Chapter 230: the lost memory

Olivia stared at him in absolute silence, while his question hung suspended in the air like a hangman’s noose. A cynical amusement gradually crept across her features, suddenly bursting into a sharp, brittle laugh.

"Your Majesty—Father, I mean, for I am hardly accustomed to the title—your sense of humor is truly peculiar. To weave such a grand fable..." A cold bead of sweat traced a slow path down her temple, a stark contrast to the biting mockery she used to veil her fracturing composure.

Yet, Lucius’s expression did not waver; if anything, it hardened with a profound, aching sorrow. His eyes, heavy and piercing, searched her face. "Olivia," he said, his voice weighted with gravity, "stop lying to me."

"I am telling you the truth," she replied, forcing a steadfastness into her tone that her trembling heart fiercely denied.

Lucius took a heavy, deliberate step toward her. "That is not the truth your actions betray, nor the one written in these documents. Shall I tell you what finally solidified my suspicions? I told you before, this power is a curse masquerading as a blessing. There is a second condition."

Masking the mounting dread clawing at her throat, she tilted her chin upward in defiance. "And what might that be? Enlighten me, Father, since you seem intent on speaking only in myths."

"It is a dominion inherited exclusively by the women of our lineage, never the men," Lucius revealed. "Do you know why? Because it is a cruel, distorted mercy. A twisted consolation. Just as it was for my great-grandmother. She... she lost three children." Reaching inside his breast pocket, he withdrew a worn, fragile manuscript and laid it before her. "This is the personal journal of the Empress herself. See for yourself."

Olivia took the brittle notebook, her gaze tracing the heavily underlined script:

> *"My God, I am so utterly weary. Why bestow this power upon me if I am forbidden from using it to rescue those I love? I have lost three children, and three times I have clawed my way back from the grave. Yet, in all three instances, I am cast back months after their breath had already left them. Why... why am I never granted a dawn before their demise? Why must their innocent souls be the agonizing toll demanded to wrench me back into this bitter existence, O Lord?"*

With trembling fingers, she turned to the final, fading page:

> *"I write these words knowing they may be my last. The powers of my sole surviving son have finally manifested; his spirit has grown resolute. Perhaps now... perhaps at long last, I may close my eyes and depart without turning back. At last..."*

Olivia closed the volume with a muted thud, her mind plunged into absolute numbness. Slowly, she lifted her gaze to meet his.

Lucius spoke, his voice heavy with the crushing weight of ancestral grief. "Empress Cecilia lost three children, all perishing before they reached the age where their inner strength could awaken. According to her confessions, she returned from death after each loss. In the end, historical records note she refused to bear any more children; she claimed she could no longer endure the torment of reliving existence without them. Only one child survived—the boy who would become the next Emperor."

He paused, allowing the tragic gravity of their ancestors to saturate the silent room. "As for her... she ended her own life. Before she did, she told her son she was finally free—that because his own power had awakened, she would no longer be dragged back into the wheel of rebirth. The court deemed her entirely mad at the time."

Instinctively, Olivia’s hand reached out, her trembling fingers gripping first the edge of the book, and then her father’s hand. The words she sought caught in her throat, strangled by the realization that her careful strategies and cold facade had been utterly decimated by this historical truth. Regression was no divine gift; it was a devastating mechanism paid for with the blood of her lineage.

Tears pooled in her eyes. She tilted her head back, forcing herself to look at the ceiling to prevent them from falling, her pride fiercely resisting any show of brokenness. But her throat burned as though filled with shards of shattered glass, making speech an impossibility.

"I..."

Witnessing that fragile armor and the desperate restraint of her tears, Lucius did not hesitate. He lunged forward, gathering her into a warm, fierce, and fiercely protective embrace. "You truly died... my little girl. Oh, God," he choked out, the unyielding emperor’s voice fracturing for the first time with the raw, bleeding anguish of a father. "It must have been so agonizing... Who? Who did this to you?"

Olivia gently pulled back from his chest, her eyes suddenly mirroring a clarity as cold and sharp as a blade.

"Yes, I died," she said, her voice steadying. "It is a tale I never envisioned whispering to a living soul, for it feels more akin to a fever dream than reality. A nightmare, to be precise."

"Tell me, Olivia," he pleaded.

She exhaled a long breath. "Very well. You ask how I perished, and whose hand stole my life. It was Kyle."

The Emperor froze, his towering frame turning entirely to stone, as though the name itself were a thunderbolt that paralyzed his limbs. "Kyle? Your brother? Great God... what did he do? How dare he—"

"It was an act of mercy," Olivia interrupted, her tone flat, hollowed of any malice. "It is not as you imagine, Father. Kyle did not murder me in treachery."

"What do you mean, Olivia? How can taking a life ever be deemed mercy?! Tell me everything!" Terror seized Lucius as he watched the phantom of his family tearing itself apart in a timeline he had never known.

Olivia let out a long, weary sigh. The dam broke, and she began to weave the tale, her rhythm heavy with accumulated bitterness. She spoke of the woman she once was, and the catastrophic domino effect of her tragedies: how her husband, Mathias, was executed; She described how she had decayed into a living corpse, draped in absolute torment, until Kyle could no longer bear the sight of her agony. At her own begging, he had stopped her breath—an act of pure, unadulterated mercy.

As Lucius listened to this cascading inferno, the phantom weight of the crown atop his head felt heavy enough to crush his skull. His knees failed him. The grand ruler of the empire collapsed backward, sinking to the floor against his desk, utterly shattered and helpless under the onslaught of her words.

A faint, hollow smile touched Olivia’s lips as she looked down at his broken form. "In any case... all of that belongs to a past that no longer exists. We are here now to alter it."

Yet Lucius remained entirely undone. He ached to hold her again, to offer solace, but a tidal wave of profound shame engulfed him. By what right could he dare embrace her or wield his paternal authority, when he had utterly failed to protect her and his grandchildren in that forgotten life? Stripped of his imperial dignity, his head bowed slowly until his forehead touched the cold floor in a desperate, tear-stained posture of absolute penance.

"Olivia... please, I implore you, forgive me," he wept, his voice muffled against the ground. "Forgive the wretched failure of an impotent father. Please, my daughter... forgive me."

"Stop this... raise your head. Why are you on your knees?" She knit her brows, an instinctual aversion rising within her at the sight of her sovereign rendered so weak. A tinge of self-deprecating irony crept into her voice. "I told you, it matters not. Besides, my own actions and machinations in that lifetime were hardly sacred enough to warrant a righteous salvation from the gods anyway."

Wiping his face with a fierce, rediscovered resolve, the Emperor rose slowly to sit beside her. His eyes burned with a protective, almost feral determination. "I understand now. I understand your desperate lengths to shield your husband and sever him from the House of Allister. I will do whatever must be done to keep you both safe. From this day forward, you do not walk this warpath alone. I am here, my darling."

Olivia offered a ghost of a smile, feeling a fleeting sense of solace—yet her analytical mind never ceased its calculations. Her gaze drifted back to the open pages of Empress Cecilia’s journal, and suddenly, the faint smile died on her lips.

"Thank you... but, Father, there is a glaring inconsistency in this lore."

"What do you mean?" Lucius asked, trying to read the sudden shadow that had fallen over her face.

"Empress Cecilia returned three times because she lost three children, correct? The curse wrenches the mother back a few months, contingent upon the number of times the blood of the lineage is spilled."

Lucius strained to recall the forbidden texts accurately. "Yes, that is what the forbidden chronicles state. The first instance was an assassination; the subsequent times, she took her own life deliberately, clinging to the desperate hope that she might regress to a point before her children perished."

"Ah..."

Lucius furrowed his brow. "What is the meaning of that sigh?"

Olivia stood up, taking a slow step back, her gaze darkening as she stared down at her own palms. A sudden, violent shiver ran down her spine, making the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. When she spoke, her voice had dropped to a ghostly whisper, like someone staring directly into an uncharted abyss.

"It is nothing. I was merely curious. I must leave."

"What? So suddenly?"

"I am merely exhausted. Please, excuse me."

"Of course, of course. You have every right to rest, my dear. You are carrying a heavy burden."

"Yes. I will take my leave."

The moment the heavy door clicked shut behind her, the silence of the corridor enveloped her. She stared blankly ahead, her mind fracturing under a new, terrifying revelation.

*"But I lost two children, not one,"* she whispered to the empty air. *"And if the curse only triggers after their demise... does that mean there is an entire lifetime I have already lived through, and forgotten?"