Nova Roma - Chapter 1 - Prologue

The whole world mutated. Mysterious resurrections happened in real life. The Tribulation descended.

“Is Fate the excuse of the forsaken, is Free Will the delusion of the chosen?”Such was a question that Xavier, the Demon King, never had the chance to ask himself. As he lay defeated, awaiting his death, he wondered about the wretched life he lived.'The hero who killed me, the one who held the same ambitions as me. We both wanted good for the people, for the world. We are both two sides of the same coin, yet, fate decided that he will be the one the light will shine on.Perhaps it was me too, perhaps it was my karma for flowing the rivers of blood with my sword. But still... It was fate that squashed the humanity in me first!Damn fate, if I had one more chance, I would've lived for myself more, I wouldn't have taken this arbitrary role of being a necessary evil... This world, this game of destiny... It can burn to ashes for all I care.'As he sunk into the cold embrace of death, a certain [REDACTED] heard his dying wish with amusement and cast their die, reversing the wheel of time one last time and going all in on him on a risky gamble with the stakes of their world.

In his old life, he was an assassin, invisible, efficient, and utterly alone.His only escape came from the pages of a fantasy novel, Crown of Thorns, and the character no one else seemed to understand: Lady Evelina D’Arclight, the proud and brilliant villainess fated to lose everything.After his death, he wakes up inside that very story, not as a hero, but as Cael Arden, a student at Eryndor Royal Academy. The world is just as he remembers it, right down to the woman destined to fall.But this time, he’s not a bystander.With a lifetime of deadly skills and the knowledge of what’s to come, Cael sets out to rewrite the story itself, to protect Evelina, rise through the academy’s ruthless hierarchy, and change a fate written in stone.As alliances form and secrets surface, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur.And in a world built on power and prophecy, he’ll prove that even a villainess deserves her happy ending.

“Could you become my daughter?”