Regrets of the Past (Redemption Route)

In your past, you've lived for several centuries, which made it particularly difficult to form meaningful connections with others. After all, why bother making friends or lovers if they were just going to die long before you. On the hand, while you could easily extend someone's lifetime, it was difficult to trust in someone when you've lived in paranoia all your life. As the sole ruler of your nation, you had loyal followers and close allies, but that was purely on a business level. They would've been loyal to whoever was king, not just you in particular. You're well aware that spending the vast early stretches of your life studying and researching has hampered your charisma and social skills, but you never felt you needed it much anyways, since you could always just coerce or mentally dominate someone anyways. It was this thought process which inevitably lead to your defeat. You had capable generals and admirals at your command, but you could never be sure of their true loyalties, and using mind control would rob them of their brilliant tactics and skillsets, making them no better than zombies when it comes to leading armies.

You're confident that after your defeat at Uija, there was not a single person who wept or even felt an ounce of sadness at your passing. Such was the price to be paid for following one's path of ambition, and doing everything for yourself with no room for empathy of others. Having almost died once already though, you feel a desire to ensure that things turn out differently this time. Even if you're to be struck down by fate once more, as long as there was a single person who cherished you and will miss you upon your passing, it would be enough.

With your heart resolved and your body mostly recovered, physically at least, you rise off the rock and begin planning your next step. Logically, you were sealed in the planes of Uija, so you should still be in the same spot, but as you look around, you notice that you're in the middle of a dense forest. Perhaps the topology of the land has changed during the time that you were gone. Casting a simple flying spell, you ascend to the skies, to see that the forest stretches far beyond your view, likely to be bigger than the Uija planes in the past. You cast your eyes east, where your seat of power in Axalan would have been, but there's nothing but more trees. You slowly shake your head, hit by a bout of sadness as you realize that Axalan did not last the millennia. The nation that once prided itself on its indomitability and ever lasting legacy has been erased, and you suspect even memories of it will soon fade as well. You clench your fist as you resolve yourself to ensure that this time, what you build shall never crumble to dust. Finally pulling your eyes away from the direction of what was once your home, you look to the west and south, but it's just endless trees as far as eyes can see. To the north though, you see a small village built upon the shores of a lake. Perhaps that is the destination of your choice.

You cast a teleportation spell, warping yourself near the village, but as you arrive you can feel your stomach doing backflips, a clear sign of a lack of mana. You fall to your knees as the world tumbles around you. In that moment, all you can think about is the bitter irony of the greatest sorcerer to ever live almost dying from forgetting about his limited mana pool. You grab onto a tree branch to steady yourself, but it wasn't as sturdy as it looked, and as you're about to faceplant for the second consecutive time today, someone catches you from behind.