I stood before the fountain again, watching the water rise and fall in its endless cycle. The sound was hollow to me now—nineteen times I had stood here, nineteen times I had lived this same moment. Nineteen.
I almost whispered it aloud, a curse spoken in the rustling of leaves and the gentle plash of water. It was a number etched into my mind, a tally of deaths, of betrayals, of my own slow-motion descent into a special kind of madness.
Why do I keep doing this? Why can't I stop? The question was a low hum in my skull, a broken record that offered no answer.
The footsteps came, soft and familiar, and I didn't even need to turn to know it was her. But I did anyway—because that's what I always do. It was part of the script, the ritual I had bound myself. My body moved without my conscious command, turning with the practiced grace of a stage actor.
There she was. Ema. Alive. Smiling. The sunlight caught in her hair, and her eyes, clear and bright, were so painfully, gloriously full of life. It was a sight that should have brought me relief, but all I felt was a cold, suffocating dread.
"Hey, Evan…"
"Hello, Ema," I said, my voice low, careful. Every syllable was a lie. "You look… stunning today."
Her lips curved shyly. "Th-Thanks… you too."
Shall we? I wanted to choke on the words, but they slipped out as smoothly as before. A gentleman's line, a lover's gesture. She nodded, and we walked—hand in hand, through the same streets, past the same people. They smiled at us, whispered about how sweet we looked. A young couple on a date—innocent, pure. A fairy tale of reconciliation.
But all I could see was death.
Her hand in mine was warm, a living thing, but I knew too well how quickly that warmth would vanish.
Her shy smile—fragile, trembling—was the same one I had watched crumble into screams. Her eyes, bright now, were the same eyes I had seen glaze over with a lifeless, empty stillness. This was not a date. It was a prelude. A rehearsal for an act I had performed eighteen times already.
Maybe it all started with that single thought.
Back then, I was still in denial—about everything that happened. Were those events real, or just fabrications?
A fracture in my thoughts, a splinter that dug deeper the more I tried to ignore it. Was it a hallucination, or had someone twisted my very mind into believing what wasn't there?
And then… came the sound. That cold, mechanical chime, like gears grinding inside my skull. The voice. I called it a "system," though I never truly knew what it was. Detached. Unfeeling. Whispering commands as though my entire life was a script it had already written. The scenario is broken. The main heroine is dead. Time is reversal.
But the unknown still lingers. And to clear those doubts, I take these steps—again, and again, and again. Does it justify me? No. Not at all. It's a sick, twisted game.
But still, I can't stop. I can't let go of these twisted emotions, these compulsions clawing inside me. The need for an answer is a constant, gnawing hunger.
I remember the first initiative I took—planning it all in the name of a date. It wasn't a crime of passion anymore. It was a test. An experiment. A desperate attempt to get a reaction.
I also remember the first time I killed her. It was swift, almost merciful. She had let her guard down, as she always did, and in that instant, I drove the knife deep into her neck.
Her blood spilled hot across my skin, a searing brand that painted me in her final heartbeat. A quick, cruel death. My first hesitant sin in this new, cursed life.
The second wasn't much different. The same sharp steel, the same sudden silence, the same cold, metallic voice.
But by the third time… I couldn't keep it simple. I didn't want to. I was tired of the same plot, the same ending. I needed to know the limits.
I slipped a drug into her cup—an insidious concoction designed to block the flow of mana through her veins, severing the link to her core. And without mana, a mage is nothing more than a fragile girl.
She died gasping, clawing at her own throat, her face a mask of purple-tinged agony. Then I dragged her beneath the fading light of evening, drowning her in the fountain at the heart of the city. I can still hear the gasps, the screams of the onlookers, their minds unable to process what they were seeing.
The guards came rushing, soldiers not far behind. They tore me from her limp body, dragged me down, pressed me into the cold stone as she floated lifeless in crimson water.
But before the weight of judgment could crush me—time snapped. The world reversed. That mechanical voice echoed again. And again. And again.
I tried fire. I tried a fall. I've killed her with magic, with poison, with my bare hands. I've strangled the life from her while she begged for mercy, and I've smiled while I did it, the same chilling smile that now haunted my reflection. I had become something monstrous, a creature of habit and murder, all in the name of a question I couldn't articulate.
Yet no matter how many times I replay it—her laugh, her smile, her death—I still cannot find the answer I am searching for.
My question is simple—am I truly who I am? Then why… why do I feel like someone else?
I can't remember when it started—this quiet erosion of self. I'm not Evan Ravenshade. I know that. I arrived here only weeks ago, foreign to this world, foreign to these people. His father, Roselyn, Haiden, Emilia… they are not mine. They are strangers I should've met for the first time. And yet, when I see them, when I speak with them, it doesn't feel like an introduction. It feels like recognition. As if the weight of familiarity has always been there, a heavy cloak draped over my shoulders.
It unsettles me.
Perhaps it began the moment I opened my eyes in his body. Or maybe later, after I started responding to his name without hesitation.
Day after day, I've slipped into his role more easily—laughing like him, teasing like him, even resenting like him. Evan obsesses over Emilia. Evan burns whenever Lucas is near.
Evan fills silence with arrogance, jokes, and posturing. And somehow, without meaning to, I echo it. Is it just the world pressing me into his mold? Or am I willingly discarding myself?
Because each time I move, speak, or think, it feels less like me—and more like him. And if that's true… then when exactly did I stop existing?
I started asking myself that question the day I first killed Emilia. It wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't planned. It just… snapped out of me—sudden, violent, suffocating.
A surge of anger so raw, so consuming, that it didn't even feel like mine. Hell, I'm still sure I'm not the kind of man who gets swallowed whole by rage like that. At least, I wasn't.
But after it was over—after she fell limp on the floor—the panic was mine.
Completely mine. I could barely breathe, could barely think, only stumble in circles around the weight of what I had done.
My hands were still shaking when that cold, mechanical voice echoed in my head, talking about "scenario change" as if it was all just some adjustment in a fucking game. That's what snapped me back—not remorse, not horror, not even guilt. A voice. A system. A machine.
And then she came back. Emilia.
The first time I held her after she revived, I swear it broke something in me. The warmth of her body, the wetness of her tears against my chest—it all felt so wrong, yet so unbearably right at the same time.
Wrong because I knew I had been the one to take that life from her. Right because I still had her, alive, clinging to me.
I screamed that day. Screamed into empty air, begging—no, demanding—that the system, God, fate, whoever the fuck was watching, would say something, anything.
Just… something to prove I was still myself. To assure me that there was a line between me and Evan.
But there was no answer. And that silence has been eating me alive ever since.
I didn't panic back then. Not openly. I hid it, shoved it down, pretended I was fine.
But now? Now I'm desperate. Because every time I look in the mirror, I see less of me… and more of him. Evan. His shadow is spreading, and I don't want this. I don't want to disappear into someone I hate.
So I made a choice. To fight back. To challenge this twisted game on my own terms—even if it means becoming more twisted than the game itself.
I started killing Emilia again. Not out of blind rage, not anymore. But as an answer. A provocation. A way to spit in the face of that mechanical voice that keeps repeating the same lines like a broken machine every time I kill her.
At first, I thought it would get easier. That the horror would dull with repetition. But instead… it sharpened. I've killed her bleeding, drowning, choking on poison. I've burned her alive, the kerosene soaking her clothes as her unconscious body lay still before the flames consumed her. I've slit her throat, snapped her neck, crushed her under rubble.
Each time, I told myself it was necessary, that I was "testing the boundaries." But deep down, I knew. I knew I was crossing a line I could never walk back from. I was not just testing the system. I was testing myself. Pushing myself to see just how much of me I had left to lose.
And yet, I kept going. Because I had to know.
By the eighteenth run, I missed. My blade slid past her heart by a fraction, and for the first time… she saw. Really saw.
Her eyes widened—shock, disbelief, betrayal written across her face as if her whole world had caved in at once. And when her gaze finally locked onto mine, when she realized I was the one holding the knife, the one responsible for every end she had met… it shattered her.
Her voice… God, I can still hear it. Fragile. Cracked. The kind of sound that doesn't just reach your ears, but claws into your bones.
"W-why, Ev– Evan… j-just… w-why?
A-am I… this un-unforgivable… t-to you?
D-did you… lie? When you said… you forgave me?"
I wanted her to scream. To fight. To hate me. But she didn't. She just… broke. And in that moment, pity—fucking pity—was all I had left. So I ended her quickly.
Ended her life like snuffing out a bad dream. But the question remained, a wound that wouldn't close. Did you lie?
But now… I don't know anymore. Do I keep going? Do I keep tearing apart every trace of mercy, every shred of conscience I have left, just to chase answers that may not even exist? Because every time I see her now—her smile, her laughter, her hand reaching for mine as if it never once remembered what I'd done—I feel something crack deeper inside me.
"Umm, what are you staring at?" she asked me just yesterday, tilting her head, eyes bright with a childlike curiosity.
"Nothing," I told her. "Just… admiring you."
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Admiration. A fragile truth wrapped in a lie. Because who knows if I'll ever see her like this again? Who knows if tomorrow I'll take her life once more?
She smiled. "Admiring me, huh? Maybe you're right. You should… while you can."
I froze, my throat tight, my chest hollow. Then I forced a chuckle.
"Yeah. Maybe you're right about that."