I remained motionless.

  The throne before me felt immense.

  The entire room seemed suspended in a silence that was not mine.

  Three days.

  Three days since my death.

  Three days since my rebirth.

  I closed my eyes and felt the mana flowing within me. It was stable. Limited. Real.

  I observed the world through it.

  Causality was different. More stable. More sealed — like a structure that had been repaired.

  Or corrected.

  Instinctively, I searched for a familiar presence.

  A signature. A trace.

  Mine.

  Eun-Ho.

  I searched for it within the flow of mana, within the very structure of the world.

  In the invisible lines connecting every existence.

  But I found nothing.

  No trace. Not even an anomaly.

  Not a single remnant of my existence as Eun-Ho.

  Nothing. Absolute emptiness.

  I opened my eyes.

  I wasn’t surprised. This was only confirmation.

  Here, I did not exist.

  Eun-Ho did not exist.

  It wasn’t that he had been forgotten or erased.

  He had simply never been born.

  He had never been integrated into this timeline.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Human causality contained no variable corresponding to his previous existence.

  It made sense.

  My soul now resided within the Demon King’s body.

  The world does not correct partially.

  It corrects completely.

  I looked up at the room before me.

  The Tower of Mages still stood.

  The Empire still endured.

  The Hero still lived.

  Seraphina… my beloved… was still there.

  But I—

  I had never stood beside them.

  The timeline had been entirely replaced.

  I placed a hand over my chest.

  I felt my heart beating.

  Steady. Stable. Real.

  The Demon King’s heart.

  It was no longer Eun-Ho’s.

  He was dead.

  And the world had accepted his death.

  I felt neither anger nor sorrow.

  But I understood something clearly now.

  I had not merely regressed.

  I had taken a place that did not belong to me.

  A place that causality accepted.

  A place the world recognized.

  A place that could no longer be taken from me.

  Then—

  Something changed.

  It was not the mana.

  Not this body.

  Not this throne.

  The world itself remained stable.

  It was something deeper. Older. More fundamental.

  A faint sensation.

  Almost imperceptible.

  A subtle pulse.

  I remained still.

  This pulse did not come from my heart.

  It came from elsewhere.

  And yet—

  I felt it within me.

  Like a singular, silent rhythm. Impossible to ignore.

  My perception shifted slightly.

  It felt as though a new dimension had opened.

  I glimpsed the lines again — more faintly than during my regression.

  They were there.

  And with them, causality. The structure of the world. The origin of this universe.

  And at the center—

  A point.

  Watching me.

  There were no eyes. No hostility.

  But a consciousness inhabited it.

  Ancient. Absolute.

  I did not react. I did not resist.

  I had no reason to.

  This presence did not seek to correct me.

  It sought to understand me.

  The pulse faded.

  The world stabilized once more.

  Silent.

  Normal.

  But something had changed.

  I could feel it.

  I did not yet know what it was.

  But I was certain of one thing.

  I was no longer merely the Demon King.

  And the world had just acknowledged it.

  Something had recognized me before I understood what I had become.