“……!”

How long would she keep falling? The thought had barely formed before pain like her body shattering seized every one of Isabella’s senses.

“Ah……!”

Cough. Red blood welled up from her mouth before she could stop it, and Isabella had neither the strength to wipe it away nor to make it stop. It hurts. It hurts. Declen. It hurts. But even so, if you can live, I’m all right. If everything is turned back, you can live. If I can just confirm that you, that you are alive, I will.

“……”

Her vision blurred. She could no longer feel the rain beating mercilessly against her face, or the blood trickling between her teeth.

Flash!

The last thing Isabella saw was a burst of pure white light spreading from somewhere impossibly high above, swallowing the world whole.

* * *

“Hah……! Hah!”

Isabella lurched upright, gripped by the terrible pain of her entire body shattering. Where was this? Why was it so dark? Had she failed to return? She shot up from where she lay and kept turning her head in every direction, trying to make out where she had woken up.

She leapt from the bed and looked frantically around, and as her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark she was able to get a sense of where she was.

The small manor of the Piper barony. Her own room, at the very top of it.

“I…… came back.”

I came back. I really came back. Isabella burst into tears at the sight before her, unbelievable and impossible to believe. She sank to the floor and wept, and wept with both arms wrapped around her body that still ached as though it might break apart. She cried like that, bitterly, for a long while. Then from somewhere, the sound of a great bell began to ring.

Dong, dong, dong.

Deep in her weeping, Isabella went still. This bell, could it be, this sound! Recognizing the bell that rang as though tearing the darkness apart, Isabella held her breath. Every citizen of the Tenat Empire was surely hearing it right now. And after a brief wait, the voice of Avilion, filled with divine power, struck her ears like a thunderbolt.

[On a dark night when not even the moon rises, he who claims the woman born from a sorrowful melody shall obtain all things in this world.]

Tears fell from Isabella’s eyes again at the prophecy she could neither ignore nor refuse. Everything was beginning again. Life without him was beginning, and a life of being hunted was about to start. Even when her life hung by a thread, he would not save her, and she would not have to ache with longing for his love.

But it did not matter. As long as he was alive and well. Even if he did not love her, even if they were not bound together again by the contract of marriage, as long as he was alive and well she could throw herself off a cliff and turn back time a hundred times more. Because even if she returned to that moment, Isabella would make the same choice.

Everything had been turned back. That was what mattered.

He would be unharmed and well, and she would soon be hunted. That prophecy could be heard by any citizen of the Tenat Empire, so he would have heard it too. And eventually he would find her.

But this time would be different. It had to be different. She had cast everything aside and thrown herself from a cliff to turn back time so she would not repeat the same mistake, and she absolutely could not repeat the same mistake. The end of the same mistake was his death.

“Hnngh……”

Isabella wiped the tears soaking her face with her hand and rose to her feet. Her body still trembled and shook and would not quite obey her, but after some time the trembling stopped and she was able to walk properly.

Opening her bedroom door and carefully descending the stairs, Isabella left behind the people stirring about after being woken by the prophecy in the middle of the night and made her way to the largest room in the barony, the room of Baron Piper, her father. Standing before it, she could hear signs of life inside, as though he too had been woken.

Knock knock. She rapped on the door and heard a reply asking who was there.

“It’s me. Father.”

“Isabella? Come in.”

The door swung open and her father’s face appeared. The face of her father, whom she was seeing for the first time in five years.

“Father.”

“My dear. What is it? Hmm? The prophecy woke you, did it?”

The reality of having truly returned hit her, and Isabella buried herself in the arms of the father she had missed so desperately and wept. Henry Piper. Her father had lost his life not long after the first prophecy was issued upon her. After people realized Isabella was the subject of the prophecy, they had killed Henry for standing in the way of her marriage.

At first, what came in were countless letters of proposal that were really threats in disguise. Letters of proposal from high-ranking nobles poured in without end to the small, obscure barony, but Henry refused them all. He refused again and again, on the grounds that his daughter was still young, that she was too unwell to marry, that she was not yet ready to become the mistress of a household, but the very next day another letter of proposal would arrive from the same house he had just refused.

“Wouldn’t it be better to marry someone? I think it would make things at least a little easier for you. Rather than being tormented like this every day……”

“But I don’t know if there’s a house that would protect me. Even if I married someone, wouldn’t I still be threatened?”

“……Hearing you say that, I suppose you’re right. Then let’s think on it a little longer.”

She never saw the father who had stroked her hair and smiled at her so warmly again after that day. The very next morning, the father who had smiled at her so warmly in his study was found as a cold corpse. Seeing her father lose his life so suddenly, Isabella had been plunged into despair. Would it have been all right if she had listened to her father and quickly found a suitable house to marry into. Could it have ended with only her dying. Father would not have had to die.

Not knowing which house had killed her father, not knowing who had driven a blade into his throat, she held the funeral. The tiny territory of the Piper family, the smallest in the Tenat Empire, a place no noble had ever paid any mind, filled with mourners. Isabella received them and saw them off without a single expression on her face.

After laying her father’s body to rest in the small cemetery behind the barony, Isabella became the acting baroness from that day on and directed everything herself. She brought in a distant relative and began their education as heir, and held her breath while refusing the endless stream of letters of proposal.

And at last. He came. On that dreadfully dark night when even the moon had hidden behind clouds, afraid of the man who would come cutting through the darkness, he came for Isabella. The one and only grand duke of the empire, the captain of the Holy Knights, and a cold-blooded killer. Shuddering as she recalled the past, Isabella spoke urgently to Henry, who was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

“Father. I am the subject of that prophecy.”

“What? My dear, what are you saying……”

“I am the subject of the prophecy that was just issued.”

“……”

“The woman born of a mournful melody.”

“Surely not, it can’t be. Why would that prophecy, how could it be you……”

“There’s no time to explain at length. Father. But you must believe me. I am the subject of that prophecy, and people will come looking for me.”

“My dear, Isabella. Calm down for a moment and let’s talk through this properly……”

“Father!”

Henry tried to calm Isabella down as she gasped frantically. But Isabella kept panting and rushing to get her words out. She did not want her father, or him, dying because of her anymore. She did not want anyone dying because of her.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please believe me just this once. All right?”

“……”

Henry looked down at her, unable to hide his bewildered expression. His dear daughter, who had never once given him cause for worry, looked so desperately urgent. That the subject of that prophecy was his own daughter. He furrowed his brow at the unbelievable claim. Gazing into Isabella’s violet eyes, precious as jewels, Henry recalled the day Isabella was born.

A night when the moon had not risen. Isabella was born.

Following the Piper family tradition, the family musician played the flute outside the bedroom door where the baroness was in labor. At the peak of the flute’s melody, played to comfort the lady struggling to bring a child into the world, Isabella was born.

[On a dark night when not even the moon rises, he who claims the woman born from a sorrowful melody shall obtain all things in this world.]

Only then grasping the meaning of the prophecy, Henry brought Isabella inside the bedroom. There was more they needed to talk through.

* * *

“Welcome.”

“Good day. Baron Piper.”

“Thank you for making the journey all this way. Young Count Wiren.”

Henry looked at the young count Wiren before him. The Wiren county. A martial house renowned for swordsmanship and archery. The eldest son of the Wiren county had reportedly had his heart set on Isabella for some time. It was a house that had been sending letters of proposal even before the prophecy was issued. That was why he had chosen them as the first candidate for the marriage. Because of the abilities of the next head of house, who had Isabella in his heart.

“Where is the young lady of Piper?”

“She is in the drawing room. I will show you the way.”

A house famous for the sword and the bow would be able to protect Isabella when the prophecy put her in danger, and it was not a house in need of money, so there was no risk of them selling Isabella off to another house. On top of that, he had reportedly loved Isabella deeply for a long time, so he would cherish her. With that in mind, Henry had chosen the young count Wiren.

“Isabella. Young Count Wiren has arrived.”

“Good day, my lady.”

“Good day, young count.”

Isabella, who had been sitting demurely on the sofa in the drawing room, rose and walked carefully toward the young count. Henry watched, then quietly closed the door and stepped out.

He had wanted to take her and run somewhere, anywhere, to escape the people who would come flooding in because of the prophecy, but Isabella had been strangely firm. He had tried to talk her out of it again and again, telling her it was all right, but Isabella insisted on marrying into another house. In the end, unable to break that stubbornness, the house whose proposal he accepted was the Wiren county. It would be fine. It would be all right.

“Ba, Baron!”

“What is it?”

Coming out of the drawing room and heading downstairs, he saw the old butler hobbling toward him at a limping run. What was going on? He had told him so insistently to keep things quiet today since the young count was coming.

“A guest, a guest has arrived!”

“A guest? The only guest expected today was the young count……”

“You must come out quickly!”

The urgency on the butler’s face made Henry follow after him. And where he was led,

“Good day, Baron Piper.”

stood an enormous, imposing man.