The Butterfly Effect: I Refuse This Ending

[Achievement Unlocked: Mana Heart Created.] [Reward: 10 Power Stones.]

[Current PS: 15]

I opened the shop.

Luna was long gone.

I scrolled through the skills section and immediately understood why the higher beings wanted entertainment. These prices were not designed for someone starting with fifteen Power Stones.

Basic magic skills started at 200 PS. Ice Spear. Wind Blade. Basic Fireball. Entry level spells that academy students probably learned in their first week.

Intermediate skills sat above 1000 PS.

High grade skills→10000 PS.

And at the very top, almost mockingly out of reach:

Divine skills→100,000 PS.

I stared at that number for a moment.

A hundred thousand.

I had fifteen.

I kept scrolling. Then one more item caught my eye.

"Bloodline."

I stared at that for a moment. Then I kept scrolling.

Later, while searching the drawer beside the bed, I found a diary.

The cover read: Happy Birthday, Brother.

It stopped me cold.

Aria.

The diary was pristine, never opened, spine uncracked, pages untouched.

I sat with that thought for a moment. Then I opened it.

I began writing not memories, not feelings. Upcoming plot points. Key events from the novel. Names, dates, turning points. Everything I could remember, organized into something that you call a plan.

It wasn’t much. But it was a start.

Dinner came and went.

Time flew.

By the time I looked up, morning had already arrived.

This wasn’t the main Ardyn mansion, I realized. It was smaller and quieter. A secondary residence on the outskirts of the Northern Region. A vacation estate, by the look of it. The kind of place people were sent when they weren’t wanted at the main house.

Fitting, I thought.

I changed my clothes. Sebastian was waiting outside the door.

Does he even sleep? I wondered, studying his face for any trace of fatigue.

There was none.

"I’m going outside."

He nodded once. Said nothing.

I found a corner of the garden where no servants were present on the left side, partially hidden by hedgerow and got to work.

Basic training. Nothing ambitious. Just enough to remind this body that it had an owner now.

Sebastian watched from a distance.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Rhythmic. Heavy. Like something large repeatedly making contact with the ground whether it wanted to or not.

The Young Master was attempting, and Sebastian used that word generously.

His massive frame moved through what appeared to be burpees, though they bore only a passing resemblance to the actual movement. It was less athletic and more reminiscent of a beached whale attempting to negotiate its way back to the ocean.

His face had gone an alarming shade of red. Sweat poured freely down his flushed cheeks. His oversized clothes clung to him in dark, expanding patches.

He finished a set if it could be called that and collapsed into a plank position. His arms trembled violently. His back sagged toward the earth. His breath came in heavy, fogging gasps that hung in the cold morning air.

Every few seconds the form would collapse entirely. Every few seconds he pushed himself back up with a grunt Sebastian could hear clearly from where he stood.

When his arms gave out, he rolled over to crunches. When his core failed, he moved to lunges. Each exercise was uglier than the last clumsy, uncoordinated, the desperate movements of a body that had known nothing but neglect for years.

And yet

The Young Master did not stop.

What was he playing at?

Some elaborate performance to impress the Duke, perhaps. So that he won’t be removed from heir position. It wouldn’t be the first time a cornered noble tried something desperate.

It didn’t matter.

A few days of exercise wouldn’t undo years of neglect. Sebastian had seen it countless times in his career, the sudden burst of motivation, burning bright for a week before collapsing entirely. People like the Young Master always gave up.

Always.

He turned and went inside.

***

After resting, I ran.

Nothing impressive. Slow, heavy, humiliating this body protested every single step like it was filing a formal complaint. But I kept moving.

And the whole time, I kept the Infinity Mana Breathing active.

It was subtle at first. Just a rhythm: inhale, draw, exhale, circulate. Pulling the ambient mana from the air around me and feeding it slowly into the bronze mana heart sitting in my chest.

It wasn’t much. But it was constant.

Every breath counts, I told myself. Every single one.

***

The sight of him up close was almost shocking.

His clothes clung to his enormous frame, mapping every roll and curve beneath the fabric. Grass stains marked his knees and elbows. His black hair was plastered flat against his forehead. His breath came in ragged, uneven gasps.

He was a mess. Sweaty, filthy, completely undignified.

"Young Master—"

He said nothing. Just brushed past, leaving behind a trail of earth and sweat and heavy breathing as he made his way toward the bathroom.

Sebastian watched him go.

At dinner, he ate less than usual.

He felt like someone else entirely. Not the Young Master he had been assigned to watch.

But he kept his thoughts to himself.

***

The next morning I woke up to muscle cramps.

Every part of this body ached. Shoulders, legs, arms, even muscles I hadn’t known existed were filing complaints. The kind of soreness that made sitting up feel like a negotiation.

But I got up anyway.

The sun was still rising when I made it outside, the sky bleeding pale orange at the edges. The garden was silent.

I found my spot in the left corner and started with mana breathing first deliberately, methodically, pulling ambient mana through each inhale and cycling it through the heart in my chest.

The mana circulation eased the soreness faster than rest ever could like the body was being rewritten from the inside.

It was the only reason I could move at all this morning.

I smiled at that.

Then I got to work.

***

By the third morning, Sebastian told himself he wasn’t watching for him.

He just happened to be nearby. It was his duty as butler to be nearby. That was all.

It was the same pathetic display burpees that barely qualified as such, push-ups where his chest never quite touched the ground, squats that weren’t deep enough. But there were small improvements.

He held his planks five seconds longer. His form, while still terrible, had marginally improved.

On the fourth morning, he added weights to just small dumbbells, but he struggled with them as if they were anvils.

On the fifth morning, he ran. Or tried to. Around and around their modest backyard, his heavy body moving with all the grace of a tranquilized bear. But he ran.

On the sixth morning, Sebastian found himself mentally correcting his form. Straighten your back. Lower your hips. Control the descent.

He stopped himself the moment he noticed what he was doing.

It was annoying. That was all. The Young Master’s inefficiency was physically painful to witness working twice as hard for half the results because his form was so objectively atrocious. It had nothing to do with anything else.

Not that he cared.

He didn’t. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

By the tenth morning, other things had become impossible to ignore.

The servants had begun to notice. Quiet murmurs in the hallways. Exchanged glances over breakfast preparations. The Young Master who had once shouted at anyone within reach, who had spent his days in comfortable, contemptuous sloth, that person was disappearing.

No shouting. No demands. No cruelty.

Just silence. Early mornings. Sweat-soaked clothes left outside the bathroom door.