Being born into nobility meant living a life far removed from failure.

Even when one failed, it was only in trivial ways.

A missed shot during target practice, for example, or an unsuccessful riding performance. Mere amusements.

But Kenneth had experienced a failure that had shattered his entire life.

And yet, he survived. He rose again.

So, at some point, the belief took root.

‘There’s nothing I can’t do, as long as I set my mind to it.’

His conviction remained, even though it was absurd, as he stood at Ariana’s funeral.

Even then, he believed. He was certain that he wouldn’t fail, not even in a deal with the inhuman creature disguised as a nun.

Whatever the creature demanded, he would succeed. He would endure. He would bring back the Ariana from when their child was still alive.

Then he would see her again.

“Very well, Kenneth. But you must pay the price.”

At the mention of ‘price’, he scoffed.

Payment? Whatever it was, he would not be afraid.

He would do anything to bring Ariana back to life and restore her to the moment before she was shattered by the pistol shot.

However, just before she disappeared, the figure resembling a nun regarded him with an unreadable gaze and asked,

“But tell me, Kenneth — why do you wish to see your wife again?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“In life, you never once cherished Ariana.”

The saint murmured, her eyes boring straight through him.

Kenneth found no words. The radiant eighteen-year-old Ariana had died, covered in blood, in his mansion, and long before that she had been withering away, her once bright face drained of life.

“If you meet her again, do you truly believe it will be what’s best for her?”

“You state the obvious.”

He forced his voice to stay firm, trying to stop himself from losing his mind.

“I can undo everything. I can make Ariana happy.”

“…”

“So prepare to honour our bargain.”

“As you wish, Kenneth.”

The price was clear: he had to do everything in his power to stop the war that the imperial court was pushing for.

Conflicts over maritime trade had been brewing for years, yet suddenly hawkish voices insisted that force was the only way to resolve them. For the Empire, it was a war with nothing to gain.

No matter how fiercely Kenneth and his allies in the House of Lords resisted the calls for war, the rumors kept spreading, and the pressure only continued to mount. Putting a stop to it felt all but impossible.

“Bet everything you have, Kenneth, at the very least, delay it — reduce the bloodshed if you can.”

“And if I succeed—?”

“If you succeed, I will appear before the living Ariana myself and give her the help you seek.”

At first, Kenneth found the bargain strange. However, since the so-called ‘Saint’ claimed to protect mothers and sick children, he convinced himself that it made sense.

Or perhaps, desperate to hold onto even the faintest hope, he simply chose not to question it too deeply.

After witnessing Ariana’s broken, lifeless body, however, there was no room for doubt in his mind.

Just moments before, he had stood over a living, breathing Ariana, feeling dazed and disoriented. And then, in the blink of an eye, death had flipped his world upside down.

He couldn’t understand it.

How had he ever treated her with such cruelty?

Had it truly been necessary to push her that far?

Yes, her family had sided with Andrew — the man who had killed his parents. And yes, she had once dreamed of becoming Crown Princess.

But what crime could ever justify such a devastating death?

He knelt in the blood-soaked room for hours, holding her body as it grew cold, until the horrified servants finally forced him to let go.

And so Kenneth clung to a single thought:

‘I will meet you again.’

‘I wanted to tell you I loved you…’
‘When I see you next time, I’ll be the first to say the words.’

‘Everything will be all right. Once you start living again, you’ll find happiness. I’ll make sure of it.’

‘I was far too brutal before. No matter how much I hated you, it was never worth it.’

‘Couldn’t we have shared the grief together?’

‘I’ll make sure there’s no grief left to share. In the new world, our child will be born safely.’

The saint couldn’t turn back time to before Ariana’s eighteenth year, but if Kenneth kept his end of the bargain, she would be sent back to a moment when their baby still had a chance to live.

He had to succeed.

This time, they would face it together.

That single conviction consumed him.

He wanted nothing more than to be consumed by it.

The deadline? It was the day their child would have turned three—if she had lived.

Thus, the countdown began.

Yet Kenneth still could not answer the saint’s question definitively.

‘Was this truly the right path for Ariana?’

***

Shortly before Kenneth rallied the House of Lords to block the imperial war effort, the investigation into Ariana’s pistol finally produced results.

It transpired that the weapon belonged to Roger Ingles, Kenneth’s most trusted aide.

Society exploded with outrage.

Ariana Clifford may have been a despised duchess, but she was still a noblewoman.

Slandering her was a privilege reserved for nobles themselves, and it was unthinkable for a commoner to assist her in taking her own life.

Weeping, Roger protested his innocence.

“My lord, I swear I’m being framed! I would never harm Her Grace — never!”

Everyone knew that Roger had always disliked Ariana.

Despite Kenneth’s insistence on an impartial inquiry, the other lords remained adamant.

“Could any noble truly side with a commoner who had harmed a noblewoman?”

And so, Kenneth lost one of his key confidants overnight.

‘A trap’, he realized bitterly.

A man who couldn’t keep his own family under control was not in a position to preach in the House of Representatives.

Even worse, Kenneth’s hard-line stance only served to further divide his remaining allies.

“If the duke is seeking vengeance for his parents, shouldn’t he set an example?”

“Quite right. Even if Crown Prince Andrew used the Aberdeens as his knife, that hardly excuses this.”

“Is Duke Clifford unpatriotic?”

Such insults, which would destroy any man’s reputation in Cremisa’s society, were becoming more frequent by the day.

Kenneth ignored them.

War, politics — none of it felt real.

If the rest of them wanted to ruin themselves in a pointless conflict, that was their choice. He simply did not care.

But his chance to see Ariana again was at stake.

There was no turning back now.

***

The ducal house had once been at the centre of a great tragedy.

Because of this, Kenneth had garnered widespread public sympathy across the Empire.

However, the moment he began to swim against the tide,

The very people who had once supported him were now eager to see him fail.

The slander against the Clifford family only grew more vicious.

Some daring citizens even painted the words ‘Traitor to the Empire’ in red on the estate walls before fleeing into the night.

Such acts would once have been unthinkable.

After Roger was imprisoned, his remaining aides were frozen in fear for their future.

“Your Grace… we can’t just sit back and let this go on…”

“Leave it.”

“B-but—”

“Punish them, and we’ll only stir the hornet’s nest.”

Kenneth’s reply was sharp and cold, his expression now carved with sharper edges.

He was already busy fending off those pressuring him to hand over Port Ailesia for military use.

‘That place must be held—resist for as long as possible.’

He didn’t need the saint to reappear in order to sense it.

Nevertheless, the exhaustion came in relentless waves, crashing over him like the tide.

He clenched his jaw and pressed his fingertips hard against his temple.

Despite Dr Bialle’s medication, he was barely holding on.

Nevertheless, he forced the drugs into his body by sheer willpower and braced himself.

‘It’s too soon to fall apart.’

None of this mattered. Nothing else could hurt him now, unless a bullet pierced his chest.

But as the crushing fatigue built up, he shut his eyes —

— and clung to the only thing that kept him upright.

“Kenneth.”

He clung to the memory of the way Ariana used to call his name —

— so carefully, as though she was afraid of breaking something between them.

But the ending of every memory was always the same:

Ariana, covered in blood.

“…Ha.”

‘Please!’

He had seen that image hundreds of times before.

Was it too much to ask for an alternative ending?

Would it help if he held something she had left behind?

Maybe then he could remember a gentler moment.

Holding onto that faint hope, he searched every room in which Ariana had once stayed.

Her bedroom, the parlour and the gazebo in the garden, where she sometimes sat.

But as he moved through the vast estate, one painful realisation slowly took hold.

There was nothing.

Nothing in this grand mansion that she had ever truly cherished.

‘That can’t be.’