Marcus stumbled out of the ballroom, his lungs screaming for air.
The music and laughter felt like a physical weight pressing down on him.
He pushed through a set of glass doors and found himself on a deserted balcony.
Cold night air hit him like a slap in the face.
He gripped the stone railing, his knuckles white. He leaned over, gasping for breath, his mind a chaotic storm.
I've stolen my brother's harem.
The words echoed in his head, a death knell for the world.
His memory helpfully replayed every disastrous success.
Seraphina's face when he'd left the tea and the note.
The vulnerable hope in her eyes.
The way she'd smiled at him over the flowers, a smile meant only for him.
Catarina's shocked expression when he'd understood her secret love for romance novels.
The way she'd broken down in his arms, trusting him with her exhaustion and fear.
The increasingly personal letters they'd exchanged.
Vivienne's dead, empty eyes at the duel.
The flicker of life when he'd told her, "You still are someone."
The predatory, playful hunger in her gaze at every social event since.
Iris's quiet, analytical curiosity turning into something more.
Her confession of a new, sharp sadness at the thought of his short life ending.
He'd seen their pain. Their loneliness. Their secret desires.
And like the well-trained life coach he was, he had offered them exactly what they needed to hear.
Validation. Empathy. Understanding.
He had helped them.
And in doing so, he had doomed them all.
The prophecy was clear. Theodore, the Child of Destiny, had to form alliances through "bonds of heart and soul." He had to unite the fractured kingdoms against the demon invasion.
The teacher. The duchess. The adventurer. The elf. The four pillars of the world's salvation.
And all of them were looking at the wrong brother.
"I've doomed the world by being a good life coach," Marcus whispered.
The absurdity of it was breathtaking.
He had one job. One critical, world-saving job.
And his own nature, his very essence, was the saboteur. His greatest strength was the world's greatest weakness.
The weight of it was crushing.
He thought of the thousands of people in the city below. The millions across the kingdom.
All of them blissfully unaware that their fate rested not on a hero's sword, but on the romantic choices of four women.
Choices that he had irrevocably altered.
The demon invasion was coming in three years.
Without the alliances, humanity would fall.
The Roselle armies wouldn't march.
The adventurers wouldn't fight.
The elves wouldn't lend their magic.
All because the women who led them were interested in a useless viscount's son with no magic and no combat skills.
A man who was supposed to be a footnote in the story.
Marcus felt his legs give out. He sank to his knees on the cold stone, the despair a physical weight.
✧✧✧
"I've doomed them all," he muttered, his head in his hands.
He can imagine it all playing out. The demons pouring over the Darkwall Mountains.
The human armies, fractured and fighting alone, being overwhelmed.
Cities burning. People dying.
And it would all be his fault.
Because he'd been kind.
Because he'd listened.
Because he couldn't stop himself from helping people who were hurting.
He'd spent his first life neglecting his own happiness to fix others. He'd died full of regret.
Now he was in his second life, and his instinct to fix others was about to cause the apocalypse.
The irony was so bitter it tasted like ash.
He stayed there for what felt like an eternity, kneeling on the cold balcony, crushed by the weight of his failure.
The laughter from the ballroom sounded like a condemnation.
This is it. This is how you fail on a cosmic scale. Not with a bang, but with a series of well-intentioned, empathetic conversations.
He thought of Theodore, happy and oblivious, talking about swords.
He'd be on the front lines when the demons came.
He'd fight bravely. And he'd die, because the support he was supposed to have would be missing.
He thought of Seraphina, who had just started to heal.
Of Catarina, who was just learning to breathe.
Of Vivienne, who was just remembering how to be alive.
Of Iris, who was just beginning to feel.
He'd given them hope. And that hope was going to get them all killed.
But then, a flicker. A tiny, stubborn spark in the darkness of his despair.
It was the life coach. The fixer. The problem-solver.
The part of him that saw a broken system and immediately started whiteboarding solutions.
You broke it. You fix it.
The thought was small, but it was there.
He'd made a mess. A world-ending, apocalyptic mess.
But messes could be cleaned up. Problems could be solved.
He got to his feet slowly. His knees ached from the cold stone.
He walked to the railing and looked out at the city lights.
"Okay," he said to the night sky.
His voice was hoarse but steady. "Okay. I broke the plot."
He took a deep, shuddering breath. The panic was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But it wasn't paralyzing anymore.
"So I have to fix it."
A new plan began to form. A desperate, probably stupid plan.
Operation: Get My Brother Laid for World Peace had failed. Spectacularly.
It was time for Phase Two. Operation: Redirect.
He had accidentally made them all interested in him.
So now, he had to make them uninterested.
He had to push them away.
He had to convince them that he was not the man they thought he was.
He had to become the scoundrel everyone used to think he was.
He had to make them hate him.
Or at least, dislike him enough to go back to the original protagonist. Back to Theodore.
It would hurt. Hurting people was against his every instinct.
Especially these women, who he'd come to genuinely care about.
But the fate of the world was at stake.
His feelings, their feelings, they were all secondary to survival.
Marcus stood up straight. The despair on his face was replaced by a grim, panicked determination.
His eyes, usually soft and empathetic, sharpened with a new, desperate resolve.
He was a fixer. A helper. A problem-solver.
And this was the biggest problem he had ever faced.
"Okay," he whispered, his voice cold and hard. "I broke it. Now I'm going to fix it."
He turned and walked back toward the ballroom. Back toward the chaos he had created.
He had a new mission.
Not to build a harem for his brother.
But to dismantle the one he had accidentally built for himself.
And he would start...
Tomorrow.