The air in Heaven's throne room was supposed to taste of victory. It tasted of blood.
Irelion Vance, the Saint of Swords, was on his knees. Cold, divine marble drank the warmth from his body, the same way it had already drunk the lives of his seven swords. His own life was leaking out from a dozen wounds, none of which came from a demon. No, this was the work of gods. The very gods he'd just won a war for.
It was funny, in a way. The Demon King was dead. The war was over. And this was his reward.
His gaze drifted. All around him lay the proof of his failure. Seven broken swords, shattered like the hearts of the women who wielded them.
A shard of ice-veined steel lay near his hand. Aurelia.
He remembered her, the First Sword, the Ice Maiden. Her frost had held back entire legions, a blizzard of pure will. But when the Arch-Celestials struck, their betrayal came wrapped in holy fire. He saw her turn, her silver-blue eyes wide with shock, not for herself, but for him. The flames melted her ice, then her skin, then the heart that had beaten for him alone for fifteen years. She didn't even scream. Just a soft gasp, a silent apology for failing to protect him one last time.
Damn it, Aurelia. You were never the one who was supposed to do the protecting.
His eyes found the hilt of a lightning-scorched blade. Seraphine.
His fiery rival. His Second Sword. She lived for the challenge, for the crackle of lightning before a duel. They'd fought a hundred times, and every clash of their blades was a conversation. She hadn't been burned by holy fire. She'd been taken down by a coward. A poisoned dagger in the chaos, slipped between her ribs by a smiling Celestial Guard she thought was an ally. Her storm went silent. He remembered cradling her, her last words a choked, furious whisper: "I... still haven't beaten you... you bastard."
A gust of wind, a phantom feeling, drew his attention to a slender, elegant blade snapped in two. Lyanna.
Lyanna, the Wind Dancer, the Third Sword. Her gentle heart had been their moral compass. She healed more than she harmed, her sword style a whirlwind of protection. She hadn't died in a grand duel or a celestial trap. She'd died shielding a group of civilians—mortals who Heaven's forces deemed acceptable losses. A blast of demonic energy, redirected by a Celestial, was heading for them. Lyanna didn't hesitate. She became the shield. He'd found her afterward, her body broken but a faint, peaceful smile on her lips. She'd died for strangers who would never even know her name.
He coughed, a wet, rattling sound. Blood spattered on the golden floors. His vision swam, focusing on a blackened, twisted piece of metal that still pulsed with faint heat. Ravenna.
His Fourth Sword. The Inferno. Passionate, impulsive, a woman who burned brighter than any flame. Her love was as fierce as her sword. He should have seen the trap. It was designed for her, for her rage. A cage of enchanted, soul-dampening metal. It exploited the very fire he'd come to love. He watched, helpless, as they extinguished her. Her final look wasn't of anger, but of desperate, heartbreaking love.
A pure white blade, stained crimson, lay by the throne itself. Celestia.
The Holy Light, his Fifth Sword. She was a temple maiden who had believed, truly believed, in Heaven's justice. She had followed him because she thought he was Heaven's chosen. When the betrayal came, her faith shattered. But her love for him didn't. They'd branded him a traitor, and her a heretic for loving him. He watched them crucify her on a cross of holy light, the very power she had once wielded. Her execution was a message.
His breath hitched. He saw the glint of obsidian in the shadows. Nyx.
The Shadow's Edge. His Sixth Sword. Silent, broken by a past he'd only just begun to heal. She never spoke of love, she showed it, a constant, silent presence at his back. When the trap was sprung, she was the one who bought him time. "Go," was the only word she said. She held off three Arch-Celestials by herself, her shadow techniques a masterful dance of death. She died alone, in the dark, covering a retreat he never should have ordered.
A single, small tear finally escaped his control, tracing a path through the grime on his cheek. His gaze fell on the last broken sword. It lay right beside him, close enough to touch. A simple, earthen-hued blade.
Evangeline.
The youngest. The Earth Mother. His Seventh Sword. She was just a girl when she'd joined them, her smile the only thing that kept him human through the blood and the horror. She'd grown up in the war, her feelings for him evolving from a daughter's admiration to a woman's love. A love he never acknowledged until it was too late. She died in his arms, right here, just moments ago. A collapsing gate, a final, desperate shove to get him clear. Her body was crushed. She'd looked up at him, her hand touching his face, and whispered, "It's okay... I forgive you."
He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve any of them.
The war was won. But Heaven feared him. They feared the loyalty he commanded. They feared the bond of seven hearts and one soul that had made them invincible. So they'd cut the strings. They called his love a heresy, his power a threat. They died for loving him.
He died for being too weak to save them.
His vision was fading to black. The grand throne of the Celestial Emperor loomed over him, empty, its master having already departed, the show over. Irelion Vance, the sixty-seven-year-old Saint of Swords, let out his final breath.
But his soul, a thing forged in the Saint Realm, tempered by forty-seven years of war and love and loss, refused to fade.
It held on, burning with a singular, impossible desire.
I want to do it over.
Give them back to me.
Heaven's betrayal had created a debt. The slaughter of seven loyal souls and their master created a karmic imbalance so vast, so fundamentally wrong, that reality itself seemed to reject the outcome.
A snap.
Not a sound, but a feeling. The feeling of a sword striking an unmovable shield and rebounding with impossible force. His consciousness, his soul, was hurled backward. Through his own death. Through Evangeline's last breath. Through Nyx's silent stand. Through the years of bloodshed, the moments of laughter, the quiet nights under the stars. Faster and faster, a torrent of memories reversing until they became a blur.
Then, nothing.
Until… sunlight.
Warm. Gentle. Not the cold, sterile light of Heaven. Real sunlight, filtering through a simple wooden window.
Irelion's eyes fluttered open. He smelled pine needles and clean, morning air. He was lying on a stiff, straw-stuffed mattress. A disciple's cot. His body felt… young. Weak. He sat up, his muscles aching with the phantom pains of wounds he no longer had.
He looked down at his hands. They were smooth, unscarred. The hands of a twenty-year-old boy.
His heart hammered against his ribs. No. It couldn't be.
He scrambled out of the small bed, stumbling across the bare wooden floor of a room he hadn't seen in nearly five decades. The disciple barracks of the Azure Peak Sword Sect. His first home.
On a small, dusty desk was a calendar. His hands shook as he reached for it.
The date was unmistakable. Forty-seven years. It was forty-seven years earlier.
He was back. He was weak. He was a nobody again, just another Mortal Realm cultivator at the bottom of the ladder.
And they were all out there. Alive. Strangers. Some of them not even born yet. Their horrible, tragic deaths were laid out before him, a path of broken glass he was now forced to walk again.
He could save them.
The thought was a spark of hope in a sea of despair.
But the next thought drowned it in ice.
He had to watch them die all over again first. In his memory. Every single day.