While Cassian was busy enforcing a mandatory and grueling study session on his juniors much to his own exhaustion—the shadows around his private residence violently twisted.
Damian Reinhardt slipped through the perimeter fence, his body coated in a high-tier stealth spell. His breath was shallow, his heart hammering against his ribs as he clutched the chained, obsidian box containing The Whisperer of the Shadows.
'This is it,' Damian thought, his eyes gleaming with a manic, vengeful fervor.
'The guards are rotated. The monster prince is away. I just need to slide this under his mattress, and the latent shadow mana will do the rest.'
Using a practiced noble pick-lock technique, Damian bypassed the rear window lock and slipped silently into Cassian's dimly lit bedchamber. He let out a low, breathy chuckle, kneeling down beside the plush royal bed frame to slide the silver-chained box into the darkness beneath.
"The craftsmanship of the Reinhardt family's stealth arrays has truly degraded over the past years," a freezing, monstrously deep voice rumbled from the dark corner of the room.
Damian's entire soul violently short-circuited. He froze mid-kneel, his head slowly, stiffly turning toward the shadows near the wardrobe.
And out from the darkness stepped Sir Lucien Arden. He wasn't wearing his ceremonial cloak; he stood in his bare, silver-plated vanguard armor, his ice-blue eyes glowing with a raw, murderous holy light that instantly incinerated Damian's stealth spell. The sheer weight of a Swordmaster's bloodlust crashed into the room, pinning Damian to the floor before he could even draw a breath.
"S-Sir... Sir Lucien..." Damian stammered, his face turning an instant, ghostly shade of white as he dropped the obsidian box. "I... I was merely—"
Lucien didn't let him finish. In a fraction of a millisecond, the Knight Commander closed the distance, his massive, leather-gloved hand clamping around Damian's throat like an iron vise, hoisting the young noble entirely off his feet and slamming him against the stone wall.
"Ugh—!" Damian choked, his legs kicking uselessly in the air as his vision began to blur.
Lucien reached down with his free hand, picking up the chained box. His holy mana instantly flared, burning through the silver chains and popping the latch open. His eyes locked onto the swirling, volatile mass of dark, unholy violet energy resting inside the velvet lining. As a Holy Knight, he recognized its vile nature instantly.
'The Whisperer of the Shadows!?' Lucien thought, his jaw locking with a rage so pure it nearly cracked his own teeth.
'What is such a vile thing doing in the hands of the Duke's third son?'
Lucien looked back at the gasping, suffocating Damian, his expression turning entirely unhinged. The original, chivalrous Knight Commander of the Holy Empire would have arrested the boy and brought him before the High Court. But the current Lucien wasn't solely moving for the church, but for the royal family as well....if he doesn't think things right, this could turn into a political situation for Cassian Valemont against the Duke.
'Wait...why do I care?, if it turns out that way then won't things turn out for the better for me?....the fact that they were going to plant the Whisperer of the shadows in Prince Cassian's room definitely means that the prince truly has darkness inside of him.'
'If I take this boy to the church, Cassian's true nature will be revealed and I would have fulfilled my goal!'
"Go back to your father, little serpent," Lucien whispered, his voice a freezing death sentence as he leaned into Damian's face. He snapped the box shut, shoving it violently into Damian's trembling hands. "And tell Duke Reinhardt... that if a single molecule of shadow residue enters the Prince's residence again, I will not wait for an imperial decree. I will march into your estate and I will paint the walls with the blood of your entire lineage. Do you understand me?"
Lucien released his grip, and Damian collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, clutching the box to his chest in pure, unbridled terror. Without looking back, the young noble scrambled out of the window, fleeing into the night like a scalded dog.
An hour later, Cassian finally returned home from his classes, yawning loudly and loosening his uniform collar. He glanced around his pristine, silent room, completely oblivious to the near-assassination that had just occurred.
"Elias!" Cassian complained, tossing his blazer onto a chair. "Why do my pillows look slightly shifted? Did you change the linen without my permission? You know I hate the smell of the palace lavender detergent!"
Standing outside the window sill, hidden in the branch of a massive oak tree, Lucien watched the prince complain about his pillows, a soft, unbelieving chuckle escaped his lips.
'If he truly knew what nearly happened to him, he wouldn't be complaining right now... arrogant bastard.' Lucien clicked his tongue jumping down from the tree and walks around to use the front door.
'But as for me though...why am I hesitating to suppress him when the truth has become clear about his dark mana?'
"I must be really going crazy."
*****
The following day.
For Cassian to firmly solidify his new ScumbagRehabilitation strategy, he decided to take his methods public. He hijacked the academy's central courtyard, setting up an open-air, improvised seminar right under the massive marble statue of the First Emperor his great ancestor.
"Listen up, you pampered, silver-spoon aristocrats," Cassian announced, lounging lazily in a grand chair at the center of the pavilion, his crimson eyes scanning the crowd of curious nobles who had gathered to watch the spectacle. "Your professors teach you how to fight wars with grand, clean spells and historical formations. That is why you will all die within ten seconds if you ever step into a real shadow trench. Today, we are discussing Remedial Practical Survival."
Cassian spent the next hour utilizing his 50 years of collective past-life mercenary knowledge. He taught them how to use minor, low-tier earth magic to create jagged spikes in dirt roads to cripple enemy mounts; how to mix common wild herbs to create a makeshift, non-magical blinding powder; and how to slice a shadow fiend's secondary tendons to incapacitate it without wasting high-grade mana.
To Cassian, it was basic, practical survival logic from his past lives and his mercenary days. But to the arrogant, traditional nobles of the academy, these brutal, unrefined, and highly efficient methods sounded like a terrifying display of "dark, forbidden arts."
"This is absurd!" a sharp, arrogant voice cut through the courtyard.
Standing at the edge of the pavilion was a high-ranking senior noble from the Crown Prince's faction—Lord Judicata. He strode forward, his face twisted into a smirk of pure disdain. "Your Highness, these methods are entirely classless and barbaric! Slicing tendons? Blinding powder? This is the methodology of a cowardly rat, not a glorious prince of the Valemont line! Are you trying to corrupt the minds of our students with such vile, dishonorable tricks because your own royal magic is too warped to face a foe head-on?"
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The nobles smirked, waiting for Cassian to explode into a typical, violent royal rage that would prove Julian right.
Cassian merely leaned his head on his fist, letting out a slow, thoroughly bored sigh. He opened his mouth to deliver a lazy, crushing modern insult that would ruin the boy's social standing—
But before a single syllable could escape Cassian's lips, a sudden, heavy, and terrifyingly synchronized rustle echoed across the courtyard.
The entire group of junior prodigies—both commoners and nobles whom Cassian had mentored over the last two days—stood up from their benches in perfect unison. Their faces were entirely devoid of childlike innocence; instead, their expressions were completely hollow, cold, and unhinged.
Leo stepped to the front of the kids, his jaw clenched as he glared at Judicata with a terrifying, mini-tyrant expression. Behind him, the frail commoner girl who had wept over the mana potion took a heavy step forward, her fingers twitching with a sudden, pressurized accumulation of elemental mana.
The twenty junior students formed a literal, terrifying human wall in front of Cassian's lounge chair. Their eyes were locked onto Lord Judicata with a creepy, hyper-loyal, and murderous intensity that made the senior noble instantly freeze, his face turning entirely pale.
"If you insult our Big Brother again," Leo spoke, his voice dripping with a cold, protective malice that mirrored Cassian's default tone perfectly, "—we will ensure your family's knights are permanently banned from our training sectors. Retract your words, Lord Judicata, before we make you do it on your knees."
The junior commoners didn't even speak; they simply cracked their knuckles, their eyes burning with a cult-like devotion to the prince who had given them resources and fixed their forms.
Lord Judicata took three frantic steps back, his sweat dripping onto the cobblestones as he looked at the wall of creepy, hyper-loyal kids ready to tear him apart in broad daylight. "Y-You... you people are insane!" he stammered, turning on his heel and sprinting away from the courtyard in a blind panic.
Cassian sat frozen in his lounge chair, his arm still propped up against his cheek, his crimson eyes staring blankly at the backs of his junior students. His internal monologue had completely, utterly flatlined in profound existential horror.
'Wait a minute...' Cassian's modern soul was violently screaming in pure panic.
'Why on earth do these kids look like a radicalized, hyper-violent cult?! I didn't ask for a private militia! I just wanted to pass the semester, upgrade my reputation to a baseline level of 'not a monster,' and secure an insurance policy! Why am I suddenly looking like a ruthless mafia boss running a junior syndicate?! At this rate, Lucien is definitely going to decapitate me for starting a domestic rebellion!'
Cassian slowly shifted his gaze toward the side of the pavilion, checking to see if Lucien's sword was already drawn.
But Sir Lucien Arden was merely standing there, his arms crossed, a look of profound, deeply satisfied pride shining within his ice-blue eyes as he stared at the loyal children. He looked toward Cassian, giving the prince a slow, solemn, and fiercely supportive nod.
'I must say...you have trained them well, prince of Edrath,' Lucien thought, his heart softening up with admiration.
'A true monarch does not need to speak to silence his critics. Your army is growing... But I hope that you won't use these kids for your vile ambitions.'
Cassian slowly buried his face in his palms, letting out a long, thoroughly miserable groan. 'God help me. This fifteenth timeline is completely broken....Why does it feel like Lucien Arden is getting closer and closer to me?'
'No, he needs to go. He still scares me'
*****
### Chapter 15: The Quiet Hour & The Boundless Sky
After finally concluding his grueling, high-pressure "open for all" seminars, Cassian managed to carve out a rare, precious pocket of undisturbed time for himself.
The strategy had worked beautifully. At the very least, his junior underclassmen had become remarkably stable, structured, and entirely competent enough to manage their own intense daily training regimens without requiring his constant, exhausting physical supervision. They were running like a well-oiled machine—or rather, a well-disciplined cult.
With his immediate survival insurance policy safely locked in place, Cassian could finally redirect his absolute focus toward his true, ultimate objective: researching advanced dimensional leaping and finding a permanent path back to Earth.
He leaned heavily over his private study desk, his crimson eyes scanning page after page of archaic text under the flickering amber glow of a high-grade mana lamp.
*The Academy's secret vault didn't have nearly enough high-tier spatial relics to help me skip across worlds,* Cassian thought, his brows drawing into a frustrated, deep knot as he aggressively flipped a heavy parchment page. *Mhm... perhaps the Holy Church or the Imperial Royal Castle. I am entirely certain that their restricted subterranean vaults will possess the ancient artifacts I truly need to open a spatial rift. I'll have to request an official audience with the King to grant me unrestricted access to the private Royal Library. I just need to fabricate a flawless, highly convincing excuse so he doesn't suspect I'm planning to permanently evaporate from this empire.*
"My Lord..."
A soft, hesitant voice broke through the thick silence of the study. Elias stepped out from the perimeter shadows of the room, keeping his head respectfully bowed as he carefully approached the desk.
"Pardon me, Your Imperial Highness, but the time... it is getting quite late now. The campus bells chimed midnight long ago. Shouldn't we prepare you for your evening bed rest?"
"No," Cassian murmured, his eyes never wavering from the complex geometric arrays detailed in the open tome before him. "You can go ahead and retire first, Elias. I will be deeply occupied with this specific text for quite a while longer. Go to bed."
Cassian lazily shifted his gaze over toward the dark corner of the room, where a massive, armored figure remained standing as straight and unyielding as a marble statue. "You too, Sir Arden. Don't let my late-night habits keep you waiting indefinitely. Go rest."
Lucien didn't move an inch. Instead, the giant Knight Commander forced a rigid, remarkably unconvincing smile that completely failed to reach his piercing ice-blue eyes. "Do not mind me, Your Highness. I will continue to stay right here and wait for you to conclude your work. After all, it is my sworn, absolute duty to be permanently by your side."
*Look at him,* Cassian thought, his internal voice letting out a long, deeply exhausted groan. *He's definitely staying up because he thinks I'm plotting a sinister, dark-magic coup while everyone is asleep! He doesn't trust me for a single second. He's just waiting for me to pull out a forbidden curse so he can justify breaking my spine.*
"Indeed, Your Highness," Elias spoke up, offering a small, relieved sigh as he gestured toward the legendary soldier. "Please let Sir Arden fulfill his protective duties. If he remains here, then even I will be able to sleep peacefully tonight, knowing that the legendary Hero of the Empire is safeguarding your life."
Cassian let out a heavy, deflated sigh, waving his hand in a casual, dismissing gesture without looking up again. "Suit yourselves, then. Just do not disturb my train of thought."
"Very well, Your Highness. Enjoy your studies," Elias murmured, bowing deeply one final time before quietly stepping out of the study chambers, leaving the prince and the knight entirely alone.
The silence that settled over the room was thick and heavy. For a few minutes, the only sound was the rhythmic, crisp turning of parchment. Cassian finally grew entirely annoyed by the massive, suffocating shadow looming over his left shoulder.
"Standing for the entire night can be exceptionally tiring, Sir Arden. Take a seat," Cassian ordered flatly, pointing a lazy finger toward the plush leather chair placed directly across from his desk, before turning his attention right back to the open tome.
"Standing for a mere few hours cannot be considered difficult, Your Highness," Lucien replied, his deep voice carrying a cool, professional distance. "Compared to the grueling three-week trenches I have endured as a knight of the Holy Vanguard, this is luxury."
"Just sit down. It is a direct command from me, your prince," Cassian snapped, his tone dropping into a low, aristocratic growl that brooked zero argument. "Having such an absurdly tall, armored figure hovering directly above my head the entire time is an experience I thoroughly dislike. It disrupts my focus."
Lucien stared down at the prince for a silent, contemplative moment. Finally, he let out a soft, defeated sigh. The heavy clatter of his silver greaves echoed softly against the rug as he walked around the perimeter of the desk, sinking his massive frame into the leather chair opposite Cassian.
As Lucien sat there, his ice-blue eyes tracking the delicate movement of Cassian's fingers against the ancient book, a strange, profound sense of absurdity washed over him.
It was truly ridiculous how this prince treated him. Throughout the entire continent, people spoke of Lucien Arden only in hushed, reverent tones—calling him the legendary Hero of the Empire, the flawless Holy Knight, a paragon of chivalry and untainted righteousness. Powerful dukes and foreign kings spoke to him with utmost caution. Yet Prince Cassian Valemont casually treated him like an ordinary, slightly annoying subordinate—a nuisance that he genuinely couldn't stand being around.
*Oh well,* Lucien thought, a faint, bitter edge tracing his mind as he leaned back against the leather. *What is the point of overanalyzing it? He is simply too inherently arrogant and self-absorbed to ever acknowledge anyone else as greater or more powerful than himself.*
"Your Highness... if I may ask a question," Lucien spoke up, his voice breaking the quiet harmony of the room.
"Yes?" Cassian replied smoothly, not even bothering to raise his head from the text.
"Why are you pushing your physical limits so aggressively to learn about skipping across dimensions?" Lucien asked, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward, resting his forearms on the edge of the mahogany desk. "The way I see it, it is not merely a passing scholarly curiosity that drives you to read these ancient texts until dawn. What is it that you are truly trying to achieve?"
Cassian's hand froze mid-turn on the parchment.
He sat completely still for a moment, the ambient glow of the mana lamp casting long shadows across his sharp, handsome features. He knew he shouldn't say a single word. In all fourteen of his past lives, revealing the truth had only ever led to institutional lockups, execution, or sheer madness. But right now, his body was completely exhausted, his mind was entirely drained, and the heavy wine from the previous nights had left his guard remarkably thin.
Cassian let out a low, weary chuckle, finally closing the heavy tome with a soft *thud* and resting his chin on his interlocked fingers. He looked directly into Lucien's eyes.
"Well... I shouldn't be telling a single soul about this right now," Cassian murmured, his voice dropping into a soft, surprisingly candid cadence. "But I suppose I will tell you, Sir Arden. Since you are so insufferably tight-lipped and bound by your pristine vows."
Lucien tensed, his posture locking as he waited for a grand villainous confession.
"I want to leave this place," Cassian said simply. His crimson eyes looked past Lucien, staring out the dark glass window toward the starry night sky. "I want to go to another world entirely. A place where I... where I might actually belong. A world where I won't be a targeted prince hated by the masses, or forced to live a brutal, chaotic life that doesn't even feel like my own."
Cassian let out a small, self-deprecating snort, a faint, genuine trace of humor entering his tone. "I will certainly miss the absolute luxury, the endless royal wealth, and the premium wine, though. But then again, I suppose it cannot be helped... because this place..."
Cassian paused, his gaze dropping down to his own pale, royal hands. A sudden, profoundly solemn smile touched his lips—a look so incredibly soft, fragile, and deeply melancholic that it completely caught Lucien off guard.
"This place is not my home."
Lucien's breath caught firmly in his throat. For a split second, he didn't see the tyrannical, multi-elemental mastermind who had threatened the Crown Prince or commanded dark shadows. He saw someone entirely displaced—a lonely, exhausted soul trapped inside a golden cage, staring at a world he felt no connection to.
"But... Your Highness," Lucien spoke, his voice dropping into a register that was far softer, gentler, and more profoundly tentative than he had ever intended. "This empire... this palace. This is your home."
Cassian raised his head, his crimson eyes meeting Lucien's with a look of quiet, profound amusement—a look that silently said, *'You just don't understand a single thing, do you?'*
"It is my home as *Cassian Valemont*," Cassian explained softly, his voice carrying the weight of fifty years of brutal, repeating trauma. "But trust me, Lucien... it truly does not feel like home. And the things that I am forced to experience here... I just..."
*I just want to go home. Back to my apartment. Back to my quiet, boring life.*
Cassian let out a long, heavy sigh, his shoulders relaxing as his eyes drifted back down to the closed cover of the tome. For the first time in this lifetime, the atmosphere between the prince and his knight wasn't suffocatingly chaotic, filled with paralyzing fear, or dripping with murderous bloodlust. It was quiet. Peaceful. Grounded.
And for the first time across all fifteen of his agonizing loops, Kagen had actually opened up to someone about his desperate, bone-deep yearn to leave this forsaken fantasy world.
But then, the sheer, unadulterated irony of the situation hit his brain like a physical comedy routine.
*Who did I just confess my deepest soul to?* Cassian thought, his eyes widening slightly before a brilliant grin broke across his face. *I just poured my heart out to Lucien Arden! The legendary Holy executioner who has literally severed my head, stabbed my chest, and hunted me across frozen mountains in every single past life! I'm begging my own grim reaper to help me pack my bags!*
The pure, ridiculous absurdity of it was too much. Cassian let out a sudden, vibrant burst of laughter. It wasn't the cold, mocking chuckle of Prince Cassian; it was a loud, sincere, and thoroughly childlike laugh, completely shaking his worries away as he tilted his head back, his silver-black hair falling across his forehead.
Lucien completely stiffened in his chair, his entire body freezing in pure, unadulterated surprise. His heart hammered violently against his ribs at the sound.
But as he stared at the laughing prince—watching the brilliant, unburdened light dance in those crimson eyes, seeing the genuine, bubbly warmth radiating from a face that usually wore nothing but a mask of freezing arrogance—Lucien found his own defensive walls completely crumbling. He leaned back against the leather cushion, allowing himself to simply sit there and silently indulge in the rare, beautiful moment. After all, it wasn't every day that he got to see the most vicious, dangerous prince in the empire look so entirely innocent and free... even if it was only for a fleeting second.
### The Study: One Hour Later
The heavy exertion of running continuous academy seminars, managing a faction of children, and reading high-tier spatial theory until the dead of night finally took its toll. The outside world had completely melted into pitch-black darkness, and the silence across the sleeping academy grounds was absolute.
Cassian had completely lost the battle against sleep. His head had slumped forward, his cheek resting directly against the hard parchment of the ancient tome as he slept like a total log. His chest was heaving in a slow, rhythmic cadence, soft, quiet breaths escaping his slightly parted lips.
Lucien slowly stood up from his chair, taking a deep, quiet breath to steady his own racing thoughts. He walked around the mahogany table with entirely silent, controlled steps, coming to a halt directly beside the sleeping prince.
He stared down at him. *How completely defenseless,* Lucien thought, his ice-blue eyes tracking the soft contour of Cassian's jawline, the long silver-black lashes resting against his pale skin. He contemplated whether he should aggressively wake the prince up according to protocol, or simply find a heavy velvet blanket to cover him up.
Before he could decide, Lucien's gaze fell straight onto the heavy, closed tome that Cassian was currently using as a makeshift pillow. His eyes scanned the archaic title formatting detailing dimensional distortion and universal skipping laws.
*How utterly absurd...* Lucien thought, a low, faint huff escaping his nose as he carefully leaned down. *Do you truly believe that you can achieve the absolute impossible, rewrite the laws of the primordial gods, and cross dimensions just to escape this world?*
Lucien slid his massive, powerful arms beneath Cassian's slender frame. With a single, fluid, and effortlessly smooth motion, he scooped the sleeping prince directly into his arms, hoisting him against his heavy chest armor.
The moment he was lifted, Cassian didn't wake up. Instead, entirely driven by a deep, subconscious need for comfort, his body instinctively shifted. He curled closer into the warmth, wrapping his slender arms completely around Lucien's neck, his face burying right into the crook of the knight's shoulder.
Lucien's entire frame violently shuddered from the sudden, uninhibited proximity. He locked his arms securely around the prince's waist and thighs, holding him with a fierce, unbreakable grip.
*Well, Your Imperial Highness...* Lucien thought, his ice-blue eyes darkening into a terrifyingly intense, violently possessive glare as he looked down at the sleeping face against his shoulder. *Even if it were mathematically possible for you to skip across worlds... do you truly believe I would ever allow you to leave my sight? There is still so much I need to unravel about you, your past lifetimes, and the absolute darkness hidden within your soul.*
*You claimed I have executed you fourteen times. You claimed I am your doom.*
Lucien slowly walked out of the study, carrying the sleeping prince through the dim, secure corridors toward his private residential bedchambers.
*If I am your eternal executioner, Kagen... then I will simply rewrite my purpose. I will hold you so tightly to this earth that no dimensional rift will ever be strong enough to tear you away from me.*
He entered the quiet bedroom, carefully laying Cassian down onto the plush velvet mattress. Lucien pulled the heavy, silk-embroidered blankets up to the prince's chin, lingering over the bed for a long, silent moment as he smoothed a stray lock of silver-black hair away from Cassian's forehead.
"Sleep well, my beautiful riddle," Lucien whispered into the darkness, his voice a low, terrifying vow. "You are never going home."