Chapter 1

A stench-ridden underground cell.

A woman with long silver hair cascading down to her waist, skin as white as snow, and crimson eyes lay slumped, bound in cold iron chains.

She lifts her head with great effort.

The shadows beneath her eyes told of countless sleepless nights.

‘Why did it come to this……’

Her name was Seraphiel Windmore.

Until just a few months ago, she had been the Crown Princess of the Empire.

The Sage of the North. A genius of pharmacology.

Through brilliant military strategy and an unparalleled knowledge of medicine, she had been a hero who played a pivotal role in unifying the continent under the Belonia Principality.

For those achievements, Seraphiel had risen all the way to Crown Princess of the unified Empire, and the people had revered and praised her for it.

Yes.

The story of a ruined count’s daughter rising to become Crown Princess.

Up to that point, it was the stuff of the most ordinary fairy tale.

But sadly, Seraphiel’s life had been anything but happy.

‘The first charge: you have forgotten your station as Crown Princess, plotted treason, and brought disgrace upon the imperial family!’

The chilling verdict rang through her mind alongside the cold voice of the judge.

‘The second charge: m*rder. You developed a forbidden poison and caused the deaths of countless innocent people.’

The terrible judgment came back to her, followed by the sharp voices of the onlookers.

‘What a vicious woman. How can she be so shameless?’

‘Exactly. She’s nothing short of a witch.’

Cutting curses poured from the lips of the very people who had once called her the saintess of the North.

She had devoted herself to the war against the Empire for the sake of her husband and mother-in-law, and all she had received in return was a false accusation.

Then, at that moment, a creaking sound rang out and the heavy door swung open, flooding the prison with light.

Against the light, accompanied by the bone-chilling wind of the North, stood a woman of regal bearing.

Beautifully long golden hair pinned up with elegance.

A woman who remained strikingly beautiful even well past middle age.

It was Helena Pyrend, Seraphiel’s mother-in-law and now the Empress who had conquered the continent.

“Poor thing.”

Helena walked toward her with graceful steps and stood before her, her expression soft with what looked like pity.

“To think that you, once more beautiful than the flowers of spring, have come to look like this. It breaks my heart.”

She was a cold and cutting mother-in-law throughout the entirety of their marriage. Yet in this final moment, she was warm.

Just like the first time they had met.

“Why did you have to go and do such a thing.”

Eyes the color of emerald, the mark of noble imperial blood, bore down on Seraphiel. The pain in her chest was all the sharper because this was the mother-in-law she had trusted more than anyone.

“Your Majesty the Empress… surely you know. That all of this is a false charge……”

A desperate plea, forced out through a cracked voice.

In that instant, the light in Helena’s eyes turned ice-cold.

“Then is the final charge a false one as well?”

“That is……”

“How utterly contemptible. You, who devoured your own child.”

In that moment, the burning red light in Seraphiel’s eyes rapidly went cold.

At the same time, the final charge that had echoed through the courtroom circled back through her mind.

‘The third and final charge: consuming unauthorized medicine and causing the miscarriage of the precious imperial heir!’

Even Seraphiel, who had steeled her heart so firmly, could not endure this one.

Because that charge was true.

Her tightly clenched hands fell open, limp.

‘Where did it all go wrong……’

Her hollow eyes drifted back through the past, searching without strength.

‘Yes. It started then……’

The day the continent was unified. The day she was named Crown Princess.

She had achieved everything, and all that remained was to find the ones who had killed her parents. That was the moment the cursed illness had come for her, like a plague.

Terrible headaches and episodes of forgetting.

Fragments of memory would surface in a blur and then vanish, and her mind could find no footing.

A condition that neither priests nor apothecaries could diagnose. Seraphiel, once praised as the wisest mind on the continent, found herself struggling to manage even the simplest daily tasks.

The irony of a genius apothecary who had saved the continent being unable to cure her own illness. Sadly, her condition only continued to worsen.

‘I can’t go on like this…… I still have to find the ones who killed my parents……’

Driven by desperation, Seraphiel had taken an unstable remedy, and she ultimately collapsed in severe abdominal pain.

When she came to, the imperial priest who had been checking her pulse went pale with shock.

‘Your Highness the Crown Princess, were you unaware that you were with child?’

‘Wh, what? Then……’

‘…… You have miscarried.’

The diagnosis struck like a bolt from a clear sky, and Seraphiel’s vision went white.

‘No. No……’

She let out a wretched, blood-soaked cry, but it was already too late. The color drained from the face of a mother clutching a belly she had never even had the chance to address. A storm of guilt crashed down on her and pressed her beneath its weight.

‘To think that my best efforts to heal myself led to my child’s death……’

Revenge had failed. And now she had lost her child too.

Tears welled up against her will and streaked down her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry, my baby……’

She forced down the grief that refused to lessen and bit down hard on her lips. Blood welled from the cracked and chapped skin.

Helena, watching from nearby, took her hand and offered comfort.

“Do not resent me. Watching you suffer so deeply after that imperial banquet was its own torment for me.”

At that moment.

‘The imperial… banquet?’

Exactly two years ago. The grandest banquet on the continent, held to celebrate the unification of the Empire.

It had been a milestone marking the beginning of a new Empire, a celebration that every noble in the principality had rejoiced in.

It was also around that time that Seraphiel’s symptoms had begun.

‘But I never told Mother when my symptoms started……’

She had done everything she could to conceal them, not wanting to bring shame upon the imperial family.

She had endured unbearable pain in silence, and it had been over a year before she finally confided in a priest.

Yet Helena had named the imperial banquet precisely.

‘Could it be……’

Seraphiel’s heart began to pound.

“How do you know my symptoms started then? I never told anyone. Not a single person……”

A brief silence fell between them. The air turned cold on its own.

“That is why I thought you were made of iron.”

The pity in the Empress’s eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by something glacial.

“To survive a full year after ingesting poison taken from the Forest of Monsters.”

A smile crept to the corners of her lips. A smile that made the skin crawl.

Seraphiel’s eyes shook violently.

Her entire body went cold, as though ice had been poured directly into her blood.

“Why would you……”

“You were nothing more than a tool I needed. But what is one to do when a tool dares to shine brighter than its master?”

Betrayal, from the mother-in-law she had trusted and followed above all others.

Her throat closed as though someone had sealed it shut, and her mind began to blur.

“The Darlington domain. Your parents. They were nothing more than means to an end for my purposes. As is your death.”

Everything that had destroyed her life had been part of her mother-in-law’s vicious design.

‘So it was you who took everything from me?’

She had not even imagined poison would be involved. Seraphiel, who was versed in thousands of toxic and medicinal plants, had never once suspected that her mother-in-law would use such a rare poison on her own daughter-in-law.

A horrific pain spread through her entire body, like a burning coal driven into her heart. At the same time, a fierce blaze of vengeance ignited within her. She twisted her body with all her strength, and the chains binding her limbs rattled violently.

“I will never forgive you!”

A vow of revenge, torn out like a scream.

But the Empress’s lips only curled into a sneer.

“How foolish. Forgiveness is not something the powerless can afford.”

“……”

She was not wrong.

Bound hand and foot, there was nothing Seraphiel could do.

Helena rose slowly from where she had been sitting.

“So simply die. For the glory of my radiant future.”

Thud. Thud.

Before the Empress had even finished speaking, a female knight with dark skin who had been standing behind her stepped forward.

Blue hair. Blue eyes.

Melania, the female knight who had protected Helena through countless imperial assassination attempts, raised her sword.

‘No. I can’t die like this.’

Revenge was only possible if she lived.

Her heart beat all the more painfully within her suffering.

“Release me. With these hands, I will make that wretched Empress……”

But her desperate cry never made it past her lips. The female knight’s sword was faster.