Flashback – Earlier That Day (Elise's Perspective)
The ceremony had been tedious, as always. A necessary social obligation wrapped in pomp and ceremony.
Elise remembered standing beside Lucien as they exited the family carriage, her practiced smile firmly in place. The crowds had parted, not from respect, but from that particular wariness commoners showed nobility. Close enough to see. Far enough to avoid offense.
"Keep your composure," Lucien had murmured, adjusting his cufflinks with practiced vanity. "The Order is always watching."
The Order that will one day stand by while Crest destroys us, she'd thought but didn't say.
She'd already known, even then, that her family was failing. The debts Lucien didn't know she'd found. The creditors her father was avoiding. The slow collapse that would take another two years to become obvious.
They'd entered the hall, and she'd been scanning the crowd, cataloging faces, identifying which families were rising and which were falling, the way she'd been trained since childhood.
Then,
Impact.
Someone had walked directly into her. Not violently, but enough to make her stumble.
Hands caught her shoulders, steadying, not grabbing. Careful.
She'd looked up, ready with a polite dismissal, and met dark brown eyes that looked at her like,
Like she was already dead.
"Elise!"
Her name. Just her name. But the way he'd said it,
Startled. Guilty. Grieving.
For a heartbeat, she'd seen something impossible in those eyes: recognition of something that hasn't happened yet.
"I" he'd stammered, releasing her quickly. "Sorry. I meant—you're from House Varen. I recognized—"
He'd gestured vaguely at her clothing where no family crest was visible.
It had been awkward. Clumsy. The kind of social fumbling that should have been forgettable.
Except his sister—Mira Ashborne, cheerful and teasing—had appeared, making jokes, diffusing the tension with easy warmth.
"Did my brother just walk into a noble lady? This is the best day ever."
Elise had laughed, played along, exchanged pleasantries.
But underneath, that whisper in the back of her mind: He knows you. He's already seen this before.
She'd dismissed it then. Told herself she was imagining things.
Now, standing in her room Two years in the past, she knew better.
Present – Midnight
The clock struck twelve.
The same hour she'd died in her first life, forced to drink poison, staged as suicide, her pride the only thing she'd been allowed to keep.
But this time, she was alive. Awake. Angry.
Elise pressed her palm against the cold window glass, watching her breath fog the surface.
If I've been sent back, there's a reason. To save my family. To prevent the marriage. To stop Lucien before his gambling destroys everything.
But I'm not the only variable that's changed.
"Rei Ashborne." She tested the name aloud, tasting its significance. "You're the only piece that doesn't belong in my memories."
She remembered more now, fragments from the ceremony itself.
The way he'd stood during the power measurement, the device showing something impossible: "Destiny Changing."
The wild boar trial, where others had killed their beasts without hesitation, but Rei had... hesitated. Done something different. She hadn't been close enough to see what, but his expression had been
Disgusted. Heartbroken. Like he knew something others didn't.
The Ice Giant round. She'd been grouped with him, randomly assigned, five students including herself despite her noble status. She'd been curious why nobles weren't exempted from combat trials this year, but had assumed it was political posturing.
Rei had been competent. Skilled, even. But watching him fight, she'd noticed he was always looking at something—someone—in the other group.
His sister. Mira. Who'd awakened early with ice manipulation powers.
He'd been teaching her. Across the battlefield, through signals she didn't understand, he'd been coaching his sister on how to use abilities she'd just manifested hours ago.
How did he know? How could he teach someone about powers that had just awakened unless—
"Unless you've seen it before," Elise whispered.
And finally, the instructor trial. That impossible moment when Rei Ashborne, supposedly just awakened, supposedly weak, had drawn that weapon.
The display had read: "Destiny Alteration Potential."
A warning.
Elise's reflection stared back at her, copper hair gleaming in moonlight, eyes sharp with understanding.
That grief in his eyes when he'd said her name. That wasn't awkwardness.
The pendant around her neck, the one she'd worn in both lives, felt heavier now.
"Tomorrow, I'll find you," she said to the empty room. "And we'll see whose determination rewrites history."
Outside, the city slept, unaware that two people who'd died were now walking through its streets again.
Two people who remembered the end.
Two people who refused to let it happen the same way twice.
The clock ticked toward tomorrow.
And Elise Varen, who'd been murdered and called it suicide, who'd drunk poison to save her family's name, who'd died proud and alone in a frozen castle,
Smiled.
Not with joy. With purpose.
"This time," she whispered, "I'll be the one who decides how my story ends."