The solid wooden door swung open with a dull thud, pushed firmly from the outside. Hayjin had no time to lift his head from the pillow or utter a single word of protest before the air in the room seemed to undergo a sudden contraction.
Before Zhilian could even finish stepping over the threshold, a lightning-fast movement, charged with compressed and long-repressed energy, sliced through the air. A dull whistle, the sharp crack of skin impacting flesh.
CRACK.
A sharp, intense pain exploded violently on Hayjin's left cheek.
The impact was so powerful it forced his head to snap to the side, causing his body to lurch on the mattress. The metallic taste of blood spread instantly through his mouth, while a dull ringing filled his left ear.
Zhilian had just punched Hayjin square in the face.
The boy lay motionless for a second, his cheek pressed against the pillow, his eyes wide with shock and utter surprise. The stinging of his skin mixed with incredulous bewilderment. With trembling fingers, he raised a hand to his face, lightly touching the struck area, which was already beginning to swell and throb with painful heat. He slowly pulled himself up to a sitting position, turning to her with a stunned look, his pupils dilated with adrenaline and complete incomprehension.
"You... you punched me..." Hayjin muttered, his voice raspy, wiping a smear of blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Zhilian?! Have you completely lost your mind?!"
The princess stood frozen on the threshold, her right fist still partially clenched and her shoulder tense from the force of the blow. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, betraying a breathlessness born not from physical exertion, but from an unmanageable emotional storm. Her light eyes, usually so cold and calculating, glistened with fierce rage mixed with a desperate, profound sense of betrayal.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke. The silence in the room grew thick, heavy, almost suffocating.
Then, with a rigid motion, Zhilian lowered her arm, clenching her fingers until her knuckles turned white. Her tone shifted abruptly: blind fury gave way to a cold, sharp, unyielding gravity.
"That's for acting like an insolent coward in the corridor earlier," Zhilian said, staring straight into his eyes without the slightest hint of regret, though her lips trembled slightly. "And that is the price you pay for treating me like a bothersome stranger after everything we've been through together."
Glaring daggers at him, the princess took two steps into the room, shutting the door behind her with a sharp click. She stopped at the foot of the bed, crossing her arms over her chest in a posture that attempted to project authority, yet betrayed deep cracks in her royal armor.
"Now talk," Zhilian commanded in a calm tone that possessed disarming severity. "Tell me exactly what's going on. Why are you acting like this? What is the cause of this paranoia that's been eating you alive all morning?"
Hayjin looked away, running a hand over his aching cheek. He could taste the sharp tang of blood and feel his pulse hammering in his temples. He wanted to scream, to shove the crazy, impossible truth of time loops in her face, to tell her that the men she admired or the people she trusted were executioners ready to slit her throat in her sleep.
But the words caught in his throat. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that explaining such a thing without concrete proof would make it sound like the ramblings of a madman. So he chose the only path he knew: he clammed up. Hayjin clenched his jaw and refused to answer, remaining silent with his eyes fixed on the wooden floor.
Zhilian watched him weather the blow of her silence. Seeing him so withdrawn, so impenetrable and distant, caused her fury to falter, dissolving into a sudden, piercing melancholy. The hardness on her face vanished, replaced by an expression of deep, almost painful apprehension.
The princess took a step forward, lowering her arms. Her tone shifted radically, turning infinitely softer and more caring.
"Hayjin..." Zhilian murmured, her voice betraying a vulnerability she rarely displayed before anyone else. "Are you sure you've completely recovered from what happened in the dungeon?"
The boy sat motionless, saying nothing.
"I mean..." the princess continued, drawing a bit closer and sitting down slowly on the edge of the mattress, maintaining a respectful distance that was nonetheless charged with concern. "Back down there... the darkness, the monsters, the blood, the oppressive sense of death around us... I know how deeply that experience scarred us inside. If you're still shaken, if you can't sleep and you're having nightmares... I swear to you, it's okay. You can tell me. I will never judge you."
Zhilian's words washed over Hayjin like an unexpected caress, painful in its sincerity. The princess who always had to prove herself strong, the future ruler who could afford no weakness, was sitting right there on his bed, willing to forgive every insolence just to understand if he was suffering in silence.
Hayjin closed his eyes for a few seconds. His breath hitched almost imperceptibly. Then he raised his head and met her gaze. His face was weary, marked by deep dark circles, but his eyes had grown remarkably calm, almost resigned.
"Right now... I can't tell you anything yet, Zhilian," Hayjin replied in a low, quiet voice, devoid of any past hostility. "I wish I could. I really wish I could explain every single thing to you... but now isn't the time. But believe me... soon, everything will be sorted out. And it will go back to normal."
Zhilian's eyes widened slightly, surprised by such an uncharacteristically mature and quiet response. Her anxiety didn't lessen; on the contrary, it mounted rapidly.
"A normal based on what, Hayjin?!" the princess blurted out, unable to hold back the worry in her voice. "Do you realize what you're saying? Who are we talking about? Is it someone who wants to hurt you? Have you been threatened by someone else? Tell me the truth... does this have to do with Riko? Did she threaten you when you were alone in the hallway?!"
At the mere mention of the housekeeper, a cold shiver ran down Hayjin's spine. Riko hadn't threatened him verbally; she had manipulated him with a psychological coldness that made his blood run cold. But he couldn't tell Zhilian that.
Hayjin didn't answer immediately. He lowered his head slightly, letting his bangs shadow his eyes. His breathing grew slow, deep, almost labored, as if every breath required immense physical effort.
He looked down at his palms hands calloused and scarred, marked by invisible wounds from another world.
When he spoke again, his voice lacked the defensiveness from the start of their clash. It was a soft murmur, stripped of all armor, drifting quietly into the room's silence.
"I'm not going crazy, Zhilian..." Hayjin said softly, almost as if talking more to himself than to her. "And I'm not doing this out of spite, or because I like playing the mysterious guy. I'm... I'm just trying to make up for my mistakes."
Zhilian froze. The impulse to press him with another question vanished instantly, overwhelmed by the change in his voice. She decided not to interrupt. Remaining seated on the edge of the bed, she let him speak, listening in absolute, focused silence.
"All my life..." Hayjin continued, his eyes lost in the dim shadows, "long before I ever set foot in this castle, long before all this knight business... I've done nothing but mess up. I lived as if nothing really mattered, dragging myself through one day at a time, ignoring the signs, turning away when I should have fought. And my punishment for living like that was ending up here... erased without leaving anything behind, without achieving a single good thing."
He paused briefly, clenching his fingers into fists on the mattress. In his mind, it wasn't just the phantom feeling of the blade slicing his throat in the previous loop; there was also the vague, bitter, distant memory of his life on Earth that meaningless, abrupt end that had ripped him away before he could truly understand what it meant to protect something.
"Then I arrived here," he continued, his voice trembling imperceptibly with emotional exhaustion. "And for the first time, I found people who... who were worth protecting. You, Isabelle... even that little brat Wren. People who don't deserve to be used, deceived, or butchered in the dark by some bastard."
He slowly raised his eyes to Zhilian. His dark eyes were clouded with pure, genuine frustration almost childlike in its desperate simplicity.
"That's all I want, Zhilian. I just want to protect you all. I want to stop history from repeating itself, I want to fix things before it's too late, before someone tears you away from me like has already happened... And what I really can't understand, what drives me crazy and makes me so angry... is why none of you can see that."
He let out a long, bitter sigh, shaking his head slightly.
"Every time I take a step forward, every time I try to anticipate a strike or figure out where the threat is coming from... I end up looking like a monster. A paranoid, reckless lunatic, someone to eye with suspicion or tackle to the floor in corridors. You all treat me like I'm the problem... when all I'm trying to do is keep everyone safe."
Zhilian remained motionless. Her lips parted slightly, but she didn't utter a word. The aggression she had brought into the room had dissolved entirely. Seeing Hayjin's raw vulnerability, sensing the weight of that warped yet impossibly deep guilt he carried inside, made her realize how acutely he was suffering in solitude.
She understood that behind every reckless action, behind every paranoid glance or outburst toward the staff, lay not madness or arrogance, but a visceral terror of watching the people he cared about die.
Silence returned to the room, but it was a different kind of quiet: no longer tense and adversarial, but heavy with painful empathy.
Instead of tensing up further, Hayjin managed a faint, weak smile bitter, yet genuinely affectionate.
Without saying a word, he leaned forward and, with a natural yet unexpected movement, pulled the princess into an embrace, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and holding her close.
Zhilian froze completely for a moment. The impulsiveness of the gesture caught her entirely off guard. Her body stiffened under the contact as the scent of Hayjin's skin, mixed with the sharp tang of sweat and dust, filled her senses.
"Everything's going to be okay, Zhilian..." Hayjin whispered softly near her ear, slowly stroking her back with one hand. "It's no big deal. I just have a few personal issues I need to work through. Trust me, don't worry."
Those words, spoken with such protective calm, permanently dissolved the princess's remaining defenses. Zhilian's heart began to hammer wildly against her ribs.
Slowly, the tension drained from her muscles. Her arms relaxed and, returning the embrace, she squeezed him tight, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.
"You really are an idiot..." Zhilian murmured, her voice muffled in a blend of fond scolding and infinite sweetness, as she felt tears threatening to sting her eyes from a mix of relief and fear. "A certified idiot, Hayjin..."
She paused briefly, hugging him even tighter, as though terrified that if she loosened her grip, the boy might vanish into thin air like a ghost.
"Still..." Zhilian continued, pulling back a few inches to look him in the face, her cheeks suddenly flushed a bright, deep red that spread across her cheekbones to her ears, while a smile of pure happiness touched her lips. "I want you to remember something. When I was at my absolute worst... after that terrifying ordeal in the dungeon, when I couldn't stop shaking and thought I'd lost everything... you were there. You were always there, helping me, supporting me, talking to me when everyone else treated me like nothing more than the future queen."
The princess's light eyes shone with absolute clarity, stripped of all pride, filled with sincere, profound devotion.
"So I want you to know that whenever you need help... I'll be there for you, anytime," Zhilian continued, her voice steady and tender. "Not just because you're my personal knight, but... but because you're my best friend."
As she spoke those words, the blush on her cheeks deepened further, almost embarrassed to have confessed such a deep bond so openly, yet her heart swelled with immense joy for having finally said it.
Hayjin looked into her eyes. In that moment, while the entire world around them seemed to crumble into an abyss of lies and hidden daggers, Zhilian's smile was the only true, pure thing left in that castle.
His eyes softened completely.
"I'll remember, Zhilian..." Hayjin replied with a genuine smile, the pain in his cheek entirely forgotten. "I promise you."
They stayed like that for a few moments, steeped in a quiet that felt like a truce, before Zhilian composed herself with a soft cough, trying to regain a semblance of her usual regal demeanor, though her cheeks remained warm and flushed.
"Well..." the princess murmured, slowly rising from the edge of the bed and smoothing down her armor jacket. "I see you're... well, let's say you're trying to pull yourself together. I'll leave you in peace to think, as you wanted."
She took a few steps toward the door, then turned back one last time to look at him, her expression an inextricable mix of affection and worry.
"Don't do anything foolish, Hayjin. And if you need anything... you know where to find me."
"Alright. See you soon, Zhilian."
The princess opened the door and stepped out of the room, quietly closing it behind her.
But as soon as the latch clicked shut, Zhilian's smile vanished completely, replaced by an expression of deep concern. Walking down the corridor, the princess clenched her fists at her sides. She knew full well that Hayjin's smile and assurances were nothing more than a facade. She knew him too well: there was something massive, dark, and dangerous that he was hiding from her something that went far beyond mere personal troubles.
"You're lying to me, Hayjin..." the princess thought as she hurried away. "You have that look in your eyes, the look of someone lying... I absolutely have to keep an eye on you... I won't let you get yourself killed."
On the other side of the closed door, Hayjin remained seated on the bed, his back resting against the wooden headboard. Silence had reclaimed the room.
The boy took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he sank into an intense, painful contemplation.
"I told her no... Was I right not to tell her the truth?"
The thought of telling her everything had crossed his mind more than crossed it. Having Zhilian at his side, with her authority and strength, would have radically changed the board. Together, they could unmask Wilder, search the sages' quarters, or keep watch over Riko.
But the idea of involving her crashed instantly against a wall of pure terror.
"No. If I told her I can loop back through time, if I told her Wilder has already betrayed her or that someone in this castle intends to kill me in my sleep... I'd put her in mortal danger. She'd try to act out in the open, face the culprits head-on, and end up dead. I can't let that happen. I've already seen too much blood; I've had to relive my own death twice now... I can't bear the thought of watching Zhilian suffer or die in front of my eyes."
Knowing he could loop back, that he could rewind the film of death, didn't make it any less agonizing; on the contrary, the thought of watching her die even if only temporarily before a reset was an unbearable psychological torture. He knew he had to fight alone, or at least without risking the lives of the people he cared about most.
"Even so..." Hayjin thought, running a hand through his messy hair, "some extra help wouldn't hurt. I'm groping in the dark. Wilder is out with the patrol, Riko has an airtight alibi and acts coy with ambiguous talk... that leaves me with only one final big unknown."
His mind inevitably drifted to the sages' tower, to the mysterious, ever-present old man pulling strings from the shadows.
"Arkon. I need to find out if it was really him. He's the last piece missing to see the whole picture before nightfall, before the loop starts over or ends tragically."
Hayjin bolted off the bed. The pain in his left cheek still throbbed slightly, reminding him of Zhilian's punch, but the adrenaline of his decision had swept away all traces of fatigue.
He headed toward the wall mirror to quickly fix himself up. He splashed cold water from the pitcher on the small table over his face, attempting to wash away the fatigue and dried blood on his lip. He adjusted his dark leather jacket and checked that the dagger at his belt was secure in its sheath, ensuring it wouldn't rattle as he walked.
The plan was insane but necessary: sneak into the hall of the sages to scavenge for clues about Arkon, hoping to uncover whether he was the mastermind behind the nightly murder taking absolute care not to get caught, especially since the sages appeared to be absent. It was time to act before the court fully awakened and the guard shifts changed once more.
Hayjin approached his bedroom door. He placed his hand on the cold wrought-iron handle, took a deep breath to steady his pulse, and slowly cracked the door open, peering outside.
The hallway of the knights' wing was deserted, lit only by the faint sunlight filtering through high diamond-paned windows. No guards nearby, no sound of suspicious footsteps only the mountain wind howling softly against the castle's outer stone walls.
With his heart in his throat and exercising extreme caution, looking side to side as he quietly stepped out of his room, the boy slipped into the shadows of the palace corridors, headed stealthily toward the hall of the sages, ready to uncover the truth that would decide his life or his next death.