442 A.R. – 10:58 PM (Past Timeline)House Varen Estate, Cindralith
The first sound Elise Varen heard was breathing, not her own, but her brother's, faint and rhythmic through the wall separating their rooms.
Lucien's snoring.
So ordinary. So alive. So impossible.
Her eyes snapped open to moonlight spilling through silk canopy curtains. The scent of lavender sachets. Warm sheets beneath her trembling body.
No. No, this can't be,
The last thing she remembered was cold stone, not satin. Iron chains, not silk embroidery. And voices, cold, clinical voices discussing her like a problem to be solved.
"The king has lost patience, Lady Varen. You've refused his proposals three times. There will not be a fourth."
"This is poison," she'd whispered, staring at the glass pressed toward her lips.
"This is mercy," the physician had replied. "Drink. Make it look like choice. Or we'll make it look like madness, and your family's name dies with you screaming in a cell."
She'd been seventeen. Proud. Desperate. Trapped.
And she'd drunk.
Felt her throat burn. Her vision blur. Her body collapse as servants arranged her carefully on the bed, placed the empty vial in her hand, smoothed her hair across the pillow.
A suicide. Clean. Tragic. The king's hands unstained.
"Another noble daughter too weak for the burden of duty," they'd say.
But now,
Elise bolted upright, nearly tangling in her sheets as she stumbled toward the mirror across her room.
The reflection staring back was seventeen again, smooth skin unmarred by the bruises she'd worn in that northern castle. Copper hair still vibrant, not dull from months of captivity. Hands that hadn't yet learned to shake when holding writing implements.
"This isn't possible." Her voice cracked, barely above a whisper.
She looked around frantically, the painted portraits of ancestors watching with dead eyes, the gilded clock ticking gently on the shelf, the familiar furniture arrangement she'd grown up with.
The clock's hands read 10:58 PM.
And beneath it, engraved in elegant script: House Varen, Cindralith, 442 A.R.
Her knees nearly gave out.
2 years ago. The night of the Awakening Ceremony.
The memories crashed over her like a tidal wave, not in sequence, but fragmented, violent, overwhelming.
The marriage contract forced upon her after Lucien's gambling destroyed the family. The journey north to Frostmere. King Aldric Thorne's cold smile as he explained she'd produce heirs or produce nothing. The months of refusing, resisting, remaining defiant even as her cage grew smaller.
The final ultimatum. The poison. The carefully staged "suicide."
And through it all, her brother's voice echoing from her last visit: "I'm sorry, Elise. I'm so sorry. I never meant—"
But he had. His weakness, his addiction, his selfishness had sold her like property.
Rage surged through her, cold, burning, absolute.
They made me a tragedy. Made my name a cautionary tale. Not this time.
She forced herself to breathe, to think, to assess.
Everything looked identical to her memories of this night. Her father would be in his study tomorrow morning, nursing a headache. Lucien would attend some Order function, networking, oblivious to the debts accumulating in his name.
The same patterns. The same trajectory toward destruction.
Everything is the same,
Except.
A memory surfaced. Not of her death, but of earlier today. The ceremony.
She'd been walking through the crowded entrance with Lucien when someone had collided with her, a boy, distracted, not watching where he was going.
His hands had caught her shoulders to steady them both.
And then he'd said her name.
"Elise!"
Not "Lady Varen." Not "Miss Varen." Just her name, spoken with such raw, unexpected recognition that she'd frozen, startled.
Rei Ashborne.
A commoner boy. Unremarkable at first glance. Dark wavy hair, tired eyes, lean build. She hadn't known him.
But the way he'd looked at her,
Like he was seeing a ghost.
Like he knew her story before it had been written.
Elise moved back to the window, staring out at the sleeping city below, her reflection ghostly in the glass.
In my first life... that collision never happened.
The realization settled like ice in her chest.
I walked through that entrance with Lucien. No one bumped into me. No one said my name with that kind of grief in their voice.
Rei Ashborne didn't exist in my memories of this day.
He's new. He's different. He's,
"the only thing that's changed," she whispered to her reflection.