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While Avery Blake was happily carrying a small fortune and ready to shop till the city burned—
Inside the Blake family estate—
SLAM!
Bianca White's expression was a storm cloud as she hung up the phone. The screen barely dimmed before Chloe Blake snatched it and hurled it to the ground.
With a sickening crack, the screen splintered like a spiderweb. Her fingers, still clenching the hem of her seasonal white haute couture dress that clung to her like fresh snowfall—beautiful, and lethal to anything beneath it, had turned bone-white.
"Mom!"
Her lashes dipped, shadowing the venom in her eyes. When she looked up again, tears shimmered artfully.
"Dad's really going to side with her just because she awakened powers?" Her voice trembled. "That bitch threw Nick Barnes and Rick Dalton straight into a PSB facility!"
No sooner had she spat those words than her mask returned—soft-spoken, well-bred, the perfect daughter the White family raised.
Though a year younger than Avery, Chloe stood just as tall now. Her voice remained tender, sweet, almost coaxing.
"That bastard's so damn hard to kill."
"So damn lucky," Bianca echoed with a calm so cold it burned. Dressed in a navy high-neck dress that framed her slim figure, her long black hair draped elegantly over one shoulder.
"Thrown from that height and still breathing..."
Even as the words dripped poison, her tone was like a lover's murmur—silken, slow, and disturbingly gentle. Her manicured finger tapped Chloe's nose—a playful gesture that left a faint red mark.
"I don't ever want to see her in this house again." Chloe tugged at Bianca's sleeve, her voice delicate, spoiled. "She's eighteen, Mom. There should only be one daughter in the Blake family."
"Silly girl, don't get upset." Bianca smoothed her daughter's hair with motherly care.
"Nick and Rick may have failed," she added in a low whisper, "but the Hidden Gate doesn't. I've already reached out to the White Family's main branch."
Her eyes gleamed.
"We'll buy their contact channel directly—face to face. I promise, she won't survive long enough to show her face again."
Meanwhile, at the White Family's Rosewood Estate, west of Capitol City—
In the sun-drenched southwestern garden, roses of every color bloomed in decadent waves, their perfume rich in the summer air.
Celia White sat alone, a vision of elegance, flipping through a leather-bound novel.
She wore a flowing sapphire dress, her jet-black curls cascading down her waist. A bracelet of five-color stones pulsed on her wrist—each gem a shackle from a different timeline.
When the soft chime of a piano ringtone sounded, her delicate fingers, fairer than any petal, set the book aside.
"Hello, Callan," she greeted, her voice gentle and cool as a spring stream.
On the other end, a young man's voice practically burst through the receiver. Celia's nail traced the trumpet vine's stem—once, twice—before stilling as she held the phone slightly away from her ear.
"Celia! I hit the peak of Mid-Tier!"
"Impressive." Her eyes flashed, but her fingers toyed absentmindedly with a gift box on the table. Nestled inside was a single, unbroken trumpet vine bloom.
"You're the first Ranked prodigy in the Federation to reach Mid-Tier Peak at just twenty-two. Soren Wolfe is no longer our golden boy. It's your era now, Callan."
He laughed, thrilled.
"Thanks to your prophecy, sis! It got rough, but the results were better than we hoped. Only forty percent source energy loss!"
"I found a whole cluster of trumpet vines at the site. Most were torn apart by source beasts... but I sent you the one that survived."
Celia's lashes fluttered, a glint of regret in her eyes.
Forty percent loss. Still worse than Soren Wolfe's twenty percent from the previous timeline.
Callan's voice chattered on, excitedly recounting the battle. But Celia's thoughts drifted to a flash of silver hair and storm-gray eyes.
Her fingers stroked the multi-gem bracelet unconsciously—The bracelet fit perfectly. It had to—Wolfe gifts always did. Even when given by the wrong brother.
It had been a betrothal gift from the Wolfe family, two years ago.
Funny. She remembered wearing the same bracelet in her past life, but it was Soren who slipped it onto her wrist, not Callan. Back then, he was already a High-Tier powerhouse, while she—stuck at Low-Tier Peak—had no resources to catch up.
"Are you listening, Celia?"
"Of course," she replied sweetly. Her voice flowed like liquid silk. "Focus on training while you're still at the source site. I'll be here when you return."
"I already told Dad—I want to start planning the wedding when I'm back!" Callan's joy nearly sparked from the speaker. "You'll be the most dazzling bride in the Federation!"
"Callan…"
She whispered his name. Her tone was even, but her heartbeat betrayed her.
He froze on the line. "Celia...?"
The way she said his name sent heat flooding through his veins.
Celia stood and strolled through the garden, phone in hand, her smile faint but sincere. Even after years of self-discipline, she couldn't quite suppress the upward tug at her lips.
They spoke for another half-hour before Callan reluctantly hung up.
Once alone, she set the phone on the tea table and took a deep breath, shedding the tenderness from her face.
"I, Celia White, am clearly the female lead of this world," she murmured to herself—and then actually laughed.
Because it was true.
She'd been reborn. Again.
Right before her past self became Soren Wolfe's fiancée.
Celia White—firstborn daughter of the White Family and a rare Trait-class Esper.
Her power? A secret buried under two lifetimes of lies. Time Rewind.
Currently Low-Tier Peak, she could rewind ten minutes into the past—The bracelet's yellow stone dimmed slightly—one minute of her ten-minute rewind now permanently gone. Still, it was enough to escape death, enough to correct fatal mistakes.
In her last life, she failed to awaken until age twenty, after countless failed drug trials. The family branded her powerless. At eighteen, they arranged her engagement to twenty-year-old Soren Wolfe.
But Soren... was warmth and frost all at once. As his fiancée, she never truly had his heart.
He wasn't from the main Wolfe line, and the meager resources he received went to his own training. Whatever he shared with her was scraps.
She remembered her cousin—gifted at B-Rank—who married into a mineral family from the Westlands and hit Mid-Tier in eight years.
While she—A-Rank talent—barely scraped Low-Tier Peak in seven.
And then she died.
Even with Time Rewind... she died again.
But not this time.
This life, she chose Callan Wolfe instead—heir to the Wolfe main bloodline. A rising star equal to Soren in potential.
She still awakened at twenty, but this time, she hid her true ability. Let the world believe she had the gift of Prophecy.
Using her past memories, she made one perfect call after another, rising as the most valued member of the White Family. Three years later, her name gleamed across the Federation—and she was engaged to Callan.
The source site Callan had just claimed? That had been Soren's destiny in her last life.
Back then, Callan had rushed into battle against the Ember Demon, lost two Mid-Tiers, and barely survived.
Soren, meanwhile, discovered the Nine Abyss Source untouched—He never mentioned the acrid stench of molten rock, or how twenty Mid-Tier source beasts' claws had scored trenches around those vines—and used it to ascend to High-Tier.
Sure, he brought back two trumpet vines for her.
But he'd kept the best for himself.