Reborn As A Useless Mage, But I'm Already The Angel Of Death

02

Adrian's eyes snapped open and his hands flew to his stomach.

No hole. No blood. Just smooth, unbroken skin beneath a thin cotton nightshirt that smelled faintly of cedar and soap.

He sat bolt upright in bed, gasping, his heart slamming against his ribs so hard it hurt. The room around him was small and familiar in a way that made his chest ache. Dark oak bookshelves lined the walls, crammed with leather bound journals and spell theory manuscripts. A writing desk sat beneath a curtained window. His old writing desk. His old window. His old room in the Blackwood family estate.

"No way." He slapped himself hard across the face. The sting was immediate and very real. "No way."

His body felt wrong. Too light, too short, too soft. He looked down at his hands and saw the smooth, unscarred fingers of a teenager who had never held a sword, never raised the dead, never watched an empire burn.

Adrian threw the blankets off and crossed the room in three strides, yanking the curtains open. Warm morning sunlight poured in, carrying the sweet smell of the plum trees that lined the estate's eastern garden. Trees that had been burned to stumps during the demon siege years from now.

"She actually did it." He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window. "Jenna, you mad woman. You actually did it."

His left arm tingled. He pulled his sleeve up and there it was, the golden serpent sigil of the Holy Mark, still glowing faintly against his skin. It should have vanished. The regression should have erased it along with everything else. But there it sat, impossibly present on the arm of a dark mage born into the oldest necromancy bloodline in the Dark Empire.

"Alright." He held his palm over the mark and tried to focus holy mana through it the way he had seen Jenna do a thousand times on the battlefield. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and attempted a rough imitation of the prayer stance her soldiers used before combat. Still nothing. Not even a flicker.

"Of course it would not be that simple." He let his hands drop. Something to figure out later. Right now there were more important things to worry about.

A sharp knock rattled his bedroom door.

"Adrian! Adrian, are you awake in there? If you are doing one of your weird experiments again, I swear on the Empress's throne I will kick this door down!"

His blood went cold, then hot, then cold again. That voice. He had not heard that voice in over ten years. Not since the night the demons came through the ballroom walls and tore everything apart.

Adrian crossed the room and threw the door open.

Lilly Blackwood stood on the other side with her arms crossed and her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid. She wore a pale blue morning dress and an expression that sat somewhere between annoyed and amused. Behind her, two household maids hovered nervously, clearly hoping they would not be caught in the crossfire of another sibling argument.

She was alive. Standing right in front of him. Breathing, blinking, frowning at him with that same impatient crinkle between her eyebrows that she always got when he overslept.

"Are you just going to stand there staring at me like a fish?" Lilly raised one eyebrow.

Adrian opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His throat had locked shut and something behind his eyes was burning in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with magic.

"Adrian? You are starting to scare me. Say something."

"You..." He swallowed hard. "You look ridiculous in that dress."

"Excuse me?"

"The color washes you out. You look like a ghost."

"Oh, that is rich coming from the boy who wears nothing but black like some kind of oversized crow." Lilly jabbed a finger into his chest. "Do you even know what today is?"

"Tuesday?"

"It is our birthday, you complete disaster of a human being. Our sixteenth birthday. The ceremony starts in four hours and you are standing here in your nightclothes looking like something a cat dragged in from the rain."

Their birthday. Their sixteenth birthday. The exact day everything went wrong the first time. The exact day the demon horde ripped through the celebration and killed Lilly along with half the guests in attendance.

"Get dressed. Properly. Not that ratty old coat you always wear, I mean actual formal clothes. Father's orders." Lilly turned on her heel, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. "And for once in your miserable life, please just show up on time. Do not disappear into your workshop. Do not blow anything up. Just come to your own birthday party like a normal person. Can you manage that?"

Adrian looked at his sister's face. Alive. Irritated. Completely unaware of the nightmare that almost swallowed her.

"I will be there." He smiled. A real, genuine smile that felt strange and unfamiliar on his face.

Lilly blinked. The two maids behind her exchanged startled glances.

"Did you just... smile? At me? Without being sarcastic?"

"Do not make it weird."

"You are the one making it weird! You never smile! The last time you smiled you were twelve and you had just successfully reanimated a dead cat, which is not exactly a heartwarming memory for the rest of us!"

"I said I will be there, Lilly. On time. Properly dressed. I promise."

Lilly stared at him for a long moment, her expression shifting through confusion, suspicion, and finally something softer that she quickly hid behind a scoff.

"Fine. Four hours. Do not be late." She marched down the hallway, the two maids scurrying after her.

Adrian stood in the doorway until her footsteps faded. Then he stepped back into his room and closed the door quietly behind him.

He sat on the edge of his bed and pressed his palms against his eyes.

Jenna had done this. Not once, but twice. She had woken up in a past where everyone she loved was still alive, still walking around completely unaware of the horrors waiting for them, and she had to pretend everything was normal while carrying the weight of all those future graves.

"You were stronger than I ever gave you credit for." He whispered it to an empty room, to a woman who would not be born for several more years in the Holy Empire, far across enemy lines.

An hour later, Adrian descended the main staircase dressed in the formal black coat of House Blackwood, silver buttons gleaming, hair combed back for the first time in what his servants assured him was a historic occasion. Lilly waited at the bottom, dressed in a proper gown now, dark green with silver trim.

"Well? How do I look?" She gave a little spin.

"Like a person. Congratulations."

"You are the worst brother alive." But she was trying not to smile.

Adrian offered his arm and helped her into the waiting carriage, drawing another surprised look from her and a whispered comment to her maid about checking whether he had been replaced by a shapeshifter overnight.

As the carriage pulled away from the Blackwood estate and rolled toward the celebration venue, Adrian kept his tone casual.

"So. Sixteen today."

"Obviously. We are twins, Adrian. We have been sixteen for the same amount of time."

"Just making sure."

Lilly narrowed her eyes. "Making sure of what?"

"That I have not lost track of time. It happens when you spend too long in a workshop."

The carriage rocked gently over cobblestones. Through the window, the grand towers of Ironhaven rose against a clear afternoon sky. Somewhere beyond those towers, in a banquet hall already filling with noble families and their children, a catastrophe was scheduled to unfold tonight. Demons would tear through the walls. People would scream and die. His sister would bleed out on a ballroom floor while he stood frozen, too shocked to save her.

Not this time.

Adrian's hand found the hilt of the ceremonial sword at his belt. His fingers tightened around it until his knuckles turned white.

He had killed all seven Demon Lords. He had raised armies of the dead. He had burned empires and buried legends and earned a title that made grown men flinch.

He would not let his sister die again.