The rain in the Holy Empire of Edrath always tasted like iron.
For the eleventh time in fifty-five years, Kagen Valemont—currently residing in the miserable, cursed body of Prince Cassian Valemont—knelt on the cold stone of the execution platform. His ink–black hair clung to his forehead, dripping rainwater into his eyes, and the heavy containment chains around his wrists chafed like hell.
Honestly, the chafing was the most irritating part from this whole ordeal.
Below the platform, the citizens of Edrath were doing their usual routine. They cheered, they threw rotten tomatoes, and they screamed obscenities about the "Corrupt Shadow Prince."
*'Blah, blah, blah,'* Kagen thought, blinking away a raindrop.
*'I get it. I'm the villain. Can we speed this up? My knees are freezing.'*
He glanced up through his lashes at the man standing over him.
Sir Lucien Arden. The Empire's Sword. The glittering, righteous war hero with ice-blue eyes that currently held nothing but absolute, cold disgust. Lucien looked immaculate, even in the downpour. His silver cape didn't even look damp.
'Show-off.' Kagen rolled his eyes and Lucien raised his massive, glowing broadsword. The divine light magic radiating from the blade hummed, vibrating right through Kagen's teeth.
"Any last words, Your Highness?" Lucien's voice was like grinding ice, it was always so deep, so righteous, so profoundly annoying.. Dark, dramatic, and deeply cinematic just like a chivalrous knight of the continent that he truly was.
Kagen, kneeling in his heavy, blood-soaked royal robes, looked up through his tangled black hair and sighed, his shoulders slumping. He didn't look like a terrified tyrant. He looked like an underpaid retail worker at the end of a double shift.
"Yeah," Kagen muttered, staring directly into Lucien's beautiful ice-blue eyes and murderous face. "Next time, aim slightly to the left. You always nick my collarbone on the way down, and it's incredibly loud inside my own head."
Lucien's perfect eyebrows twitched. For a fraction of a second, confusion flickered in his ice-blue eyes. The script was broken. The villain wasn't begging, laughing maniacally, or cursing the heavens. Instead he was giving feedback on the blade alignment.
"May the Light have mercy on your foul soul," Lucien intoned, recovering his composure as he swung the blade downward.
*'If I ever get back to Earth,'* Kagen thought peacefully as the glowing steel rushed toward his neck, *'I am going to strangle my sister until she turns purple.'*
*Schwing.*
The blade fell. Darkness came.
*Flash.*
Kagen took a massive, gasping breath of air and slammed his eyes flying open.
He wasn't dead. Of course he wasn't dead.
He was staring at a ridiculously lavish canopy ceiling draped in deep violet silk and gold embroidery. He didn't smell rain or iron. Instead he smelled expensive lavender incense and oil, and the distinct, sickeningly sweet aroma of royal silk and bitter medicinal herbs, and suffocating royal privilege.
He sat up abruptly, clutching his neck. It was perfectly intact without even a single scar, and then he looked down at his hands. His limbs feeling stiff and entirely too light. Pale, unblemished, and completely devoid of the calluses he had built up in the timelines where he tried to become a rogue mercenary or a battlefield healer. Smooth, unblemished, and entirely attached to his shoulders.
He looked around. The massive canopy bed. The gold-leaf moldings. The ridiculous velvet curtains. He was back in the grand bedroom of Prince Cassian Valemont.
He caught his reflection in the full-length mirror across the room. Striking crimson eyes. Intimidatingly sharp, aristocratic features. Dark black hair.
He was nineteen again.
This was the infamous "sick leave" during his senior year at the imperial academy. A brief window of time where the original, bratty Prince Cassian had faked a magical exhaustion migraine just to skip exams and throw tantrums in the capital.
Kagen stared at the mirror for a full three minutes. Then, he faceplanted right back into the silk pillows and let out a long, muffled scream of pure, unadulterated rage.
"Fourteen times," he hissed into the down feathers. "I have died fourteen damn times."
"Now timeline number fifteen," Kagen whispered to the empty, luxurious room.
He threw his head back into the plush pillows and stared at the ceiling, utterly exhausted.
Fifty-five years ago, Kagen had been a normal modern university student. He had a budget, an annoying thesis to write, and a sister who was aggressively obsessed with a dark fantasy novel called *The Holy Sword of Edrath*.
The only thing Kagen remembered from her hours of endless yapping was her favorite summary: *"Oh my god, the villain prince Cassian gets corrupted by shadow magic and dies so horribly, it's amazing."*
He hadn't cared. Until his sister convinced him to help her set up some "harmless, trendy occult ritual" she found online. When he had jokingly agreed to let her draw a "harmless ritual" under his bed using her weird occult books, he hadn't expected the brat to accidentally switch the ritual patterns. He certainly hadn't expected to wake up as Cassian, the infamous villain prince destined to be decapitated by the male lead. Except the absolute brat had secretly switched his ritual chalk patterns at the last second, tearing his soul out of his body and dumping him straight into the doomed prince's skin.
For the first few lifetimes, Kagen had actually tried. Oh, he had tried *so* hard.
On Timeline 1: He acted like a literal saint. Gave to charity. (Result: Poisoned by a corrupt duke; Lucien finished him off anyway).
Timeline 2:** Ran away to become a farmer. (Result: Drafted into the war; Lucien mistook him for a spy and executed him).
Timeline 3:** Tried to expose the Church's corruption to Lucien directly. (Result: Lucien thought he was manipulating him; executed for treason).
Timeline 4:** Sacrificed his own body to shield Lucien from a shadow beast. (Result: The shadow magic corrupted him faster; Lucien killed him out of "pity").
Timeline 5:** He ran away to marry a commoner. Lucien tracked him down because the royal bloodline apparently possessed a divine fertility trait, and the Empire needed him back to breed political heirs for a foreign treaty. When Kagen refused, he was branded a rogue element and executed.
Timeline 6:** He sacrificed his own life forces to save the kingdom from a plague. They called him a demon anyway. (Result: Lucien, the sword, the chopping block.)
And so on.
Kindness? Useless. Rebellion? Useless. Compliance? Useless. No matter what he did, the plot of this stupid world corrected itself like a hyper-aggressive virus, always driving him back to the executioner's block.
He had been good. He had been bad. He had been a martyr, a coward, a politician, and a hermit. And every single time, fate dragged him right back, with Lucien Arden holding the axe.
Kagen rolled onto his back, staring blankly at the ceiling, pulling the silk duvet over his face and let out a long, muffled groan.
"I'm done," he announced to the empty royal bedchamber. "I am completely, entirely, legally done quitting this novel."
He wasn't going to be a villain. That required too much scheduling and scheming. But he sure as hell wasn't going to be a good person either. He was going to do absolutely nothing. He was going to sit in this palace, eat the kitchen's expensive pastries, look out the window like a tragic, fragile painting, and let the empire handle its own damn problems.
No more trying to save the kingdom. No more trying to avoid the plot. But also, no more plotting to overthrow the Emperor. If the universe wanted him to stay in this stupid world, fine. He was going to do absolutely nothing. He would eat royal pastries, sleep fourteen hours a day, and become the most useless, idle prince in the history of the Valemont bloodline.
Let the plot save itself. Let Lucien fight the shadow beasts alone. Cassian Valemont was officially on strike.
A sharp knock rattled the heavy oak doors of his bedchamber.
"Your Highness," a calm, familiar voice called out from the hallway. It was Elias, his personal servant. "Sir Lucien Arden has just crossed the palace gates. The Emperor has requested your presence in the grand hall to welcome the Knight Commander back from the Northern Front."
Underneath the covers, Kagen didn't even move. He just pulled the heavy blanket entirely over his head.
Let the hero come. Let the plot happen. Unless someone was bringing him a plate of tarts or a portal back to the 21st century, Prince Cassian Valemont was officially out of office and become the most idle Prince in history.
******