His body felt lighter.
Breathing became easy—like a lie.
At the same time, the frail body in his arms was growing cold.
“… Hey. Stop this right now.”
He tried to pull her hand away, but her fingertips were already cold as ice.
“Stop, Odelie!”
“No.”
Clinging to his chest, Odelie desperately shook her head.
“If not now … I’ll never be able to again.”
“Don’t! I never wanted this!”
Ludvil’s voice cracked with rage, but it didn’t last long.
Soon, his roar dissolved into desperate pleading.
“Please … stop. I’m begging you …”
But it was already too late.
Odelie gave a faint smile and collapsed in his arms.
“It’s okay now.”
Before he could even say that nothing about this was okay—
“If you go straight that way, you can escape … So live.”
Mustering the last of her strength, she pointed with trembling fingers.
“Live. That’s my last request.”
Her lips still curved in a faint smile.
Even until her final breath.
For all her confident talk about outliving him, Odelie died in a heartbreakingly quiet, fleeting way.
She died far younger than the average lifespan of a Purifier.
With Odelie gone, a new Purifier would soon be born.
The Kardel family would surely click their tongues, saying the newborn must be tamed from the start.
It was nothing new—
Only a death arriving slightly ahead of schedule in the centuries-old fate of all Purifiers.
It had always been that way, and it would continue that way.
It should have ended there.
But …
There was one person.
A single man who could not accept that fate.
“You said you’d live longer than me…”
His blood-crusted lips trembled.
Ludvil’s fingers grazed Odelie’s cheek, her eyes gently closed in eternal sleep.
“… You lied.”
“Odelie.”
“Answer me … please …”
His shoulders shook.
It didn’t take long for his ragged, suppressed breathing to turn into sobs.
Once he let the first cry escape, he broke completely, weeping in despair.
After years as a test subject, Ludvil was still small and emaciated, little more than skin and bone, nothing like the man Odelie would one day remember.
But his eyes …
They were alive.
Glinting fiercely, even in the dark.
“God, demon, I don’t care who… It doesn’t need to be a miracle. A contract, a curse, anything… Just once, please…”
Hot tears slipped down his lips as he prayed with desperate, hollow intensity.
“Take it all. My name, my memories, my soul. Just… please, bring her back…”
At that moment, the air shimmered.
Time seemed to stop.
The air warped, and a gemstone radiating light appeared.
A palm-sized crystal of brilliant blue.
It pulsed faintly, like a living heart.
“This is…”
One of the countless sacred relics of House Kardel.
The Kardel family, having long crafted an image as the descendants of dragons, had collected many such relics and stored them in the underground vault.
One of them had now manifested before Ludvil.
And then the scene changed.
The floor was splattered with blood.
Ludvil lay collapsed, his entire body soaked in red.
In his hand, he still clutched the blue gemstone.
Around him, knights of House Kardel in silver armor formed a tight circle.
Someone shouted through clenched teeth:
“This deranged test subject dares to steal the family’s sacred relic!”
The lead knight drew his sword and drove it straight toward Ludville’s heart, where he lay like a corpse.
Instinctively, Odelie —watching this memory—flinched forward.
But in that instant—
The gemstone blazed, releasing a surge of blue light.
A brilliant flash engulfed Ludvil’s body.
Like a burning star.
Radiant, and merciless.
And then …
Everything vanished.
The blood, the pain, the blade piercing his chest.
In the silent darkness, time began to flow backward for the first time.
The pools of blood soaked into his body.
The knights sheathed their swords and stumbled back.
Everything rewound like a spring-driven toy.
And when he opened his eyes again—
Ludvil had gone back ten years.
Back to the day he was sold at the slave market and dragged into House Kardel’s underground lab.
‘… The Gem of Regression.’
This was the true identity of the gemstone embedded in the ring he would later always wear.
No one knew what had triggered it.
Only that, on the day he knelt and prayed over Odelie’s corpse, the gem had responded to his voice.
He had been chosen, and gained the power to turn back time.
“This … is impossible.”
The first time Ludvil experienced regression, he refused to believe it.
“… I can undo everything.”
Next came hope.
“I can save you.”
A smile of ecstasy curved his lips.
“We can live together.”
That time, he ran away with Odelie.
But he was still only a powerless slave.
Before they could even escape the Kardel domain, he was captured and executed on the spot, and Odelie was dragged back underground.
Time rewound again.
The gem was slightly smaller than before.
‘I need strength.’
Ludvil decided to escape the Kardel family first.
He served a retired knight and, for the first time in his life, took up a sword.
The boy who couldn’t even hold a blade straight grew stronger than his peers after relentless training.
But he was nowhere near becoming a true knight.
He dedicated that lifetime solely to mastering the sword, training until he was an old man.
When he died, time rewound again.
The gem was smaller than in the previous regression.
In the next life, he became a knight of House Kardel.
He waited patiently for the right opportunity, then fled with Odelie.
They stowed away on a cargo ship and escaped to a foreign land.
In a small rural domain, they built a modest cabin and lived together.
“Odelie.”
Ludvil took a pair of silver rings from his pocket.
“They’re neither expensive nor extraordinary, but…”
He had spent every coin he saved to buy the most beautiful pair he could afford.
With trembling hands, he slid the smaller ring onto Odelie’s finger, and the larger onto his own.
“This is my promise to stay by your side forever.”
He pressed a slow, deep kiss to her ring.
With the face of a man lost in his first, all-consuming love, he whispered:
“… I love you, Odelie.”
A raw, unadorned confession—pure devotion in its truest form.
He embraced her as if it were the last moment he would ever be given.
But Odelie’s body, ravaged by years of exploitation, was beyond saving.
She died at twenty-nine.
Ludvile despaired—but he wasn’t done.
He still had more chances.
‘… I need to find a way to heal her body.’
He scoured the Empire for a cure.
But a knight of such lowly birth had little access to true medical knowledge.
‘I need power.’
Time rewound.
The gem grew smaller.
He joined the army as a child soldier.
He hurled himself into the battlefield.
And died almost immediately, skewered by an enemy’s sword.
Time rewound again.
The stench of blood on endless battlefields.
Screams in the flames.
Comrades falling one by one.
He died countless times.
Collapsed countless times.
He earned titles: baron, viscount, count.
The title of duke—Grand Duke—was nothing compared to the thousands of achievements he accumulated.
He saved this land.
He conquered foreign realms with advanced medicine.
He learned magic, seeking miracles.
He even became a crime lord and delved into forbidden sorcery.
But he could not save her.
No matter what he did.
