The fog was thick, hiding the horizon.

According to the System, this fog was just a sign of more gentle rain to come. The butterfly had already fluttered its wings.

Her interference had been too effective. She had saved the people she intended to rule, and in doing so, she had destroyed herself.

Evelina leaned her forehead against the cool glass that was cracked. A cold sweat broke out across her back, making her damp gown feel like a shroud.

For the first time since she had opened her eyes in this new life, the knowledge of the future she had clung to like a holy relic felt like a heavy yet useless stone around her neck.

She had played the game perfectly, anticipating every move of her enemies and fate. But she had forgotten one thing: the world was a living and breathing entity. By changing the players, she had changed the game itself.

The script of her past life, the one she had memorized to keep herself alive, had been burned to ashes by her own hand.

She wasn’t a prophetess anymore. She was just a woman standing in a dark room, surrounded by maps of a world that no longer existed, while her fortune rotted in the silence of the North.

She looked down at the [Merchant’s Eye] notification still hovering at the edge of her vision: [Estate Liquidity at 12%].

Outside, in the distance, a single bird let out a sharp, panicked cry, quite different from the song of a bird enjoying the rain. But Evelina, trapped in her own terror, didn’t even hear it.

The silence of the study was broken only by the frantic scratching of Evelina’s quill as she tried to recalculate her remaining assets, but the numbers refused to lie.

She was trapped in a cage of her own making at this point. The butterfly effect had turned her greatest weapon, her foresight into a blunt instrument that was now bruising her own hands.

Evelina frowned, sinking into her thoughts for a moment before she finally moved.

With a flick of her wrist, she summoned the System’s Shop interface. The blue light washed over her pale face, illuminating the dark circles beneath her eyes.

She ignored the usual stock of luxury soaps, poisons, and minor social boons. She scrolled past the high-end art supplies she once coveted for her private peace and pushed through the lists of tactical weaponry.

Then, she saw it.

At the very bottom of the tab, glowing with a golden hue was something she had desperately wanted to get some time ago.

[Prototype Steam Engine Blueprints (Early Stage)]

[Cost: 2,500 Heart-Wrecker Points]

[Description: The heart of the machine age. Provides the fundamental physics and mechanical engineering required to build the first functional steam-powered piston.]

Evelina’s breath hitched.

In her past life, the industrial revolution had been a dream in distant lands, something that didn’t reach the Empire until long after the famine had already gutted the population.

If she could build this and create a machine that didn’t rely on the whims of the weather or the strength of a horse, she could change the nature of power itself.

As her finger moved toward the [Purchase] button, the System’s interface suddenly flared a violent, warning red.

[WARNING: CRITICAL SYSTEM ADVISORY]

[DO NOT PURCHASE.]

Evelina paused, her heart hammering, "Why? You’ve never blocked a purchase before."

[Analysis: Host’s current Heart-Wrecker Balance: 4,900 Points.]

[Status: Estate Liquidity is at 12%. The 100-Year Drought fails to materialize as per the butterfly effect glitch, so the Host will require these points for ’Emergency Liquidity Conversion’ to prevent total financial collapse and social exile.]

The System’s voice was devoid of its usual cold pride; it sounded like a frantic accountant calculating a bankruptcy at this point.

[The Steam Engine requires high-grade steel and a ’Master’ level engineer, assets the Host cannot currently afford without gold. And in the current weather, there is no desperate need to work on it. Retain your points. Use them to buy back your reputation when the grain rots. This is a survival directive.]

"Survival?" Evelina hissed, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the blueprints, "Do you hear yourself?"

[It is the logical path,] the System replied. [The probability of the drought is negligible. Buying a machine you cannot build with money you do not have is a secondary path to ruin.]

Evelina looked at the blueprints again. They represented an advanced world that people had barely seen, a world where one could draw water from the deepest parts of the earth even if the clouds vanished forever. It was a bridge to the future she had seen in her dreams.

But if the System was right, if she had truly changed the world so much that even the natural disasters were averted, then the engine was a useless toy, and the points she spent on it would be her fatal mistake.

"You’re asking me to play it safe," she whispered, "But safe is how I died the first time."

Evelina turned away from the glowing screen. he fog outside had begun to lift, and the moonlight was finally beginning to pierce through the gray.

She walked to the window and her gaze fell upon the large, ornate bird feeder she had placed in the garden months ago, a small indulgence meant to bring life to the gloom of the Alvarez estate.

Usually, the feeder was visited by local sparrows and the occasional finch. But tonight, it was swarming.

Her eyes widened as she recognized the small, yellow-streaked breasts and the distinctive chirping of the migratory warblers.

These were birds of the high canopy, travelers that usually stayed in the Northern forests until the very end of late summer, feasting on the abundant insects of the rainy season.

But now... they were all gathering.

Hundreds of them were descending on the garden.

They moved with urgency , chirping in high, panicked bursts as they jostled for space on the branches. It wasn’t the behavior of birds enjoying a bountiful spring. Rather, it looked like a... mass evacuation.

Evelina froze as the entire flock suddenly rose as one before they streaked toward the South, fleeing toward the distant coast.

She turned back to the blue screen, her face set in a mask of terrifying resolve.

"System," she said, her voice dropping to a low note, "Cancel the survival directive."

[Host?]

"I’m not buying back my reputation," Evelina declared.