He didn't want to gather evidence and unnecessarily drag his revenge when the opportunity was presented to him now. Gathering evidence took weeks, and Cassian wanted to go back to bed *today*.
Cassian slowly raised his hand and signaled the royal palace guards standing nearby to come closer.
"Take him to the dungeon," Cassian commanded, his voice deadpan and flat. "And execute him."
The entire courtyard went violently silent. The wind seemed to stop blowing.
Elias gasped so hard he nearly sucked his own teeth in. The palace guards froze in absolute disbelief.
"B-But Your Highness!—" Count Malakor stumbled backward, his face instantly draining of color, the crystal vial shattering on the marble floor. "What did I do?! What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?!"
Cassian stood up, brushing a speck of dust off his black royal tunic. He looked down at the trembling noble with an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust.
"Your face is really pissing me off," Cassian sighed, waving his hand dismissively as if shooing a fly. "So get lost."
"Your Highness! This is madness! I am a noble of the Empire! Crown Prince Adrian will hear of—" Malakor shrieked as the terrified guards, knowing the prince's reputation for ruthlessness, aggressively grabbed the Count by his arms and dragged him kicking and screaming toward the execution block.
Because Malakor was only a mid-line county noble, his sudden death wouldn't significantly impact Cassian's political standing. And honestly? Even if it did, Cassian didn't give a single damn. The man had literally murdered him in a past life. And prevention while it's still early is the best medicine.
Cassian let out a long, exhausted sigh, completely ignoring the horrified, shaking servants around him. "Elias, I'm going to the library. Do not disturb me unless the palace is on fire."
With that, Cassian turned and strolled toward the inner palace archives to study dimensional magic, completely oblivious to the psychological trauma he had just inflicted on the entire castle.
The second Cassian walked past the corridors, the servants scurried away, throwing themselves flat against the walls, bowing so deeply their foreheads touched the stone.
'That sick bastard...' the head maid thought, trembling in absolute horror. 'He executed a high-ranking noble! Without thinking twice, without an ounce of conscience, just because the man was ugly and rubbed him the wrong way!'
Within hours, a terrifying rumor spread across the continent like wildfire: *Prince Cassian Valemont has completely lost his mind. He now ruthlessly executes anyone who is annoying or ugly. Do not make eye contact. Do not speak unless spoken to.*
*****
Lucien wiped the sweat from his brows, sheathing his training sword as he walked away from the training course and heading back into the main palace. The air in the castle was buzzing. The servants were pale, moving in frantic, silent packs, and the guards looked like they had just seen a ghost.
It didn't take long for Lucien to catch wind of what had just happened in the palace courtyard.
When a captain of the guard nervously whispered the details of Count Malakor's sudden, unprompted decapitation, Lucien froze.
His teeth ground together so hard his jaw audibly creaked. His chest vibrated with a mixture of profound disbelief and pure, unyielding rage.
'Is that all a human life amounts to him?'
Lucien thought, his fists clenching until his leather gloves threatened to rip apart.
'To execute a noble of the realm without a trial, without a shred of evidence, simply because his appearance 'pissed him off'?!'
Lucien looked toward the massive royal library towers, his ice-blue eyes burning with a dangerous, holy fury.
'That vile, monstrous prince. He isn't just a threat to the crown... he is a tyrant in the making. I will drag the truth out of him even if it is the last thing I do.'
*****
Amidst the imperial archives one hour later after the abrupt execution of Count Malakor.
The Royal Library was the only place in the entire palace that Cassian actually tolerated. It was vast, quiet, smelled delightfully of old paper and leather, and most importantly, it was usually devoid of people trying to murder him.
Currently, Cassian was buried deep within the forbidden research section, surrounded by towering mahogany shelves. He had stacked a dozen massive, dust-covered grimoires on a wooden table.
"Let's see here..." Cassian muttered, flipping frantically through a tome titled *The Fundamentals of Space-Time Anomalies*. He propped his chin on his hand, his eyes scanning the ancient text. "'To tear open a rift between realms, one must anchor the soul to a beacon of origin.' Okay, cool, great. But what if my origin beacon is just a crushing amount of student loan debt and a strong desire to punch my sister? Does the universe accept that as a valid coordinate?"
He let out a long, dramatic sigh and slumped forward, face planting directly onto the yellowed pages of the book.
'I just want to go back to the 21st century,' he whined internally. 'I want to watch anime, I want to scroll through TikTok, and I want to eat instant noodles. Instead, I'm stuck in a Gothic tragedy playing a game of 'Don't Get Decapitated' with a human chainsaw.'
He was so deeply immersed in his homesick self-pity that he didn't even notice the temperature in the library suddenly plummeting.
*BANG.*
The heavy, enchanted oak doors of the archives didn't just open—they slammed against the stone walls with a force that rattled the glass cases.
Cassian jolted upright, his sleep-deprived heart leaping directly into his throat. He whipped his head toward the entrance.
And walking down the center aisle, looking like a literal god of holy vengeance, was Sir Lucien Arden. The knight commander hadn't even changed out of his training gear; a faint aura of pressurized white mana was visibly rippling off his shoulders, causing the nearby dust motes to disintegrate. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle was violently twitching in his cheek, and his ice-blue eyes were locked onto Cassian with a gaze that could kill a lesser man on the spot.
'OH MY GOD, WHY IS HE HERE?,' Cassian's brain went into a full, screeching, red-alert meltdown. 'Why is he vibrating?! Why is he glowing?! Is he going to kill me right now?! I didn't even use shadow magic! I was just reading! Is reading forbidden now?! Is this a literary dictatorship?!'
Behind Lucien, poor Elias was hovering by the doorway, looking like he was about to burst into tears, silently mouthing prayers for Cassian's soul.
Lucien stopped exactly three paces away from the table. The sheer pressure of his presence made the pages of Cassian's books flutter violently.
"Your Highness," Lucien spoke, his voice dangerously low, vibrating with a terrifying, controlled rage. "Care to explain what happened in the courtyard an hour ago?"
From the outside, Cassian's body automatically locked into his default 'indifferent villain' defense mechanism. He slowly leaned back in his leather chair, crossing one elegant leg over the other. His expression was completely deadpan, his heavy, crimson eyes looking up at the towering knight with a mask of absolute, unbothered boredom.
"Ah, Sir Arden," Cassian murmured, his voice smooth and entirely casual. "I see the palace gossip mill moves faster than your cavalry. If you're referring to Count Malakor, he was dismissed from his duties. Permanently."
"Dismissed?" Lucien's voice dropped an octave, a dark, dangerous edge cutting through his words. He took a predatory step forward, slamming his leather-gloved hand onto the edge of Cassian's reading table. The wood grooved under the pressure. "You ordered a noble of the realm to the chopping block without a trial, without the Emperor's seal, and without a shred of evidence. The servants say you had him slaughtered simply because his face *'pissed you off'*. Is that what a human life amounts to you, Prince Cassian? A mere inconvenience to be erased on a whim?"
To Lucien, this was the ultimate proof of Cassian's corruption. The prince wasn't just a sneaky politician; he was a cold-blooded sociopath who felt absolutely no remorse for taking a life on a whim.
But inside Cassian's head, the modern college student was screaming in absolute, desperate agony.
'Ah HE THINKS I'M A TYRANT!' Cassian's internal monologue panicked. 'I can't tell him the truth! What am I supposed to say? 'Hey, big guy, actually that guy poisoned me in timeline nine, so I did a pre-emptive[1] strike to save my own neck!' If I say that, he'll think I'm completely insane and drag me to the holy execution block anyway! Ugh, fine, if he wants a villain, I'll give him a villain. Let's just lean into it.'
Cassian didn't flinch from Lucien's terrifying proximity. Instead, he slowly reached out, using a single, pale index finger to casually push Lucien's heavy hand off his table.
"Sir Arden," Cassian said, his voice dropping into a chillingly calm, arrogant whisper. "A weed is best pulled before it chokes the garden. I don't need a trial to know when an insect is trying to bite me. If the nobles of this empire cannot even present a gift without testing my patience, then they have no place in my sight. If that makes me a monster in your righteous, holy eyes... then so be it. You are my guard, not my judge. Know your place."
Lucien froze. He stared down at the black-haired prince, his breath hitching slightly.
The prince's eyes weren't filled with the frantic, manic glee of a madman. They were heavy, ancient, and profoundly lonely—yet entirely unyielding. For a split second, Lucien's heightened senses picked up something bizarre. The prince's heart was hammering at a frantic, terrified pace, completely contradicting his freezing, arrogant exterior.
'He's terrified...' Lucien realized with a jolt of confusion. 'His pulse is racing. But why? He just executed a man without blinking, yet looking at me, he looks as if... as if he's staring at his own ghost.'
Lucien's gaze slowly drifted down to the books scattered on the table. He expected to see dark magic rituals or necromancy. Instead, his eyes landed on titles like *Dimensional Gateways* and *The Theory of Parallel Realms*.
Lucien's brow furrowed, his anger momentarily derailing into intense, deep suspicion.
'Dimensional magic? Space-time rifts?' Lucien thought, his analytical mind working at lightning speed. 'Why is he researching how to leave this world? Is he trying to escape the empire? Or is he trying to summon something from another realm to aid his dark ambitions?'
Lucien slowly straightened his posture, his ice-blue eyes locking back onto Cassian's face, his voice quiet but filled with a new, dangerous obsession.
"I know my place perfectly, Your Highness," Lucien whispered, leaning in just close enough that Cassian could feel the cool ozone of his mana. "My place is right beside you. And I assure you... I will be watching every single page you turn."
Cassian internally sobbed, his soul officially packing its bags. 'I just wanted to read a book in peace. Why is my life like this?'
*****
[1] Refers to an action taken early.