Vieta thought that h＊ll with all its punishments wasn’t only in the afterlife.

For her, childhood had been h＊ll.

Opening her eyes, Vieta sneered softly, mocking her own situation.

The hellish landscape of her childhood years stretched before her.

‘Is this my h＊ll?’

Between the cobweb-covered ceiling and rough wooden floor, she and her mother lay under blankets that were little more than rags.

Her mother didn’t belong in such a h＊ll.

Perhaps she was here with her for the crime of raising her daughter poorly? Vieta suppressed her burning heart and exhaled with difficulty.

She reached out to touch her sleeping mother’s cheek.

‘My hand is too small.’

Startled, she sat up and looked around.

Suddenly, all the furniture appeared enormous to her eyes.

‘What is this.’

Jumping down from the bed, Vieta stood before a cracked mirror covered in dust.

The black-haired girl was exactly her younger self.

Before she had time to contemplate her appearance, threatening footsteps echoed along the walls and the attic door was roughly thrown open.

“Vieta!”

The ear-splitting shout made her cover her ears and frown.

“Winter Lukbiche?”

Furious, Winter roughly grabbed Vieta’s ankle.

This caused Vieta’s head to crash against the floor.

“This was your doing, wasn’t it? You stole my diamond ring from Gedmile, didn’t you!”

Vieta stared blankly at the ceiling, swallowing her intense irritation.

Seeing the woman who had died miserably by her hands now alive and rampaging—this place was definitely h＊ll.

As if time had been rewound, Winter was repeating exactly what she had done to her thirteen years ago.

The ring Winter mentioned had been taken by Vilter, Vieta’s half-brother and the Lukbiche family’s eldest son. The missing ring’s whereabouts would later be revealed when the adult Vilter brought home the lady he was to marry.

“I didn’t steal it! Ma. Dam. Win. Ter.”

She twisted her mouth as she looked up at Winter.

However, Winter’s gaze shifted to Vieta’s mother, who had just awakened from the noisy commotion.

“Jonathan! Since Susan has failed miserably at raising her child, administer punishment in her place!”

Jonathan grabbed Susan, Vieta’s mother, by the hair and dragged her out of the attic.

“Ah. Augh.”

Vieta caught sight of Susan’s face, showing apology in her eyes.

Before she disappeared from view, Winter threw Vieta down and locked the attic door.

“Vieta. I won’t open the door until you answer honestly.”

An even fiercer voice came through the crack in the door.

Vieta barely managed to stand up, suppressing the urge to retch.

The feeling of being trapped in a past she wished to forget caused her considerable pain.

Vieta’s mother couldn’t speak.

She hadn’t always been that way.

Madam Winter had cut out her tongue as punishment after accusing her of lying.

Vieta walked to the window, biting her nails.

H＊ll was just like the past.

Just as thirteen years ago, her mother was thrown outside the mansion in the falling snow.

Vieta clutched the glass window and bit her lip.

In the past, she had insisted to the end that she hadn’t stolen anything. Because she truly hadn’t done it.

But the consequences of that action had been horrific.

She recalled what she had lost because of the “ring incident.”

“D＊mn it.”

Vieta’s mother, whom she truly loved, had frozen to death because of Vilter’s wretched love games.

The Duke had said nothing to Madam Winter for k＊lling Susan.

Vieta had always thought that if her father hadn’t taken her mother for one night of l＊st, she wouldn’t have been born.

Then her mother’s life wouldn’t have ended like this.

She knocked on the attic door before it was too late.

“I’ll tell you everything! Madam Winter. I’ll answer honestly! So please let my mother back into the mansion!”

Despite her desperate cries, the attic door didn’t budge.

Vieta bit her lip harder and pounded on the door with greater force.

Her arms, thin as bare branches, turned red as if about to break.

“I was wrong! Madam Winter. I stole it! I stole your ring!”

There wasn’t a single truth in Vieta’s cries, but the rattling key sound seemed pleased with her words as it unlocked the firmly secured door.

Winter, standing with her back to the light flooding into the attic, revealed a satisfied smile.

“Is that true? Vieta? I’m truly grateful that you’ve confessed the truth.”

“Please let my mother in. And provide a physician too. Being thrown out in this winter, she might catch a severe cold!”

Feeling absurd at Vieta’s unrestrained demands, Winter crossed her arms, displeased with her attitude.

But Vieta urged the motionless Winter.

“Mother could get sick. So! If you call a physician, I’ll tell father the whole truth when he returns. That I……stole your ring, Madam.”

“Where is the ring?”

“I’ll return it when father arrives. You can punish me then.”

Winter thought for a moment, then called for Jonathan.

“Bring that woman back. Get a physician too.”

Jonathan hesitated, as if unable to believe Winter’s words.

“Can’t you hear me?”

Hearing her irritable snap, Jonathan finally moved.

Only Winter and Vieta remained in the attic.

“How good it feels when a thief admits to being a thief. Do you also admit to everything else you’ve done?”

Everything else she had done. Vieta recalled the past.

‘Pushing Vilter down the stairs? Taking Amy’s doll? Or telling Vilter he was the family’s disgrace?’

The last one was true, but the first two weren’t.

Vilter had tumbled down the stairs himself in anger, and Amy had thrown her doll into the attic after claiming Vieta’s mere touch made her feel bad.

The last incident happened when Vieta told Vilter, who had insulted Susan by calling her a wh*re, that he was the family’s disgrace for flirting with young maids.

Susan lost her tongue because of Vilter’s lie that Vieta had pushed him down the stairs.

After falling down the stairs, Vilter remained unconscious for three days, and Madam Winter, unable to control her anger, assaulted Susan, Vieta’s mother.

Vieta steadied her labored breathing as the pain of approaching past memories tightened around her throat.

She tightly closed her eyes, then opened them with finally even breaths.

“Yes. I admit to all of that too. So please show mercy.”

Vieta walked to Madam Winter, grabbed the hem of her skirt, and knelt.

“From now on, I’ll obey your words well.”

She gave Winter the words she had wanted to hear her entire life.

Winter lightly pushed Vieta’s forehead with her hand gloved in wine-colored lace.

Even from this light push, Vieta’s body lost balance and fell backward.

“The smell is terrible. You need to wash first. Follow me.”

Madam Winter removed her gloves and threw them away as if she had touched something dirty, then turned and went downstairs.

Vieta barely managed to raise her nearly powerless body and left the attic.

She descended, watching Winter’s greatly puffed skirt.

‘Even before death, you never gave up that ridiculous clown-like crinoline.’

Vieta recalled the distant past.

Winter, waddling in her crinoline-puffed skirt, had fallen while climbing to the execution platform, becoming the laughingstock of the crowd.

With her head bleeding from hitting the ground, she glared at Vieta with a distorted expression.

Her cry that she would never let this go seemed like a dream, and Vieta couldn’t accept it.

As she denied reality, Vieta was roughly thrown into the kitchen.

Startled by Winter’s sudden appearance, the maids seemed terrified, stopping their work to look back and forth between the two.

“Wash her. And since firewood is precious, use cold water.”

Outside, snow was falling so heavily that visibility was nearly zero, and the water the maid brought from outside was practically ice water.

At Winter’s command, the maids simultaneously stripped Vieta’s clothes and poured cold water over her haphazardly.

They scrubbed her body with dish sponges and roughly tore at her tangled hair.

Vieta’s body and head moved ridiculously under their rough handling.

Even in this chaotic situation, Vieta clenched her teeth and didn’t scream once.

This truly couldn’t be anything but h＊ll.

She acknowledged God’s creativity.