At first, it felt as though the world itself had split apart.

Bang!

When another deafening crash—loud enough to shake the entire cathedral—rang out, the frozen Isabelle realized it was coming from behind her.

She turned sharply.

So did everyone seated in the pews.

Bang! Crack—!

The violent, splintering sound sent a chill through the entire hall, freezing everyone in place.

Dark, jagged fractures spread across the thick, reddish-brown wooden doors—and through those cracks, something silver flashed.

Before Isabelle could even recognize it as the blade of an axe, the cathedral doors began to tilt.

The massive wooden doors gave way, unable to withstand the strange, hostile force bearing down on them.

Everyone held their breath as they fell—

Thud!

Dust billowed into the air as the doors crashed completely to the ground.

In the next instant, screams erupted. People scrambled to their feet, rushing toward the bride and groom—desperate to gather where they thought they might be safer.

But Isabelle couldn’t take a single step.

She couldn’t even breathe properly.

Because through the pale haze of dust, the figures emerging were none other than—

“The Achilleton crest!”

They were the knights of her damned first husband.

All of them wore helmets, but there wasn’t a noble in the Empire who wouldn’t recognize that crest.

Clank. Clank.

With every step they took closer, the grinding sound of metal followed.

‘Is Tenetta among them?’

Fearfully, Isabelle’s eyes darted across them. Every face was hidden. There seemed to be one man, taller than the rest—but her vision wavered too much to be certain.

Then—

One of the most likely figures turned his gaze directly toward her.

Though his face was concealed by his helmet, Isabelle felt as though she saw a pair of cold, burning eyes glaring through the darkness.

As the knight raised a hand toward his helmet, as if to remove it—

Snap.

“Run, Isabelle.”

Chester seized her wrist and forced his way through the crowd.

Caught off guard, Isabelle was dragged along like a sheet of paper, her focus still fixed ahead.

Through the chaos of screaming guests, Chester skillfully carved a path, pulling aside the drapery behind the altar and revealing a hidden door.

He pushed Isabelle inside.

Staggering from the force of his grip, she lost her footing and collapsed.

“What are you doing?!”

“If you go this way, you can get outside.”

Bang.

With only those words, Chester shut the door.

Click.

The sound of a bolt locking from the outside followed.

Left alone in suffocating darkness, Isabelle finally understood what had happened.

She rushed to the door and pounded against it.

“Are you insane?! Open this door right now!”

Her parents—and her younger brother, Raymond—were still inside the hall.

Isabelle couldn’t just run away alone, not when something might happen to her family.

And escaping in such a cumbersome wedding dress was hardly realistic.

But Chester, on the other side of the door, said nothing.

Only the chaos seeped through, the terrified screams of people, the deafening crash of wood breaking apart, the heavy, unmistakable footsteps of armored knights, all blending into a dull, overwhelming roar.

Realizing there was no point in shouting, Isabelle bit down on her lip.

“…I need to get out of this passage first.”

It didn’t seem like the door from the inside of the cathedral would open.

Even if she made it out, the Achilleton knights had likely already surrounded the area. Still, it was better than standing here alone.

‘If I’m lucky and don’t get caught…
I can ask for help somewhere.
And even if I am caught… at least I’ll be with my family.’

Gathering the heavy folds of her dress, Isabelle turned and began to move.

How long had she been walking?

Careful not to trip over the hem, she kept her eyes lowered—until a faint light brushed against the tip of her shoes.

The exit must be near.

But—

Strangely, the center of that light was split by a dark shadow.

As if someone was standing there, blocking the way.

Isabelle slowly lifted her head.

From within the shadows, a pair of piercing blue eyes flickered—burning through the darkness as they locked onto her.

It was him.

The husband from her first life, the one she had never once been able to forget, even in her dreams.

Startled as though she had come face to face with a beast, Isabelle instinctively stepped back.

“Lady Attley.”

No longer wearing his helmet, Tenetta called her name.

He stepped toward her—toward Isabella, whose face had gone deathly pale, as if she had seen a corpse.

Each step he took echoed through the narrow passage with a chilling metallic ring.

If Isabelle had been more composed, she might have noticed that although he was only three years older than when she last saw him, his face looked as though it had aged twice that amount of time.

At the very least, she might have seen the pain and exhaustion etched into the lines on his left cheek and, beneath it all, a longing that refused to fade, no matter how deeply buried.

But Isabelle was already frozen in terror.

And it was only natural.

The silver armor covering the man’s massive frame was splattered with red, as though it had been painted with the final screams of the dying. And more than anything—in his hand—

“…Ah.”

Realizing where her gaze had fallen, Tenetta glanced down at his hand and casually let go of what he had been holding.

Thud.

The heavy sound of metal striking the floor echoed through the narrow passage.

Setting down the axe—its blade still dripping with blood and flesh—he spoke,

“It’s just a tool. Don’t mind it.”

If his intention had been to reassure her, it was a remarkably useless attempt.

Isabelle stared at the blade, clotted with unrecognizable fragments of flesh, her vision trembling.

Then strength returned to her legs.

She was about to run.

Sensing it, Tenetta reached out toward her.

“Don’t go.”

His voice sounded almost desperate, but it was far too late to change her mind.

“Isabelle… you may not believe this, but I—”

She gave him no chance to finish.

The moment she turned her back, something sliced through the air.

In the blink of an eye, something sharp pierced straight through the bride’s pure white back.

***

Isabelle opened her eyes.

She was in the young lady’s room at the estate.

It wasn’t hard to understand what that familiar beginning meant.

She had returned again—to the winter of her nineteenth year.

The moment she realized it, Isabelle shut herself in her room and trembled uncontrollably.

She had died again.

The first time, her neck had snapped. This time, something—an arrow, a blade, something sharp enough to kill her—had pierced through her back.

“…It must have been Tenetta.”

She hadn’t turned around, but she was certain. There had been no one else in that passage but the two of them.

Tenetta Achilleton had finally killed her.

In her first life, it had only been an attempt—but this time, he had succeeded.

That confirmed one thing without doubt: The man in this second life remembered the past as well.

Otherwise, why would he have stormed into her wedding?

‘Why does he keep trying to kill me?’

Isabelle couldn’t understand.

It had been the same in her previous life. If he truly despised his imperfect wife, he could simply have returned her to her family. He could have found a reason later to annul the marriage. That would have been humiliating, but far more reasonable than m*rder.

‘What if he comes to kill me again this time?’

The moment that thought took hold, Isabelle leapt from her bed for the first time in days and began hastily packing.

If Tenetta was chasing her, the most important thing was to get as far away from her family as possible.

In her previous life, it had all happened on her wedding day, and her family had been dragged into it as well.

She stuffed whatever she could into a travel bag, only to realize—

If she wanted to leave, she would need her parents’ permission.

Without hesitation, she ran to her father’s study.

“I want to travel.”

“My dear, that’s rather sudden. What’s happened?”

Hexter asked, startled by his daughter—who had been shut away in her room, claiming to be ill—suddenly making such a demand.

But Isabelle didn’t know what to say.

‘In truth, this is my third life, and in both of my past lives, a man—the commander of the holy knights—has chased me down to kill me.’

Even the simplest explanation sounded like the ramblings of a madwoman.

Isabelle loved her family, and she knew they loved her.

But she also knew that her father would never grant her request based on words like that alone.

No—if anything, they would try to keep her close, believing their daughter to be emotionally unstable and in need of protection.

Forcing her half-numb mind to work, Isabelle grasped at the most reasonable excuse she could find.

“I want to see Raymond.”

Her younger brother, Raymond, was studying abroad in the Kingdom of Pessen—a place that could only be reached by sea from the Legrandem Empire.

They had always been close, exchanging letters often.

Of course, she couldn’t actually go to him and risk dragging him into this. She could simply board a ship bound for Pessen and change course midway.

‘Where would I even go?’

The question lingered as Hexter watched his daughter—pale and trembling—with growing concern.
With a small gesture, he summoned a maid.

Handing Isabelle over to her, he said gently,

“We’ll talk about this later. You look like you’ve caught a chill—go and rest in your room for now.”

She wasn’t truly ill, so that evening, Isabelle took her seat at the dinner table with her family.

As she sat there, staring blankly at her food, Hexter and Viole exchanged worried glances.

But Isabelle was too lost in thought to notice.

‘What if I see Tenetta again?’
‘What if he tries to kill me… and my family gets caught up in it too?’

If he had wanted to talk, he wouldn’t have tried to kill her in the first place. There was no way to reason with him.

‘Then maybe… if he were gone…’

The thought surfaced—only to be dismissed immediately.

It was impossible.

Assassinating a perfectly healthy Grand Duke was unthinkable. And holy knights were not easily killed.

Tenetta had never explained it in detail, but they were far stronger than ordinary people.

Just then….

The doors of the dining hall burst open.

The captain of the estate guards rushed in, breathless.

“My lord—the Inquisition has arrived at the castle!”