The man approached the tombstone and knelt on one knee. Snow had frozen on the rounded part of the cold marble, so he brushed it off with his bare hands.

Looking at the dates on the grave, even her birthday wasn’t recorded. She wouldn’t have died here unknown to everyone had she met her sister…

His dry gaze remained fixed on the frozen ground.

Reizen wouldn’t leave the grave, and finally the summoned pastor explained.

“Last night I heard groaning from the chapel, and when I went out, I found a collapsed woman. Her accent suggested she was from Sys. I don’t know the circumstances, but since she was a foreigner, locating her family seemed difficult, so the church took care of her.”

Reizen clenched his fist in silence.

“…When we called a doctor to examine her, he said she was very weak from pregnancy. Meanwhile, being in a pursued state, more than twenty people came looking for the woman.”

The secretary briefly interjected.

“What did these people look like?”

“They were mostly well-dressed. From what I know, most were from Arthur White’s trading company or appeared to be knights from Sys, though occasionally men with fierce looks came searching too.”

The pastor’s expression darkened with the memory.

“She said she wanted to be a good mother.”

“Then the child…”

Rael, who had been crying silently, cleared her throat and asked. The elderly pastor solemnly shook his head. Following the old man’s sorrowful gaze, everyone turned their eyes to the tombstone. The young woman’s tragic end lay before them, contrary to her wishes.

Rael now made choking sounds of pain. She covered her face with both hands and collapsed in place.

“She must have remembered what I said and was on her way to me. But then her health wasn’t good…”

While Rael sobbed, saying she was the only family and must have been her only support, Reizen merely furrowed his brow, showing no reaction.

As the pastor continued talking, the secretary consoled Rael who had fallen to the ground, sobbing loudly. The snow-covered ground was hard as stone.

“When did it start snowing?”

“About a month ago…”

A young monk who had come out with the pastor answered Reizen’s question.

“That’s good.”

“Pardon?”

The man in monk’s robes tilted his head. His expression suggested confusion, seeking confirmation. But Reizen responded to that question with a faint yet strange smile around his eyes and said:

“Dig.”

Behind him, Rael rushed forward, seemingly about to faint, but the secretary held her back. The pastor also shook his head, saying it couldn’t be done.

As the two’s opposition intensified, Reizen lifted his lips in a smile and raised his heavy body. He then went back to the chapel saying he needed to warm up, and sat there cross-legged with a cigar in his mouth.

“W-what is this!”

Even villagers gathered to watch.

While people murmured outside the chapel, two hours later hundreds of gravediggers and workers sent by the Tavanian government arrived.

The Chairman of Tavania had taken special care, sending the same hearse used when his mother passed away, along with a top-quality coffin lavishly decorated with mother-of-pearl and jewels on a black background.

When the hearse pushed through the main gate, the pastor shouted anxiously.

“What are you trying to do! This is desecration of the deceased!”

The empty coffin landed on the ground with a thud, making the earth shake. About fifteen strong men moved the coffin and set it down in front of the tombstone, then brought shovels and began digging up the hard ground.

While chaos engulfed the graveyard, Reizen Kalphenster stood motionless in his black suit, like a statue. The cigar in his hand continued shortening on its own, smoking while the man watched without missing a moment as his wife’s grave was dug up.

“Stop, stop it, you madman!”

Rael screamed hysterically and rushed forward. But naturally, she couldn’t get past the guards inside the yellow control line. She found a stone rolling on the ground, picked it up, and threw it in Reizen’s direction.

The stone lacked force. It only left a tiny dust mark on the man’s wool suit. The fallen stone rolled pitifully on the ground. Even that was crushed under the busy movements of the people pulling out the coffin.

Rael wept loudly outside the control line. Arthur, who had rushed over after hearing the news belatedly, checked Rael’s condition, and Clara held Rael’s face tightly in her arms as she sat collapsed.

The grave wasn’t very deep.

The uprooted tombstone rolled on the ground.

When the workers pulled out the coffin and lifted it above the hole, Melissa’s terrible loneliness was palpable – having to be buried alone in such a plain coffin.

Reizen walked forward with dry eyes.

He stepped on the frozen, crunching soil with his shoes as he advanced. Toward her. And toward the child he never got to see.

In truth, though he had pretended not to know hundreds of times outwardly, he had known she was dead from the moment the brand was erased. But he couldn’t bear that their last moments were filled with resentment and ended in fighting, so he alone couldn’t bring it to an end.

‘There was no later.’

He had lived so desperately trying to make the right time to speak, but the person he loved couldn’t wait for him. He had wanted to prove himself to her by achieving results that would satisfy everyone.

He had planned to spend his whole life protecting her and the child from now on.

‘You were the beginning and end of this revolution from the start.’

In his boyhood, when he saw young Melissa in the rose maze, he felt the difference in social status for the first time in his life. He wanted to become friends with the pretty girl, wanted to talk to her. But after learning that even approaching Melissa was a sin for the boy, he would sometimes cry from the unfairness.

The reason he had begged his mother to walk in the garden together was to see her. When he met Melissa, he wanted to give her gifts, and she kept catching his eye, making him want to see her just one more time.

After she saved him when the Crown Prince was beating him by the lake, his desire grew even stronger. He too wanted to be with her someday.

He wanted to become a man of power like his brother the Crown Prince, someone who could stand proudly by her side.

But when that simple wish remained unfulfilled, he developed a rebellious attitude toward the world.

The antipathy toward nobles that sprouted then grew like a tree as he aged, creating an adult who struggled with all his might to bring down the privileged class.

He had truly lived desperately. And just when he was starting to forget where this dogged tenacity began, she appeared before him again.

“Kill me.”

That this woman who was more noble and beautiful than anyone, who had planted and nurtured the seed of antipathy in his life, who had been so distant and wondrous that he could never reach her his whole life – that when they met again, all she said was to kill her.

At first, he was so disappointed and angry that he couldn’t accept how weak she had become. But later, he couldn’t contain his rage at those who made her tremble and cower in fear at every touch. So he eliminated them all and came this far, only to find she had vanished like a mirage at the final destination.

‘What have I been chasing all this time?’

The irony brings tears to his eyes.

Reizen ordered them to open the barely-rotted wooden coffin, still full of moisture.

“Don’t, you bastard!”

Rael wailed, crawling on the ground with a hoarse voice.

As the wooden coffin slowly opened and a mass wrapped in white cloth appeared inside, Reizen’s heart beat slowly and heavily in his ears.

The surrounding sounds became distant, resembling being underwater, and he felt buried alone in a thick fog. The man walked forward with heavy frozen feet and knelt before the coffin.

So, Melissa Grey.

How does it feel to die as you wished?

Are you at peace now?

He reached toward where the woman’s cold, stiff face would be. But the sensation he felt was not that of a dead person.

“…”

Reizen’s blue eyes trembled minutely, vibrating with emotion.

Rael, who had finally crossed the control line and run to the grave, slapped Reizen’s cheek. There was a smack sound, but the man didn’t budge.

“You madman, what are you trying to do!”

“Get that woman out of here right now! Prime Minister! Prime Minister, are you alright?”

People rushed over to check Reizen’s condition.

After wearing a blank expression for several seconds, the man finally covered his mouth with one hand and his shoulders shook.

People wore solemn expressions thinking he might be crying, but when the man burst into loud laughter, they instead froze, their faces turning pale.