The stars above shone dimly, their light barely reaching the ravaged earth below. The world was dying, its very fabric tearing apart with every passing moment. The earth quaked as monstrous creatures, corrupted by a sinister force, rampaged through the once-thriving cities. Caelum Aetheris, the bastard son of the noble Aetheris Family , lay battered and broken on the cold, blood-soaked ground.
He had always known his life would be a struggle—born of an affair, abandoned by his family, ignored by his father, and dismissed as a mere shadow of a true heir. But he never expected his journey would end like this: alone, without glory, without the power to change his fate.
Above him loomed the Demon King, the towering figure of darkness whose every movement sent tremors through the land. His black armor gleamed in the pale moonlight, his eyes burning with the malice of an unearthly being. The king's monstrous form seemed to distort reality itself, the air around him warping like the ripples of a shattered mirror.
"You fought well, Caelum Aetheris," the Demon King's voice was cold, cruel, and oddly detached. "But it was all for nothing. You and your world were destined to fall. The truth was always beyond your reach."
Caelum's breath was shallow, each gasp a struggle as the blood flowed from his wounds. His vision blurred, and the world around him began to crumble. But amidst the pain, a single thought reverberated in his mind—a thought that defied all logic, a thought that burned through the fog of his despair:
I... I have failed. But... did I ever truly know what I was fighting for?
The Demon King raised his blade high, the jagged, black steel gleaming with a malevolent light. It was a sword forged in the heart of a dying star, an instrument of destruction that had cleaved through entire kingdoms. This was the final blow, the one that would erase Caelum's existence from this world.
"You've fought valiantly, but your time has come. Know this: your fate was sealed long before you ever raised a blade."
The Demon King's voice grew quieter, more sinister, as he lowered his sword.
"But I will let you witness the true power of the universe, Caelum. The Aetheris Family... The Space Element… none of it matters. Nothing matters. For the age of your kind is over."
In the split second before the sword fell, Caelum had an epiphany. He saw flashes—his life flashing before his eyes. The battles, the struggles, the countless moments of failure. But something else followed, something strange and unsettling. A future he had never lived, a future where he had not yet been born.
In that moment, time itself seemed to fracture. The very essence of space, the domain of his bloodline, buckled and collapsed under the weight of the Demon King's words.
The sword descended with a final, devastating arc.
---
Time shifted.
Caelum's consciousness drifted. In the depths of unconsciousness, he heard a voice—a whisper carried on the winds of forgotten realms. It was a voice of ancient power, one he had never heard before. Yet, it felt strangely familiar.
"Regression..."
A cold, metallic light filled his vision, and the ground beneath him quivered. He was pulled from the brink of death, not by his own power, but by some unseen force. The world had reset, and in a strange twist of fate, Caelum was given another chance.
But why?
The dawn broke over Aetheris, the continent of endless skies and shifting realities. It was a land where the very fabric of space was manipulated by the will of its rulers. Floating islands drifted across the horizon, and the landscape seemed to shift constantly, as if reality itself was being reformed by the Aetheris Family's control over Space.
Caelum Aetheris opened his eyes. He was not where he had been. His wounds were gone, the pain no longer present, and yet he felt a strange unease. He sat up, his mind racing as the memories of his final moments flooded back.
He was alive. But how?
The answer was simple: Regression.
He stood, looking around, but something was different. The air was charged with a sense of impending change, and a strange, unfamiliar calm hung over the land. The world was as it had been, yet it wasn't. Time had rewound. Everything was back to the way it had been before the Demon King's invasion—a time before Caelum had even set foot on the battlefield.
He was young again, just as he had been when he first entered the Academy of Resonance—a place of training where the heirs to noble families learned to bond with their Mystics and harness their elemental powers. But now, he was armed with knowledge he had no right to possess. Knowledge of the demon invasion, the corrupted Mystics, and the truth behind the Demon King's true nature.
His journey was about to begin again—but this time, he would change the course of his fate. And this time, he would fight not just for himself, but for the survival of the world.
---
The Aetheris Family had long ruled Aetheris, manipulating the very fabric of space. But no more. Caelum's time had come, and he would not fail again.