Lucien opened his eyes to the familiar, slightly cracked plaster of his bedroom ceiling. He felt like he had been trampled by a herd of mountain goats. Glancing down, he noticed he was covered in bandages, though several seemed to be wrapped around areas that weren't even bruised, while a few of his actual lacerations were only lazily covered. It was clear that whoever had dressed him had been in a state of sheer panic.

  The sun streamed through the window, warm and unapologetic. He had been out for at least a night.

  His mind immediately sharpened. Sebas. Was the man loyal? Had he crumbled under the "leecher" father’s questioning? This was the greatest gamble of Lucien’s second life, and he was currently too broken to influence the outcome.

  The heavy oak door creaked open. His mother, Adeline, walked in, her face a mask of grief. The moment her eyes met his, she let out a strangled sob and rushed to his bedside, throwing her arms around him. Lucien’s ribs screamed in protest, a sharp groan catching in his throat, but he forced himself to stay still.

  It had been decades since he had felt his mother’s embrace without the shadow of tragedy hanging over them. For a fleeting second, the coldness in his chest thawed. It was a nice change of pace from a life defined by dirt, blood, and bodies.

  Then, Adeline pulled back, her tear-streaked face hardening into a look of maternal fury.

  "How could you?" she cried, clutching a damp handkerchief. "Sebas told us everything! He said he caught you following him!"

  Lucien’s heart hammered against his ribs. Fuck, he thought, his stomach dropping. I gambled wrong. The idiot broke.

  "He said you tried to scale the cliffside just to pick a flower for me!" she wailed, tears fresh once more. "He said you slipped and fell because you wanted to surprise me. He had to cancel his entire business meeting just to carry your broken body home!"

  She threw herself onto him again, burying her face in his shoulder. "You sweet, stupid, precious boy! Don't you ever scare me like that again!"

  Lucien froze, his mind reeling. Oh. A wave of relief washed over him so potent it made him feel lightheaded. Sebas had lied. Not just a small lie, but a perfectly crafted cover story that played on Adeline’s vanity and Lucien’s supposed innocence. The gamble had paid off. Sebas had chosen his side.

  Now, however, came the hard part. Lucien realized he had to play the role of the "sweet, stupid boy." He cleared his throat, trying to summon a look of sheepish, childish regret.

  "I... I'm sowwy, Mama," he croaked. The "w" in sorry felt like acid on his tongue. It was a pathetic attempt at a lisp he hadn't used in twenty years.

  Adeline pulled back, looking at him expectantly.

  "The flower... it was p-pretty," Lucien continued, his face twitching. He tried to make his eyes go wide and watery, but they remained unnervingly sharp and analytical. He felt like an actor who had forgotten his lines and was trying to improvise a Shakespearean tragedy as a puppet show. "I wanted to... um... give you a gift. Because you're the best. Truly."

  Adeline blinked, her sobbing slowing. "Truly?"

  "Yes!" Lucien squeaked, his face flushing with genuine embarrassment now. "I love you. A lot. Please do not be mad at Sebas. It was my fault for being... small and clumsy. Like a little baby."

  He felt a piece of his soul wither and die with every word. He was doing a terrible job of it; he sounded like a middle-aged man mocking a toddler rather than an actual child. But Adeline, blinded by her own relief, simply took his awkwardness for lingering shock.

  "Oh, my little angel," she cooed, kissing his forehead. "Rest now. I'll bring you some broth."

  As she bustled out of the room, Lucien slumped back into his pillows, staring at the ceiling with a hollow expression.

  I need to work on my acting, he thought grimly. And I need to see Sebas. Immediately.

  Lucien slumped back against the pillows, the embarrassment of his performance lingering like a bad taste. He let it sit for a moment before his mind shifted back to the forest. That power, he thought. What was it?

  It wasn't something he’d possessed in his previous life. It had to be a consequence of his regression—a residual effect of breaking the laws of time. He needed to know if he could replicate it.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled a shallow, painful breath. He focused all his will on the sounds of the kitchen downstairs. He strained to hear, but his ears only met the muffled, distant hum of the house. Nothing changed.

  What is missing? He wondered. The tilt. I have to imagine the tilt.

  He tried again. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on his hearing, but this time, he imagined his internal scales sliding to one side.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Slowly, the world began to tilt. It wasn't a snap, but a deliberate, heavy slide. The balance of his body skewed, shifting the weight of his entire existence away from his other senses to feed a single point.

  The smell of the house vanished. The feeling of the comfy bed beneath him disappeared. Even the agonizing pain in his ribs faded into a gray void. He was becoming a hollow shell, his reality tipping entirely toward his ears.

  In that lopsided silence, the muffled world sharpened. His mother’s voice suddenly became jagged and clear, echoing through the floorboards as if she were standing right beside his bed. She was stirring a pot, her voice light and melodic as she sang a lullaby she had clearly made up for him:

  "My little star, fallen from the sky," she hummed, the sound sickly sweet and doting. "With a heart so pure and a soul so bright, he climbed the mountain in the pale moonlight. For a tiny flower, for a mother’s kiss... oh, was there ever a boy as sweet as this?"

  Lucien could hear the clink of the ladle against the ceramic bowl.

  "No thorns can hurt him, no heights can scare, my brave little angel with white in his hair. He brought me a gift from the cliff's cold stone, the kindest spirit I've ever known..."

  The irony cut deeper than his wounds. He was a monster who had just committed double homicide, and she was singing about his "kind spirit."

  Suddenly, the strain became too much. The "tilt" slowly returned, and everything returned to normal. The pain rushed back into his chest like a flood, and the smell of onion broth returned to his nose. Lucien gasped, sweat beads breaking out on his forehead.

  He had found it. The power wasn't just strength—it was a scale. He could have superhuman abilities, but he had to sacrifice his other senses to pay for them.

  Determined to test the limits, Lucien spotted a fly on the wall opposite his bed. He focused his gaze on the tiny black speck and beckoned the tilt once more.

  Noise disappeared. The smell of the room died. The pain in his chest vanished.

  This time, his eyesight sharpened into a terrifying, microscopic clarity. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The fly was no longer a speck; it was a twitching, iridescent beast. He could see the thousands of hexagonal facets in its blood-red compound eyes, glinting like dark jewels. He saw the individual black bristles standing up like iron spikes on its thorax.

  The fly began to rub its "greedy little hands" together. Lucien watched the microscopic hooks on its feet and the wet pulse of its proboscis. He could see the oily, rainbow sheen on its translucent wings as they vibrated with agonizing slowness. It was a level of detail no human eye should ever behold.

  The strain became a physical weight. Lucien let go of the focus, and the world rushed back in a confusing blur of sound and scent. He lay back, sweat soaking his pillow. He had confirmed it. Sight, sound, strength—he could tilt toward any of them.

  "Young master!"

  Lucien jumped up from his bed, his heart hammering against his bruised ribs. He had been so deeply immersed in the "Tilt" that the sudden voice gave him quite the scare.

  He looked toward the door and saw Sebas. The man was a tall butler with a naturally straight, military-esque posture. He wore a crisp, well-kept uniform, and his hair was perfectly groomed, framing a face that was handsome in a sharp, clinical way—a chiseled jaw, calm eyes, and usually, an expression of unwavering competence.

  Or at least, he should have had an expression of competence. But today, Sebas was nothing but nervous and fidgety.

  "You scared me!" Lucien yelled at him, clutching his chest as the pain from his sudden movement flared.

  "I’m sorry," Sebas said, his voice trembling. "I called for you several times, but you were just... staring at the wall. I was afraid that your injuries were so serious that you had gone mute." To Lucien's bewilderment, Sebas actually began to sob, the composure of a professional butler completely dissolving.

  Lucien looked at him, dumbstruck. Well, this ability seems useful, but the downsides are huge too, he thought. If he became a god of one sense only to become a vegetable in every other, he was a sitting duck. He realized there had to be ways to mitigate these downsides—perhaps a way to balance the tilt without losing total awareness—but that was a thought for a future time.

  Right now, his biggest obstacle was the man standing in front of him. What should he do with Sebas?

  "Sebas," Lucien called to him, his voice regaining its cold, authoritative edge. "It seems that my 'fall' from the cliff while trying to get a flower for my mother has rattled my memory."

  He teased the man, watching Sebas squirm in place. The butler had never lied to the Lady before, and the weight of the deception made him look physically uncomfortable.

  "Tell me," Lucien said, narrowing his eyes. "Before I fell... did you agree to catch me? Or have you decided to let me fall?"

  Sebas looked at him, his face a mask of internal struggle. What had happened yesterday was too much for a normal man to process. He kept seeing it in his mind: the cold efficiency with which Lucien had killed the first man, and the terrifying, unnatural strength he used to choke the second. Then there was the claim—the impossible claim that the boy was from the future.

  Yet, the letter had proven Lucien right. The bald brothers had intended to slaughter everyone after getting the mine's location. And the way the boy had manipulated the battle... it was beyond anything Sebas had ever seen.

  Sebas had always harbored a dream of helping the Marcis family become the greatest barony in the land. He wanted to help the family rise up; he felt he owed the Marcis name that much. But beneath the fear, a morbid curiosity was taking root.

  What did the boy mean when he said the world would end in ten years? If the child truly held the keys to the future, then being loyal to the father might mean following the son into the dark.

  Sebas looked up and stared at Lucien—truly looked at him. The young, bouncy boy he had known just three days ago, the child who had waved him goodbye before he left to set up the deal, was gone.

  Now, all he saw was an experienced and dangerous soul residing in the body of a young child. The soft innocence had vanished from Lucien’s eyes, replaced by the cold glint and lethal sharpness of a powerful warrior who had seen a hundred battlefields. It was a gaze that didn't belong to a boy; it belonged to a predator.

  Sebas swallowed the lump in his throat and met that gaze. "Of course, I decided to catch you," Sebas said, his voice finally finding a sliver of resolve. "I believe that catching you was the best course of action."

  Lucien didn't respond with a hug or a childish laugh. Instead, his lips curled into a menacing smirk. It was a slow, knowing expression that signaled he now owned Sebas body and soul.

  This sent a violent shiver down Sebas’s spine. He realized in that moment that by "catching" the boy, he hadn't saved a child—he had tethered himself to a monster that was the only thing standing between his world and total annihilation.