* * *
When Joel opened his eyes, he realized he was still lying in the snow, dying.
His body had long since frozen stiff. He no longer felt cold or pain.
Only an extreme sense of fatigue remained, strikingly vivid.
Everything—returning to three months ago, the journey to capture preacher John, being led into the underground tunnel by his father and meeting John there—had all been an illusion.
In reality, he was exhaling his final breath in the snow.
It had been early morning when he left Count Lucas’s estate, but the sun was now high in the sky.
Strong sunlight poured over Joel’s face, but even with his eyes half-open, he couldn’t feel the glare.
His vision had already faded to near-blindness.
Joel could feel that he was almost at the end of his life.
He was so tired, and he was unbearably sleepy.
He wanted to sleep now.
He knew he would never wake up again, but his current situation was so painful that he found himself craving the rest offered by that eternal darkness.
Joel calmly accepted that this wasn’t a bad end. In fact, his heart was now incredibly peaceful and still.
There was no fear.
It felt as if he was truly ready to face death.
And yet, what lingering attachment to this tedious, painful world was making him hold onto his breath so laboriously?
Joel couldn’t understand his own foolish self for choosing to remain in this agony.
As he let out a breath so faint it seemed it would snap at any moment, he finally heard the sound of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of hoofbeats galloping toward him.
He wanted to lift his head to check, but he didn’t even have the strength for that.
For the current Joel, even the simple motion of inhaling and exhaling was too much to bear.
“Joel!”
When a voice cried out his name in disbelief from a distance, Joel realized that he was the final attachment left in this world.
“Joel, why…?”
The Crown Prince, who had rushed to his side, muttered in a voice full of horror.
Joel figured he must look terrible; his skin was frozen blue, and the area around him was a mess from the blood flowing from his cracked head.
‘I didn’t even get to dress properly because my stepfather kicked me out so early in the morning…’
Even while dying, Joel let out a small laugh at the absurdity of worrying about such things.
“No, no…”
He could feel the Crown Prince trying desperately to transfer warmth to his frozen body.
Of course, it didn’t help at all.
Joel wanted to see the Crown Prince’s face one last time, but unfortunately, he had to give up that greed since he couldn’t see.
Even the sensation of his body being rubbed grew faint until he could feel nothing at all.
Now, Joel could only hear the Crown Prince’s sorrowful voice calling his name.
Was this the final hallucination before closing his eyes? It didn’t matter.
Even if it was an illusion, he was grateful to meet the Crown Prince like this at the end.
With that, Joel let go of all lingering attachments and prepared to fly away, leaving his cumbersome physical body behind.
But at that very moment.
‘Joel, did you see that grieving face? Remember it well.’
A mocking voice echoed in Joel’s ear. It was definitely the voice of preacher John.
Before Joel could grasp the situation, his consciousness was sucked away somewhere else once again.
“…Gasp!”
Returning to reality in an instant, Joel burst out the breath he had been holding.
It felt as if he had held his face underwater for a long time before finally pulling it up.
Heaving for air, Joel recalled the memories he had forgotten.
He thought his last memory was lying in the snow in despair, but it wasn’t.
He had held onto his breath for quite a while after that.
Because he couldn’t cut off his foolish attachment to the Crown Prince.
Because it had been so painful and miserable, he had forgotten it after traveling back in time, but now he remembered everything.
The pain and the flood of emotions he felt in the final moments of his life surged back all at once.
Before he knew it, Joel was sobbing.
Panting, Joel questioned preacher John as if demanding an explanation.
“Why on earth are you showing me this?”
“You saw that face filled with despair clearly, didn’t you? So, do you realize now who made a contract with me to turn back time?”
John’s words made it sound as if the Crown Prince had offered his soul to save Joel and turn back time. But Joel couldn’t believe it.
In the past, the Crown Prince hadn’t liked him even a little bit.
He had been kind for a short while, but wasn’t that only because of the baby in his womb?
“Look, are you trying to tell me the Crown Prince turned back time for me? But the one who threw me out without listening to a single excuse, the one who told me to get lost to Duke Julian’s estate immediately, was the Crown Prince himself. So why would he…?”
Therefore, the Crown Prince he met in his final moments must have been a mere illusion.
No, it had to be an illusion.
At the moment he was dying, the Crown Prince should have been inside the warm and peaceful Imperial Palace, enjoying his time with beautiful Omegas.
There was no way the Crown Prince, who had rejected him, would have chased after him through the snow, and there was absolutely no way he would make the stupid choice of giving up his noble soul just to revive someone like him.
Joel wanted to insist on that, but as he recalled the Crown Prince’s behavior—which had started showing strange signs during their journey—doubts began to rise.
“Well. I don’t know why the Crown Prince, who was so anxious to get rid of you, suddenly changed his mind and chased after you that day. But when I met the Crown Prince three months ago, he deeply regretted failing to protect you. And he willingly gave up his soul to turn back time.”
“No, that can’t be true… Let me see the Crown Prince. I have to ask him myself.”
“That is not possible. You may want to ask him directly, but you will never have the chance to speak with him again. Do you know what this hourglass represents?”
preacher John spoke, pointing to the clock with almost no sand left.
“This is the time remaining for the Crown Prince. He offered his soul to turn time back three months, and he promised to pay the price on the day the turned time runs out. And as you can see, not even a full day remains. When this time is up, his soul will become nourishment for my magic.”
preacher John licked his lips greedily, like a wolf looking at a delicious piece of meat.
Did this mean the Crown Prince would disappear when the hourglass emptied?
However, Joel couldn’t understand why only the Crown Prince had to pay the price so quickly when his own father, who had supposedly traded his soul, was still perfectly fine.
“But my father also made a contract with you and he’s still fine. So why does only His Highness have to give up his soul already!”
“Well. With such a delicious soul in front of me, why would I need to wait a long time? Since this was something the Crown Prince agreed to at the time of the contract anyway, nothing changes even if you complain now.”
A very mean smile played on John’s lips as he countered. It wasn’t hard to guess that he had used clever wordplay when dealing with the Crown Prince, and Joel immediately jumped up from his seat.
“You fraud!”
“I’ll take that as a compliment to my skills. Thank you.”
Leaving Joel to rage, preacher John leaned back leisurely on the sofa. Joel had to admit the truth: as the man said, there was nothing he could do right now.
At most, he could run out of the tunnel and ask Abe for help. Of course, John wouldn’t let him escape. Just as Joel’s face took on a look of despair…
“However… there is one way to save the Crown Prince’s soul.”
As if he had been waiting for this moment, preacher John whispered in a tempting voice.
“Fine, I’ll give you my soul. So please, save the Crown Prince.”
Joel nodded readily without even hearing the rest of John’s words. He was already mentally prepared for this.
Furthermore, now that he knew the Crown Prince had sacrificed his soul to turn back time, he had even less reason to hesitate.
Joel had never wanted the Crown Prince’s sacrifice, then or now, and he didn’t want the Crown Prince to vanish in vain just because of him.
However, contrary to Joel’s expectation that he would jump at the offer, preacher John burst into a hearty laugh. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
“What? You’ll give your soul to save the Crown Prince? You foolish little lamb, do you really think your worthless soul has the same value as the Crown Prince’s? It would probably take about a hundred souls like yours just to maybe exchange for his.”
Joel felt bewildered. If so, why had he summoned someone as worthless as himself here in the middle of the night?
Toward the tense Joel, preacher John lowered his voice even further and spoke in a secretive tone.
“…But you hold the right to choose. A very important choice, at that.”
As he whispered this, preacher John looked at Joel’s stomach with greedy eyes.
Disgustingly, he smacked his lips like someone sitting before a very delicious meal.
That bone-chilling behavior—Joel finally realized what price preacher John wanted.
* * *
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