Empress of Self-Ruin

Chapter 14: On Blood and Heartbeats

I had only been reading through my book for less than five minutes when I heard the shuffling sound of a chair being pulled. I snuck a glance through the corner of my eyes and saw that Arsen had stood up from his seat and was walking to a row of bookshelves on the left side of the room.

I furrowed my brow at the swish of his dark robes and bright scarlet hair heading to the magic section of the library. It's strange. Arsen had never been interested in magic before.

While our neighbor, the Helios Empire, was famous for its strong holy power, our empire was famous for swordsmanship. That was why Arsen, just like his father, grandfather, and his predecessors before him, was very good at handling swords.

Though magic was the base of technology in this world, our empire barely produced any magicians in centuries. We mainly imported stuff like magic stones and hired mages from mage-based kingdoms like Verena or Ravaryn when we needed help with anything magic-related—like building good plumbing, for example, so it was strange that he was suddenly interested in magic to the point that he decided to visit Graniel Royal Library.

I bit my lip in contemplation when it finally clicked. The regression. He must have wanted to find out about the regression. I supposed all of this must be surreal, even for him.

Too bad he would never find anything about regression in any magic books no matter how hard he looked. After all, it wasn't magic at all—it was Electra's holy power that turned back time.

Now that I thought about it, a child born with holy power through our imperial family bloodline was unusual.

I did hear that the famous abandoned princess from our neighboring empire was born with magical powers instead of holy powers. Still, her mother was from the Verena Kingdom, so it wasn't strange if she had inherited the power from her mother's side.

But Phoebe and Arsen were both from this empire and neither of them had any holy powers, so why would their child be blessed with an incredible amount of it—so much that she was even—or would be declared a Saint?

Then it struck me. Electra was unique. She was an anomaly, a special exception. She was a child who piqued the interest of god. The favored one. A child loved by god to the point that the world turned back its time because she didn't get her happy ending in the first timeline.

My mood went from bad to worse in a matter of seconds. That fucking little bitch! I bet she visited Leon in his dream whenever she could—they were probably concocting a plan to get her parents together again so she could be born.

Anger filled my eyes at such thoughts.

What a bunch of bullshit!

What does it make me, then?

I moaned with self-loathing, bringing my fingers into my hair. I wanted to pull it out. I was feeling so fucking—I didn't know what I was feeling—only that everything about her left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to dwell on my misery. My pity party was disturbed when I heard a muted scream from two bookshelves away, the row where Arsen had disappeared, but it clearly wasn't Arsen's voice; the voice belonged to a woman.

Setting aside my book, I got up to check—just in case there was another poor lady who got the misfortune of falling from a ladder or having books showered on top of their head or both, just like me earlier. Then maybe I wouldn't feel so bad for being the only unlucky one here.

Making my way to the source of the voice, I stopped in front of the row between two shelves containing tons of books about magic, and then I... froze.

I found myself staring at the most cliché of romance scenes where the female lead falls while trying to get a book on a higher shelf, but of course, the male lead was just conveniently there to catch her.