Path of the Extra

”Do not worry. I promise you this. Go save Azriel, and once I am free of these chains, I will make both Caleus and Lioren pay.”

”...”

?

...?

...Huh?

”Lumine?”

Lumine looked at Celestina.

She was shackled in front of him, bound in place, yet still carrying herself with the unyielding pride that made her worthy of the title Frost Heiress. Her posture was firm. Her eyes were cold. Her will had not bent.

And yet Lumine barely saw her.

His gaze drifted past her, unfocused.

”Lumine? Did you hear me?”

”Ye-eah? No—wait... what? S-sorry...?”

Still caught in an absolute daze, Lumine looked around.

Only then did he realize where he was.

’No... w-what... what... what happened?’

The blood drained from his face. He went pale, ghastly pale, like a man struck by sudden illness. His legs weakened beneath him, and before he could stop himself, he staggered back and fell hard onto the floor.

Right into a smear of blood.

He stared down at his hands.

They were trembling.

Dirty blood clung to his palms, dark and wet, seeping between his fingers. As he looked at it, his eyes began to tremble too.

”E-eh? Lumine!? What is wrong!? Did I ask too much of you...!?”

The moment Celestina saw his condition, her firmness shattered as though it had been a lie from the beginning. Panic flushed across her face, and in an instant, the heiress was gone.

Only a worried frightened girl remained.

”W-w-w-wha—! What!? Hey! Lumine, you are bleeding from your nose!? Lumine! Wait, no! Yelena! Yelena! Get down here quickly! Quickly!”

’Why...? Why am I back here...?’

The last thing he remembered was standing on that cliffside with Azriel and Lioren, and then...

And then...

And then—

”Lumine!”

Yelena’s voice ripped him out of his thoughts.

She was suddenly kneeling beside him, gripping his shoulders with both hands. Her face was pale with terror, her eyes wide and shining as if she was about to cry.

”Y-Yelena...?”

”Lumine, you are finally back!”

”Back...? Back from what...?”

His head still spun. Dizziness and confusion tangled together inside him, and his stomach twisted so violently that he had to fight the urge to vomit.

”You tell me! You had a nosebleed and you weren’t responding to us! You were so pale I thought you were going to die! You still are actually!”

”Huh...?”

Lumine slowly brought his fingers beneath his nostrils.

His fingertips came away wet.

Red.

”Oh...”

When Celestina saw that he had returned to himself, her worried expression softened. Her lips, which had been pressed into a tense line, loosened as she let out a relieved sigh. A moment later, she forced herself to regain her composure.

”What happened, Lumine?”

Yelena’s worry had lessened, but only slightly.

”I... I don’t know...”

Lumine lifted a trembling hand and gripped the side of his face. A sharp, pounding headache pulsed behind his left eye. Wincing, he looked up at Celestina.

”What... what did you say to me? B-before... I got sick?”

The way he spoke made it clear to both girls that Lumine was not himself.

Celestina hesitated.

”...I told you to save Azriel while I deal with Lioren and Caleus. But forget about that now. You are in no condition to go to Azriel.”

”No... I...”

The words left him on instinct, without thought.

Celestina cut him off coldly, her voice turning authoritative.

”No. You can barely tell the difference between left and right. Sending you to save Azriel would be too dangerous. We do not know what might happen, and I am in no mood to discover that you died because you failed to dodge an entire floor collapsing onto your head.”

”...Right.”

...Right.

Now he knew.

”Argh!”

”Lumine!”

”Bring him to me quickly!”

Lumine clutched his head with both hands as the headache worsened.

Now he remembered.

Azriel.

Azriel.

Azriel.

Azriel.

Azriel.

Azriel.

’He brought the entire cliff down with him and... and... and killed... Killed us all.’

Horror twisted across Lumine’s face.

He looked at Celestina as Yelena tried to drag him closer to her. His ears began to ring. More blood slipped from his nose, warm and steady, and the ringing grew louder.

Louder.

Louder.

Until it drowned out everything around him.

The girls were shouting. He could see their mouths moving, their faces contorted with fear, but their voices were swallowed by the noise inside his skull.

The only thing Lumine barely heard through the ringing was a cry.

Or a shout.

Or perhaps something caught between the two.

’Ah, no... this can’t be real...’

Lumine understood what had happened.

’I... I went... I went back in time?’

”..!”

Then, without warning, he felt the delicate weight of two slender hands settle upon his shoulders from behind.

Lumine’s entire body went rigid.

Their touch was soft.

Far too soft.

Not the softness of warmth or comfort, but something pale and unnatural, something that made his skin tighten as though it were trying to crawl away from his bones. Her fingers lingered there for a moment, light as breath, before they began to glide down his arms with slow, unhurried patience.

His stomach turned.

Bile rose in his throat.

He did not know why it terrified him so much.

There was no force in it. No claws digging into his flesh. No blade pressed against his throat. No violence he could understand, no violence he could fight against. But...

The gentleness felt deliberate.

Intimate.

Obscene.

Each brush of her fingers seemed to leave something behind beneath his skin, a crawling, sickening sensation that spread through him like rot blooming under flesh.

Then her arms slipped around his chest.

Lumine stopped breathing.

They wrapped around him with such care that, for one dreadful instant, it almost resembled affection.

But there was no comfort in it.

No warmth.

No humanity.

Only a cold, silken pressure drawing him back against something he could not see, something that held him as though he belonged to it.

Revulsion twisted through him, sharp enough to tighten his throat.

He wanted to move. He wanted to tear himself free, to shove her away, to claw at every place her fingers had touched until his skin bled clean.

But his body would not listen.

Fear had buried itself too deep into his limbs, merciless and absolute, leaving him frozen in the hollow of her embrace.

Her.

Who was she?

No.

What was she?

The questions rose in his mind, but they felt useless the moment they formed. Some instinct older than thought recoiled from her, screaming that this was not a woman, not a person, not anything that should ever have been allowed so close to him.

She felt like something that had learned tenderness by watching it from far away.

Something ancient and empty, trying to mimic love with her hands.

Then her lips brushed the rim of his right ear.

Lumine’s stomach lurched.

”My hero...”

The whisper slid into him, soft and intimate.

For a single breath, the maddening ringing and distant cries vanished.

He could hear his own pulse now, frantic and uneven, trapped beneath the quiet pressure of her arms. Her mouth remained near his ear, close enough that every faint movement of her lips scraped against his nerves.

A tremor passed through him, born from a terror so intimate it felt almost like shame.

His body flinched at the contact, and the disgust that followed was immediate and vicious, flooding him with the urge to retch.

Still, she held him.

Still, she touched him as though he were precious.

Her lips lingered near his ear with a patience that felt inhuman. When she spoke again, her voice unfurled in a low, velvet murmur.

It was beautiful.

Unbearably beautiful.

The kind of beauty that belonged to poisoned things and moonlit graves. To flowers growing from the mouths of corpses.

Divine, perhaps.

But not holy.

Gentle, perhaps.

But not kind.

”Little light...” she breathed.

Lumine’s blood went cold.

Somewhere beneath the horror, beneath the crawling disgust, beneath the unbearable feeling of her arms wrapped around him as if she had every right to touch him, another voice whispered through the dark.

”This is what we call... a redo.”

[The ??? Skill, [Redo], has successfully been activated.]