Not my sister.
The words echoed in the silent space where a twenty-five-year-long obsession used to live. For a single, frozen moment, my entire world, my entire motivation for this second chance at life, ceased to have meaning. The anchor of my hatred, the core of my desire, was built on a lie.
Then, the moment passed. And what replaced it was not grief or confusion.
It was liberation.
A slow, terrible, and utterly joyous smile spread across my face. The final chain, the last, deeply buried shred of societal taboo that had made my obsession a thing of twisted shame, shattered into dust.
She wasn't my sister.
She was just a woman. A beautiful, powerful, treacherous woman who had a piece of my System and who had played a role in my past life's misery.
The obsession didn't vanish. It purified. It was no longer a dark, forbidden thing to be hidden. It was simply a goal. A prize to be claimed. My desire to possess her, to break her, to make her utterly and completely mine, was now clean, simple, and absolute.
The world came rushing back in a cacophony of horror and disbelief.
"IMPOSTOR!" Elder Sun shrieked, her ancient face contorted in a mask of pure fury. Her sect's sacred beast was dead, its lake defiled, and the princess she had granted sanctuary to was now declared a fraud by a dying god. Her sect's shame was absolute. "Seize the false princess!"
Lyra, her face ashen, reacted with the pure survival instinct of a cornered animal. A wave of chaotic silver energy erupted from her, blasting back the first few cultivators who lunged for her. She turned and fled, a desperate scramble to escape a world that had just collapsed around her.
Lin Feng, meanwhile, was on his knees, clutching his head, the Carp's words about his parentage having broken through his rage and left him a trembling, humiliated wreck.
This was my moment. The chaos was a perfect symphony, and I was its conductor.
I ignored the fleeing Lyra for a moment. First things first.
I plunged my hands into the colossal, cooling head of the Spirit Carp. The flesh, made of light and water, felt like dense, metaphysical jelly. My Abyssal Art flared to life, and I began to devour. I wasn't absorbing its soul—that was too vast, too pure. I was absorbing its residual energy, the divine life force that still saturated its body.
My cultivation, already at the 2nd stage of the Core Formation realm, began to skyrocket.
3rd Stage!
4th Stage!
5th Stage!
A torrent of pure, clean energy poured into me, a stark contrast to the usual soul-dregs I consumed. It was like drinking from a holy spring.
Finally, my hands closed around my prize. A fist-sized, crystalline orb that pulsed with a gentle, golden light. The Heart-Core of the Spirit Carp. I ripped it free, a visceral, final act of sacrilege.
I turned to face the horrified Elder Sun, holding the heart in one hand and the Bell of Sorrowful Souls in the other.
"Your beast is dead," I stated, my voice ringing with cold authority. "It was tainted by the presence of these two," I gestured to the fleeing Lyra and the broken Lin Feng. "I used a necessary evil to subdue it before its divine rage could kill us all. A regrettable, but necessary, act. The fault for this sacrilege lies with you, Elder, for harboring these anomalies."
I had seized the narrative. I was not the villain. I was the pragmatic anti-hero who had made a hard choice.
"Now," I continued, my gaze sweeping over the chaos. "The false princess is escaping. She is a matter of Imperial security." I pointed the heart at the stunned Captain Draven. "Captain! Your duty is to the Empire. Apprehend the impostor, Lyra. Bring her to me. Alive."
Draven, caught between his loyalty to the Vanes and the direct command of a prince in a moment of crisis, made the only logical choice. He nodded grimly and rallied his men, beginning the hunt for Lyra.
I had just turned my new ally into my prisoner.
With Lyra being hunted, and Elder Sun's faction in a state of catastrophic disarray, I was the sole power on the field. I had the weapon, the prize, and the narrative.
I walked away from the defiled lake and the dead god, my power surging, my mind already focused on my next move: returning to the Forgemaster and claiming the true power of the Shadowfang Dagger. My path to absolute power was clear.
Everything was going perfectly.
And then, as always, the universe decided to remind me who was truly in charge.
The ground began to tremble. Not with the death throes of a beast, but with a deep, structural groan. The sky above the capital, miles away but visible from the mountain peak, began to shimmer. An oily, violet light, the light of the void, pulsed in the heavens.
The 24 hours were up.
With a sound that was the opposite of an explosion—a deep, implosive lurch—the Imperial Palace snapped back into existence. It reappeared in its crater, perfectly intact, as if it had never left.
The game board was back. And all the players were returning to their seats.
My data-siphon on Seraphina, which had been sending me a stream of data from inside the void-bubble, flared with a final, cataclysmic update. It was the result of her 'Gacha of Fate' roll. The Fated Event she had won. And it was a move of such breathtaking, game-breaking genius that it made all my victories of the past month feel like a child's tantrum.
[FATED EVENT WON BY USER 'SERAPHINA VANE': 'THE UNVEILING'.]
[Effect: A single, absolute truth, chosen by the winner, will be revealed to every sentient mind within the Ravencrest Empire. The truth will be delivered as an undeniable, divine revelation, accepted by all as fact.]
[TRUTH CHOSEN FOR REVELATION:]
["Kaelen Ravencrest is not a regressor. He is a transmigrator from another world. His 'future knowledge' is not a memory of this world's timeline. He is not a prince. He is an otherworldly soul inhabiting the body of the true Kaelen Ravencrest, who died at the age of fifteen."]