NOVPUBTheir wedding rings.
When Isaac entered Helmut as a live-in son-in-law, he liquidated every possession he had and prepared a single dowry: one ring—made for exactly one finger.
Yet, on the eldest daughter of Helmut that modest band looked almost shabby.
On the day of their divorce, the two stood before the gods and exchanged their rings once more—
A symbol of rupture and release.
A Severance Ring was a vow declaring they were completely, irrevocably split.
Which is why the wedding ring in Isaac’s hand now was never meant for him at all.
It had originally rested on Rihanna’s ring finger.
So why was it reacting like this now?
The question rose inside Isaac but had no time to take shape.
“Huh!?”
The ring grew so hot he couldn’t hold it.
He let the glowing band fall; it hissed on the ground, belching light and smoke to prove it still existed.
Meanwhile, a spell from the Mage-Tower arced through the sky, homing in on the ring.
Clack!
Both of Isaac’s hands moved on instinct, gripping his sword.
The blade—a bird caught mid-flight—spewed killing ki to intercept the magic.
—Kkyaaaaaaa!—
The scream echoing in the ki seemed to resonate with Isaac’s own pulse.
His head knew he shouldn’t meet that spell head-on, yet he refused to watch the ring be shattered.
A single sweeping slash split the spell apart.
Like stars exploding in the night sky, the mana packed inside burst free and rained in every direction.
“Urgh…!”
The mana was so dense that even one strike left Isaac’s arm trembling.
“Nameless! Hold the Tower Master back!”
At the Grandmaster’s shout, Nameless was already moving.
Another spear of light shot upward, then curved toward them again.
“First, get clear,” the Grandmaster warned. “Meeting that magic head-on is sheer folly.”
Who could say how many Tower mages were burning themselves out to cast that spell?
They might be clumsy in a fight, but their firepower was no joke.
“…I cannot.”
Still, Isaac did not retreat.
He knew the secret of his regression was bound to that ring, and emotionally he simply could not let it go.
“It’s coming again—coming again!”
Sharen pointed skyward in alarm. Isaac, arm still quaking, raised his sword once more. The Grandmaster sighed.
“Honestly… if I coddle my disciple this much, how can I call myself a teacher?”
She pressed down on Isaac’s shoulder, stepped forward, and settled one hand on her enormous saber. After a single steadying breath she looked up.
“Sometimes a pupil must learn to yield to the master.”
With that soft lament, the Grandmaster drew her blade.
A single flash—far brighter and more beautiful than the blue-white stars the mages had cast—ripped through the night.
****
No more stars fell.
Two mountainous clots of mana had been cleaved apart; like split melons, they burst and flooded the area with raw energy so thick it made the eyes sting.
Even Isaac felt a thrill as stray motes of mana brushed his fingertips.
“Wow…”
Sharen marveled that the condensed energy made her heart pound.
Just then Tower Master Regant arrived, mages swarming behind him—his pace noticeably heavy.
“What in the world happened here?”
He leveled his staff, murderous intent pouring off him.
Regant in particular looked livid; he raked a hand through his hair and glared.
Every clipped word he ground out dripped with hostility.
“We treated you as honored guests—turns out you were thieves. You even lived among us. Do you think we’re idiots?”
“You’ve got this wrong,” Isaac answered evenly, and Regant hesitated a beat.
“I know you’re angry, but calm down and you’ll see none of it adds up.”
Isaac flicked his gaze sideways.
Sometime during the stand-off, the Grandmaster and Nameless had both laid their palms on their blades—
A silent promise that the moment hostility flared, heads would roll.
“…….”
Regant saw it too and gulped.
The instant he realized death was hovering at kiss-range, the fever in his brain cooled fast.
The staff aimed at Isaac dipped, now pointing at the ring on the floor.
“That ring reacted to our magic. For that alone, you owe us an explanation.”
Trying his best to sound composed, Regant snapped again—
But Isaac could hear the rigid control in his voice.
“Let me confirm just one thing first. Is there any chance the spell misfired?”
That, Isaac thought, was the likeliest scenario.
But Regant shot it down immediately.
“Once, maybe. But twice our spell struck that ring dead-center.”
“…….”
“If the magic were faulty, the bolts would’ve gone in different directions. Yet they both targeted your ring. So—the spell isn’t the problem.”
Meaning the mana core really was linked to the ring.
“Very well.”
With that final check, Isaac nodded, calm again.
“Looks like the picture is finally coming together.”
The opaque mystery around his regression was beginning to lift.
****
They stepped into the Mage-Tower itself.
Vivian had once said the tower—an enormous cylinder—was now little more than a symbolic relic, yet the inner structure proved surprisingly vast.
Behind the visible tower, buildings rose from a wide hollow in the ground.
Isaac had expected to climb back up to enter, but the real doorway lay underground.
Beneath the earth, the passage exuded a heavy, uncanny air—as though the tower’s deepest secrets were coiled there.
Regant conjured a globe of light in his palm and stepped onto a colossal magic circle etched into the floor.
“The mana core drops from up there.”
His voice climbed the cylindrical walls, echoing.
He shone the light upward; the shaft was so tall that darkness still swallowed the ceiling.
“We draw magic here from the fallen core. Its mana is so vast no ordinary mage can handle it directly.”
“…….”
“The term mana core is just shorthand, really. In truth, it’s nothing but highly condensed mana—”
“Hold on.”
The more Isaac listened, the stranger it sounded.
“If no one can handle it easily, why did you assume someone stole it?”
Regant gave a sheepish laugh.
“When that much vanishes overnight, what else would you think? A homeowner trusts his house is safe until thieves slip in and empty it. Same idea.”
“…….”
“Besides, the odd ritual magic we detected… If someone had used that much mana in a normal spell, we’d have noticed. Theft was the only explanation we had. And moving it isn’t utterly impossible—though half a dozen mages would die in the attempt.”
The mages had racked their brains over the missing core and finally settled on the only answer they could imagine: someone, somehow, had stolen it.
And honestly, what else could explain it?
“Yet after hearing you, it finally makes sense.”
Regant nodded, eyes on the ring—which had lost its glow and returned to plain metal.
“The mana core wasn’t stolen at all. It was spent—to rewind the world once.”
And most likely, the one who cast that spell…
“Was me.”
Regant scratched his cheek, embarrassed.
“By your story, it happens roughly ten years from now. I use the spell then—to stop the end of humanity.”
Of course, all of that assumed Regant had survived the ordeal—but he seemed quietly convinced that he had.
“Well now, does that mean we owe you our lives?” Regant asked with a wry grin.
Isaac answered politely, “We’re even.”
“Hah … thanks to your efforts, the situation is already far better than last time,” Regant added, sotto-voce noting that his mages hadn’t even sensed the threat in the first place.
Regant understood perfectly that peace never came free.
“So the regression spell worked, did it not? An era no one remembers—erased from history—but up to this point at least—”
“I still have questions,” Isaac cut in.
He now grasped why the Mage-Tower’s magic had triggered a rewind to save humanity, using its last line of defense.
“But I need to know why me—and why our wedding rings became the catalyst.”
“…….”
If the spell’s condition had been dying while holding Rihanna’s wedding ring, then why hadn’t Rihanna—who was dead with the ring on her finger—regressed as well?
“Are you sure I was the only one who came back?” Isaac asked on a hunch.
Regant shook his head. “Impossible. The magic is triggered by death. Two people would have to die in the exact same instant to return together.”
“…….”
“Let me see the ring.”
Isaac placed it on Regant’s palm. The Tower Master turned it over, muttering:
“A ring imbued with magic drawn from the mana core… which means the ring itself is also from the future. If I was the one who crafted it, then surely there must be—”
While Regant mumbled, the rest of the party watched Isaac with mixed expressions.
“Well, doesn’t it feel good to have everything out in the open now?” the Grandmaster teased.
“Those who know about Isaac’s regression versus those who don’t! That’s the real friendship meter!” Sharen crowed, preening.
Nameless and Damien looked more complicated—less hurt than simply awed that Isaac had lived the phenomenon of regression.
And then—
“…It’s really here,” Regant breathed, eyes fixed on the ring. He gave a shaky laugh.
“Normally, mages each have their own—”
“That’s enough. Keep it short,” Isaac cut him off; mages loved needless digressions.
Sighing, Regant obliged. “The inscription I carved with mana is still intact. So it was true after all. I’ll admit I was half-skeptical.”
“…….”
So he never completely believed it until now.
“I must have left the trace to help us understand what happened. Tower Master or not, I like to keep a few moves ahead of everyone else.”
Regant, clearly pleased with his own competence ten years down the road, placed the ring at the very center of the underground magic circle.
“We can read the record right away. Thanks to someone, we’ve got mana to spare.”
Because the mana-core–seeking spell had been aborted the moment it began, surplus energy now flooded the chamber.
No one hesitated.
Isaac walked forward at a measured pace.
Mana flared out from Regant’s body…
…and although Isaac’s feet never moved again, his vision drew closer and closer to the ring—until it swallowed him whole.
****
A cramped lectern, rickety chairs, motes of stale dust drifting in the faded light of stained-glass windows.
This place…
Isaac recognized it at once.
Evergarde, the royal capital.
The church overseen by Sister Helia Bell, the same order as Jonathan’s mother.
Only now it looked utterly neglected, as if the woman who kept it had vanished years ago.
‘The place where we divorced.’
Remembering that day still left a bitter taste on his tongue.
Colors seeped into the hazy scene.
In the center of the nave stood two red-haired women.
One of them was the very Rihanna Helmut Isaac had finally laid to rest.
Which meant the red-haired woman facing her was—
“Sharen, where is Regant?”
The woman Rihanna called Sharen looked nothing like the lively girl Isaac knew. Her twin braids were now a single tail, and her face held only frosty composure.
“Why are you here instead of Regant?”
“Because I know what choice you’re about to make. I begged Regant to let me come first.”
Sharen’s voice brimmed with hostility. To a stranger it might look like hatred for Rihanna, but Isaac could read the deeper worry beneath the chill.
“You mean to send Isaac back in time.”
“Sharen—”
“I’m against it, Unnie.”
“...”
“You should be the one to regress.”
“Sharen, you know how many lives Isaac saves these days—people call him the ‘Silent Sword.’”
Sharen fell silent. She couldn’t deny it.
The manuals authored under the name Isaac had become indispensable field guides for soldiers, and Sharen herself had studied them. Blind opposition was impossible.
“Even so, you have to regress.”
Her tone allowed no argument.
“You… you could do it better.”
Rihanna gave a faint smile that was so bitter it squeezed Isaac’s chest even now, knowing how this ended.
“My little sister Sharen.”
“…You have to live, Unnie.”
“Thank you.”
“At least you must survive.”
“This isn’t just emotion. If Clarice were alive, I’d ask her instead… but it’s too late.”
“Unnie!”
Rihanna said nothing more. She understood Sharen’s reasons and could not deny them out of hand.
Her resolve was already set.
“Isaac will succeed. I know he will.”
“Now? Now you want to play the dutiful wife? He’s been gone ten years! Ten years without seeing his face—why on earth would you—!”
Rihanna still did not answer. Sharen already knew.
Klik.
“Enough.”
Sharen’s clenched jaw erased every trace of expression.
“You said the regression triggers at death.”
Her gaze dropped to the ring on Rihanna’s left ring finger, and an icy determination settled in.
“Then I’ll kill you right now—send you back.”
Sharen declared:
“Because I want you to live, Unnie.”
– – The End of The Chapter ––
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