The phone clutched in Damian’s grip rang shrilly amidst the silence of three in the morning. The sound of rain lashing against the glass windows of his luxury penthouse seemed to accompany the ominous foreboding that had been hammering against his chest all night. With slightly stiff fingers, Damian answered a call from one of the trusted operatives he had assigned to monitor Rehan's movements from afar.

"Master Damian... We just received an emergency report from the North Sector Police. The car driven by Madam Aileen has suffered a fatal accident. Her vehicle plunged off the cliff along the northern mountain pass..."

The voice on the other end suddenly dissolved into a ringing hum inside Damian's ears. The world around him instantly stopped spinning. A single second felt like a thousand years. Without uttering a single word, Damian dropped his phone onto the floor, the screen shattering into countless pieces.

"Aileen..." Damian whispered, his breath catching sharply in his throat.

Disregarding raincoats or the torrential storm raging outside, Damian grabbed his car keys and bolted through the pouring rain toward the scene of the crash. Inside his vehicle, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator, rocketing through the wet capital streets at a mad, reckless speed. All the way there, Damian's jaw remained locked in a tight brace, while tears—which he had rarely shed since the death of his parents—flowed freely down his cheeks.

“Hold on, Aileen... Please, don't leave me...” his mind screamed in profound agony.

Upon arriving at the scene, yellow police tape stretched tightly along the edge of the steep precipice. The flashing red-and-blue lights of patrol cars and ambulances cast strobing reflections across the dark night. Damian leaped out of his car, charging aggressively through the crowd of officers despite several cops trying to hold him back.

"Master Damian, you cannot go down there, the area is extremely dangerous—" a police officer shouted.

"Get your hands off me!" Damian snarled in a deep, booming baritone charged with fury and desperation. His sharp, dagger-like gaze forced the officer to retreat in sudden fright.

Damian immediately scrambled down the muddy, precipitous slope, ignoring the razor-sharp rocks and thorny brush that tore through his expensive suit jacket and clawed at his hands. Upon reaching the bottom of the ravine, the sight before him made his heart feel as though it had stopped beating forever.

Aileen’s sedan was crumpled beyond recognition, wedged tightly between the trunks of massive trees. With his remaining strength, Damian lunged forward, ripping open the jammed car door with his bare hands until his palms were slick with blood. Inside the blood-spattered cabin, he beheld the woman he had secretly loved to the ends of the earth.

Aileen lay rigid, held upright by the seatbelt cutting across her body. Her beautiful face was marred by deep bruises and fresh blood, yet her expression looked utterly serene—a tragic, haunting tranquility that tore at the heart of anyone who looked upon her.

"Aileen... Wake up, Aileen. I'm right here..." Damian's voice trembled violently, breaking into a choked, agonizing sob.

With trembling fingers, Damian extricated the lifeless body from the wreckage, pulling her tightly against his broad chest as though he could channel his own heartbeat straight into the woman in his arms. He buried his face in the crook of Aileen’s cooling neck, howling silently amidst the dark, isolating forest.

"I was too late... I was such a fool to always keep my distance, a fool to let you be surrounded by those venomous snakes..." Damian wept, his tears mingling with the relentless rain soaking their bodies. "I'm sorry, Aileen. I swear... I will rip the life out of that bastard Rehan with my bare hands to avenge your death!"

Several days later, the funeral arrived under a bleak, gloomy sky.

At the exclusive hillside cemetery, mourners dressed in solemn black stood in quiet reverence. In the front row stood a man clad in a pitch-black suit, his eyes shielded behind dark sunglasses. Damian stood rigid, watching the casket as it slowly lowered into the open earth. A few paces away, Rehan stood with a feigned expression of grief, putting on a fake sorrowful look while wiping away manufactured tears from the corner of his eye.

Witnessing Rehan's sickening hypocrisy standing so close by made Damian’s blood boil furiously. His fists inside his suit pockets clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned ghostly white.

As the mourners began to trickle away one by one, Damian remained standing tall before the headstone bearing the name Aileen Hartono. He slowly knelt, placing a bouquet of Aileen's favorite white roses upon the damp earth.

"Rest in peace, Aileen," Damian whispered in a raspy voice laden with a fierce, burning vengeance. "I will not let Rehan live in peace for a single second after this. I will strip away everything he owns, and then send him straight to hell to follow you."

Suddenly, as Damian's fingertips brushed against the marble gravestone, a strange phenomenon occurred.

The air surrounding the grave abruptly froze. The gray, overcast sky suddenly flashed with a brilliant, blinding golden light, forcing Damian to raise a hand to shield his face. A howling wind roared violently through the air, whipping the white rose petals off the grave and swirling them into the sky.

Thump!

A sharp, stabbing wave of pain violently assaulted Damian's head, as though space and time were being forcefully wrenched apart all at once. Within the swirling vortex of light, a whispering voice called out his name with gentle urgency:

“A second chance... Go back...”

And then... everything plunged into absolute darkness.

The warm rays of morning sunlight filtered gently through the sheer curtains of a luxurious bedroom.

Damian jerked awake with a violent gasp. He sat bolt upright in the king-sized bed of his exclusive hotel suite. His breathing came in ragged, frantic gasps, his chest heaving as though he had just sprinted for miles through a raging storm. Cold sweat drenched his entire body.

He blinked rapidly, struggling to adjust his vision to the bright morning light around him. Damian lowered his gaze, inspecting both of his hands. There were no scratches, no lingering stains of blood on his palms.

In a panic, his hand shot out toward the smartphone resting on the bedside table, lighting up the screen to check today's date.

The display glowed brightly, flashing a digital sequence that left Damian utterly paralyzed:

Wednesday, October 14, 2024.

That date... was precisely three years before the fatal accident that had stolen Aileen's life.

Damian sat in absolute stillness, staring at his own reflection in the large mirror across the room. His gaze—once cold and aloof—now radiated a fierce, razor-sharp flash of profound realization, mingling with overwhelming relief and an unyielding, burning resolve.

"Time... time has turned back," Damian whispered hoarsely, the corners of his lips curling upward into a subtle, meaningful smile. "Aileen... this time, I will never let you fall into that bastard's hands again. I will protect you with my very life, and tear them to absolute shreds."