Rewind

I had twenty-four hours. That was the first time.

I remember staring at the System’s message, Lucien’s still body lying only a few feet from me on the grass. People milled around us—students shouting, instructors pushing through—but the world had gone silent, like someone had stuffed my ears with cotton. Only the words burned in my vision:

> Secondary option: Rewind available. Condition: Your death within 24 hours. Confirm?

I don’t even remember making the decision. One moment I was kneeling beside him, my hand hovering inches from his hair; the next, I was running, my mind a single, shrieking thought: I can’t lose him. Not like this.

I barricaded myself in my dormitory room. My hands trembled as I dragged a chair under the door handle. My breath came shallow and fast.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered—to Lucien, to myself, to no one.

Then I drew my dagger.

I had never killed anything bigger than a mosquito before. The dagger looked absurd in my shaking hands, a sliver of steel against my skin.

“I can do this,” I muttered. “I can do this.”

The System pulsed once, as if waiting.

I took a deep breath, angled the point just below my sternum, and pushed.

Pain exploded white-hot through my body. My breath tore from my lungs. My knees buckled.

It’s strange, what the body does at that edge. Every instinct clawed at me to stop—to pull the blade out, to call for help, to live. But I had to do this. I had to.

“Lucien…” I choked out his name as blood filled my mouth.

The System’s message flickered bright against the inside of my skull:

> Rewind commencing. Memory retention: partial. 

The world shattered.

I woke gasping on the riverbank—the same place I had first arrived in this world. My body whole again. The sky bright. My hands unscarred.

And Lucien alive.

Relief hit me so hard my knees gave way. I pressed my face to the damp grass, sobbing. I had done it. He was alive again. I could try again.

That was loop one.

I thought that would be the only time. That I’d be careful now, fix whatever had gone wrong, and Lucien would live.

I was wrong.

---

The second loop was different.

I did everything the same at first—detour to the academy, study harder, shadow Lucien’s every step. But three months in, before I’d even had a chance to prepare for the undercroft event, Lucien fell ill. A fever that came from nowhere, a sickness no healer could name. He was dead within days.

I begged the System for an explanation. It gave me only silence.

Then the message appeared again:

> Rewind available. Condition: Your death within 24 hours. Time remaining: 18 hours.

Eighteen. Not twenty-four.

My heart froze. The window was shrinking.

That time, I slit my wrists in the dormitory bathhouse. I tried to make it clean, quiet. It wasn’t. Blood spreads in water like red smoke. My vision dimmed as I watched the pattern bloom across the tiles.

Rewind.

---

The third loop, Lucien died before I even reached the academy. Bandits on the road. An ambush that shouldn’t have been there.

I didn’t even see him that time. Only heard the news from a trembling merchant at a roadside inn: a boy matching his description, cut down in a ditch.

> Rewind available. Condition: Your death within 24 hours. Time remaining: 12 hours.

Twelve hours.

That night I hanged myself from a tree in the forest. My hands slipped twice tying the knot. I had to force my shaking fingers into the rope. When the branch creaked under my weight and the world went black, the last thing I saw was Lucien’s face, smiling as he had that first day at the academy. 

Rewind.

---

The fourth loop, Lucien drowned in the academy’s reflecting pool. No explanation. No signs. One moment he was practicing with Arian, the next they found his body floating like a pale lily among the reeds.

Eight hours left that time.

I threw myself from the academy’s northern tower. Hoping it would be a bit less painful then previous death. However every time while dying I would see how many times Lucien died, how but couldn't see the reason. I had no reason to have a painless death... Wind roared in my ears, the courtyard rushed up, and then—

Rewind.

---

It went on like that.

No matter how careful I was, Lucien died. Sometimes days after I met him. Sometimes before. Sometimes in ways I couldn’t even have imagined—a collapse of the west stair, poisoned tea, a stray arrow during a festival. It was as if the world itself conspired to snuff him out, like some mysterious force is trying to rewrite the story itself just to keep me from saving him. 

And every time, the window shrank.

Six hours. Four. Three.

It wasn’t just the time. It was me.

Every death left its mark. I could feel them stacked inside me like layers of ash. 

The first thought after finding a way to save my favourite character was that: Ah what a blessing. When i saw my favourite character's dead body before my eyes and received message from system that I could rewind time even though it costs my life. I thought: Ah what a blessing. I still have a chance to save him. After seeing the real Lucien in flesh my urge to save him grew stronger. However —

Was it a blessing really? It was my fault Lucien had to die so many times, I lost counts.

Blessing later turned into curse. My hands shook constantly now, even when I tried to smile. I avoided mirrors because sometimes I saw blood on my face that wasn’t there.

The System offered no comfort. Only messages, blunt and clinical:

> Mission failed.

Rewind available. Condition: Your death within 3 hours.

> Memory retention decreasing. Mental strain increasing.

It felt like being trapped in one of my own horror stories, except I couldn’t put the pen down.

I tried every method.

Blades. Ropes. Drowning. Starving myself until my body gave out. Running into battle and letting an enemy’s blade take me. Drinking poison. Each time, the moment of death was different—pain, fear, relief—but the System’s pull was the same. A snap, a void, and then the riverbank.

Lucien alive again.

And me a little less.

---

By the time I reached the current loop—the one where Lucien had been kidnapped—I had lost count of my deaths. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. My mind felt like frayed rope.

But this loop was different.

I had reached the academy again. I had kept Lucien alive through the first months. I had been careful, meticulous. I had mapped out every known danger. Even gave clues to avoid problems, I learned in the past times.

And then the abduction happened.

No warning. No precedent in my notes. No mention in the original story.

I watched him vanish in front of me—one moment standing, the next gone, a wisp of cloak and a burst of silent light. My body moved on instinct, reaching out, but my hands closed on air.

Arian’s scream split the courtyard.

I turned and saw him—a face twisted with something more than grief. Desperation. Recognition. His eyes locked on mine, and in them I saw it: memory.

He remembered too.

But his memories were wrong. Twisted. I could see it in the way his hands shook, in the way he stumbled forward, shouting Lucien’s name. What he remembered was the story I had written. 

“No—no, this isn’t—” His voice cracked. He dropped to his knees, fists slamming into the flagstones. “Not again—!”

I had never seen Arian like that. In my story, he was the hero, the steady one. But now he looked like a man breaking apart, every piece of him splintering under a weight only he could feel. 

What happened after lucien died in my story I wrote? What happened then, Arian..what he did? Was he a hero, saving everyone. Or did he tried ro resurrected his dear friend?

I wanted to reach for him, to tell him I knew, that I’d been trying. But my own throat felt full of glass.

The System’s message appeared, calm as always:

> New mission: Save Lucien. Target location: Unknown. Priority: Maximum.

> Rewind unavailable until death or completion.

My hands clenched. My nails bit into my palms.

“No more,” I whispered.

Because the window now… it was down to an hour. Maybe less. I could feel it like a ticking clock under my skin. If Lucien died out there before I found him, I’d have to kill myself again. I’d have to start over. And over. And over.

I didn’t know how many more times I could do it.

But as I looked at Arian—devastated, kneeling on the stones, his antlers dim, his eyes burning—I felt something else rise up under the exhaustion.

Resolve.

This time, Lucien was alive. Kidnapped, but alive. The System had confirmed it. It was the longest he had lived after I came to this world.

This time, I wouldn’t just react. I wouldn’t just die and rewind and hope.

This time, I’d fight.

I knelt beside Arian, my hand brushing his shoulder. “We’re going to get him back,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “I swear it.”

He looked up at me, eyes wild. “How—”

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I’m not letting him go. Not this time.”

The System pulsed again, almost like a heartbeat:

> Mission active. Save Lucien.

I closed my eyes and drew a long, trembling breath.

“I’m coming, Lucien,” I whispered. “So please just hold on until then.”

•••