Tiya’s Smooth Regression Life

Author: rolypoly

His eyes were dry and lifeless, like a parched desert where even a handful of emotion had evaporated.

For a moment, instinctive fear tightened her throat, and she couldn’t get a word out.

Just then, Winter stepped forward as if shielding Tiya.

<Tell him you witnessed Erin’s suspicious behavior yesterday and followed her.>

Only then did Tiya snap out of it and look at Winter’s back.

Her tone was forceful, but her presence felt incredibly reassuring.

Because of that, Tiya managed to squeeze out her voice.

“I wanted to see the spirit egg.”

Winter turned as if to stop her, but Tiya didn’t pause.

“Erin told me there was a spirit egg in there. So when I saw the door open, I went inside…… and I got locked in……”

If she followed Winter’s advice, she might avoid her father’s interrogation.

‘But that would be a lie.’

Tiya didn’t want to run away from her mistake by telling lies.

Just as she was about to confess fully, Winter’s hand suddenly covered Tiya’s ears.

<Don’t listen. It’s nonsense.>

But neither her voice nor her hand could block out the Count’s next words.

“So you entered in order to steal the spirit egg after all.”

<You would’ve been accused of stealing it.>

Winter had clearly said that.

But she hadn’t expected even her father to think so.

Her head nearly drooped, but Tiya clenched her fists and lifted her chin higher instead.

Then she defended herself clearly.

“I don’t touch things that don’t belong to me.”

Her grandmother’s teachings—and Winter’s hand still covering her ears—gave Tiya courage.

“I heard that Father was going to use the Spirit Egg as medicine. If I were greedy for the Spirit Egg, sick people couldn’t be treated. So, I would never do such a thing.”

Before she knew it, Tiya was meeting her father’s eyes head-on.

Everyone in the office alternated their gazes between Tiya and the Count.

The Count, with an expression as dry as ever, took out a sheet of paper from his drawer.

“State the reward you want.”

“A reward?”

“Is that not why you captured the rat?”

That hadn’t been her intention….

As Tiya hesitated, Winter spoke as if she had been waiting.

<Ask for half the value of the spirit egg in gold coins. That would be appropriate.>

Just as Tiya was about to open her mouth—

Knock, knock.

Urgent knocking echoed.

A butler hurried in and lowered his voice to whisper something to the Count.

“In the North… a plague… Urgent blockade…”

“Plague.” And “lockdown.”

Even from the fragments she overheard, Tiya’s eyes widened.

Just as Winter had said.

An imperial lockdown to prevent the plague threatening the North from spreading across the Empire.

However, if there was one thing no one expected, it was that the blockade would continue until House Vladizev was annihilated.

Shurka immediately prepared to leave and, as he passed Tiya, handed her something without much thought.

“Write what you want and give it to my aide.”

As if his business was concluded, the Count left the office.

When everyone had gone, Tiya, pushed along, also left the office and returned to her room.

Only once she was alone did she look at what her father had given her.

<At least he’s clear about business being business.>

“What is this?”

<A blank check. Write the amount you want, and you’ll receive that much in cash.>

“A blank check…….”

Could this be her father’s way of praising her?

But this kind of praise didn’t make her happy at all.

Her heart didn’t feel warm or ticklish, nor did it fill her with motivation to do better.

“Dad must not be very good at praising people…. Well, I guess there’s no choice. Even if Dad praises like a mess, I’ll just have to understand it perfectly.”

Tiya rubbed her head roughly, the way her grandmother used to.

But no matter how much she did, only her hair became messy. No warm spark bloomed in her heart.

Her shoulders drooped.

‘Once I become a spirit mage, I’ll collect all eight years’ worth of praise I’ve missed from Dad.’

As she touched the spirit stone around her neck and steeled her resolve as usual—

A sharp chill of unease struck her heart like a snowball.

Suddenly, Tiya’s gaze turned toward Winter.

It felt like she had just been handed the answer key to the question she most wanted to solve.

The intense desire to peek at it was strong enough to shake her faith in herself.

In the end, Tiya reached for that answer.

“Winter, did you ever meet me? I mean, future me.”

<Why are you asking that all of a sudden?>

“Mm, I was just… wondering if I become a spirit mage.”

<…>

“I will become one in the future, right?”

<That…>

The few seconds waiting for Winter’s answer felt like years.

Unknowingly, Tiya clasped her hands tightly as if praying—

<Why ask something so obvious?>

At that single sentence, all her anxiety melted away like snow under spring sunlight.

“I-I knew it! Right, I become a spirit mage too! What kind of spirit comes to me? No, wait! Don’t tell me!”

Tiya, hurriedly covering Winter’s mouth, pictured a gift box in her mind.

And imagined the spirit of her future popping out from inside it.

Her father had the Spirit of Sand. Rodion had the Spirit of Shadow.

Lev had the Spirit of Flame, and Grandmother had subjugated the Spirit of Lightning.

Among all the spirits, Tiya immediately imagined the Spirit of Spring.

For some reason, she could easily picture filling the mansion garden with spring flowers alongside it.

‘No, it doesn’t have to be the Spirit of Spring.’

Because she was confident she would love any spirit more than anyone else in the world!

And once she became a spirit mage, surely Dad would—

<Even if you become a spirit mage, there will never be a day when Shurka Valloze acknowledges you.>

Winter’s sharp words ripped through Tiya’s swollen, happy heart.

Tiya’s body, which had been sitting on the sofa, kicking her feet while lost in joyful fantasies, slumped.

With a resentful tone, she asked,

“Why would you say something like that?”

Because it came from Winter, it sounded almost like a dark prophecy.

<I hadn’t intended to explain this, but.>

Winter’s fingertip pointed toward the Great Spirit in the tapestry.

<To return to the past by making a contract with the Spirit of Time, two conditions must be met.>

Winter held up two fingers and folded them down one by one.

<One, you must carry the blood of Vladizev. Two, you must possess the head’s ring in which the Spirit of Time is sealed. The Count once met those conditions, didn’t he?>

…He did.

Now he was Count Valloze, but until her mother’s funeral, her father had been called the Young Duke of Vladizev.

And on his hand was clearly the head’s ring—

<That man must have made a contract with the Spirit of Time.>

“How do you know?”

<The power of the Spirit of Time isn’t omnipotent. There are limitations.>

This time, Winter extended her fingers one by one as she continued.

<One: you can go back to the past multiple times, but the total time you can turn back is only twenty years. Two: every time you regress, your soul is damaged.>

The Spirit of Time leads the contractor’s soul back to the past.

However, just as a salmon swimming upstream loses scales and tears its fins, the human soul also suffers wounds.

The more one resists the current of time, the more the soul wears down, gradually losing its humanity.

The Spirit of Time had said that this was the price for defying the natural order.

<Seeing how rotten his eyes are, there probably isn’t even any humanity left to be damaged anymore.>

The fact that the current Grand Duke of Vladizhev had erased her own son from the family register was also evidence of that.

The family law book, passed down only to the head, clearly stated that anyone who consumed all twenty years of reversal would lose their qualification as head.

<Because of the restriction, we’ll never know what he reversed time for. But the result is what you saw.>

Twenty years of reversed time.

Shurka’s soul, having turned back all that time, had been worn down to the point that he had become a human who could feel nothing.