“Huh?”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“Zahid? You don’t even have divine power—how the hell are you here...?”

The four Divine Beasts and I had at least infused our divine power to be here. But Zahid... how?

A part of me even wondered if this was all just a dream. I blinked slowly, uncertain.

<Zahid and I were partially merged during our time in the cave beneath the Temple of Memories, remember?>

Ah.

Our souls had begun fusing into one body—and I’d stopped it midway.

<Even though we were separated afterward, a part of our consciousness remains connected.>

Fire’s explanation made me jerk back in alarm.

“What? Are you saying Zahid is partly a beast now?”

I let out a deep sigh and muttered blankly.

“No wonder he acts like an animal whenever we’re alone—like his ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) brain just shuts off...”

<Hold on. That’s not fair. That part isn’t my influence. Just so you know, I’m asexual.>

Fire hurriedly cut in, his voice defensive.

Zahid let out a sharp, exasperated scoff.

“You think this is the time for that kind of talk?! Huh?!”

One look at his typical expression of disbelief, and I knew it really was Zahid’s soul, dragged here alongside Fire.

Grinding his teeth, he clutched my wrist tightly.

“You... I knew you’d pull something like this.”

“Huh?”

“I just knew... you’d do this.”

His violet eyes blazed coldly, as if they were about to swallow me whole.

I blinked, then murmured,

“What... me quietly disappearing for everyone’s sake? But they’d forget everything anyway, so it wouldn’t even hurt. Seems like a good choice...”

“Don’t give me that crap.”

Zahid’s voice was seething with rage.

“How is that a good choice? Why are you always so damn cruel?”

“No, Zahid. Just think rationally, okay?”

I looked up at him, lips trembling, and gently touched his cheek with one hand.

“You still don’t get it, even after coming all the way here?”

“What.”

“I was born like this. For someone like me, normal happiness is nearly impossible. But...”

Trying to explain everything to his stoic face made the tears that had stopped start flowing again.

“Even if I’m twisted from the start... you’re not.”

To a man like Zahid—head of the Dyfenril Duchy, who valued love deeply—I must’ve been too burdensome a partner.

Looking back, if I’d known I was Aietar’s daughter, I would never have agreed to be Zahid’s fiancée.

Because I believed he would’ve been happier without me in his life.

“If I hadn’t forced this engagement... you wouldn’t have had to struggle alone for nine years... wouldn’t have filled that empty room with gifts you couldn’t give...”

What I’d seen in Zahid’s memories, as Fire’s master, was nothing but solitude and aching loneliness.

I never did tell him what I saw.

If all he’d wanted was immense wealth or fame, it wouldn’t have hurt me this much...

“If I just weren’t here... you wouldn’t have to suffer, watching the person you love live a life of sacrifice...”

I knew Zahid well. If something happened to me, he was the type who would never recover from the grief.

I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t get the words out.

“...Rosie.”

He slipped a ring off his fourth finger—and gently slid it onto mine.

My eyes widened.

That was the ring I’d asked him to give me only after everything ended... the one I’d postponed accepting before regression.

Partly because I feared I might die.

I hadn’t wanted Zahid to experience a fiancée leaving him again—not a second time.

“It was between us, but I could tell—you were putting off the engagement.”

Zahid looked into my eyes.

“I’m not that bastard. I won’t keep his promises. Let him be remembered as the fool who failed to keep even a single vow.”

I gasped softly, staring at him.

“My patience ends here, Rosie.”

He kissed the hand now wearing the ring and growled:

“I love you. I love only you. No matter how thorny the path you walk, I’ll follow it.”

His gaze burned into mine.

“If I’m with you, I don’t care how many lives I have to repeat. But don’t ever say you’ll remove yourself from my life again.”

And that’s when I finally snapped and shouted in his face.

“Then what am I supposed to do?!”

The Divine Beasts were watching us with fascinated eyes.

Liri even shook his head as if to say, “They’re bickering again...”

“Then what the hell do I do in this situation?! We’ve come this far—we have to turn back time, don’t we?!”

“Then make a wish no one else would! That way, only one balloon will appear!” 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Zahid fired back, undeterred.

“Something like—‘I don’t want to change anything. Please send me back to just before all this.’”

“What?”

“This whole mess is full of priests who poured their lives into desperate wishes, right? Who’d make a dumb wish like that?”

“...Oh.”

My expression relaxed in an instant. It actually wasn’t a bad suggestion.

If we did it that way, Aietar’s divine power would vanish into the Sacred Relic, and I wouldn’t need to die.

“Hey!”

Zahid, voice emotional and ragged, yelled toward the balloons.

“A wish like, ‘I don’t want to change anything, just send me back to right before all this’—no one made one like that, right?!”

Fire had said our time here was limited. Zahid’s urgency was rising too.

“If no one has, then Rosie can make that wish and choose it herself!”

It was a solid strategy. If no one else had ever made a wish like that, mine would be the only balloon of its kind, unmistakably mine.

No risk of duplication. No uncertainty.

But the moment Zahid finished speaking—balloons flew in from all directions.

At a glance, there were over twenty.

“Damn it!”

Zahid swore, irritated.

Fire shook his head and sighed.

<Seems like there were quite a few priests who didn’t actually want to change anything, but were curious enough to test it out before they died.>

There had been far too many pointless priests making unnecessary wishes at the brink of death... so that plan failed too.

Just as I sighed, despair in my eyes—

Zahid took my hand and spoke.

“Either way—I won’t stand by and watch you isolate yourself for our sake.”

He still hadn’t let go of my earlier words—that I’d go off alone.

His voice began to tremble with emotion.

“A life like that... once is enough.”

“...”

“There has to be another way, Rosie. You always said so. Even when it feels hopeless—if we think and think again, there’ll be another path.”

He pressed his face to my hand and murmured,

“Please... just once... is enough for a life like that...”

His voice was thick with grief and anguish.

At that moment, Zahid didn’t sound like a twenty-year-old man—but like someone old and weary.

Then—

“...Ah.”

I blinked, a realization suddenly dawning.

I’d been thinking about it the whole time.

Why was it different now?

Why was this return to the past using the Sacred Relic of Time not like the last one in prison?

There had been no rituals like this back then.

Surely a wish like “Let me protect those I love” had already been made thousands of times.

“...That’s it.”

Listening to Zahid’s words, something clicked.

A wish that transcended time and space—one that no one had ever made, except me.

One that would result in a single, unmistakable balloon.

“...A life like that... just once is enough...”

I whispered, breath hitching.

“One regression... is enough...”

“Just make a wish no one else would ever make!”

These wishes—just as Zahid said—were made by desperate priests pouring divine power into the Sacred Relic.

I recalled the moment I had made my wish—the one that actually turned back time from that prison cell.

Clutching the Sacred Relic tightly, pouring in what little divine power I had—I had wished:

“If I can return to the past and change everything... I’ll protect them all. And I’ll destroy the Temple.”

Even then, I’d felt uneasy.

To declare my intent to destroy the Temple in front of the Sacred Relic... it had made me feel oddly guilty.

“I don’t need to make a wish now.”

“Huh?”

“My past self already made one. I just need to choose it.”

Still holding Zahid’s hand, I turned back to the floating balloons and spoke.

“Is there one among you that says, ‘Let me destroy the Temple’?”

It was the desperate prayer I had whispered in the prison—clutching the Sacred Relic, channeling a sliver of divine power into it.

Then, slowly, a single balloon drifted in from afar.

It was violet, with ancient script reading: Please let me destroy the Temple.

No matter how long I waited—no others came.

Just one.

In this dimensional space where all of time and space overlapped—that was the only wish stored within the Sacred Relic.