Grace Merseden cast her gaze out the window.

Thick snowflakes fell fiercely under the night sky, piling up layer upon layer.

For a moment, Grace wished that the snow would cover the entire world in white, ultimately bringing about an apocalypse where no one would survive.

A breeze entered through the open window and swept through the corridor. The acrid smell of gunpowder and the metallic scent of blood dissipated in the wind, replaced by the fragrance of flowers. The cold air that had filled the corridor quickly turned warm.

It was clearly winter. Warmth and flower scents shouldn’t exist.

Yet despite this strange situation, Grace spoke calmly as if it were perfectly normal.

“Do what you must do.”

“……You are truly cruel to me.”

Footsteps echoed through the corridor. A man slowly emerged from the shadows.

The saint, Adrian Magnus. With each step he took, pure white flowers sprouted through the floor around his feet.

The meaning behind those flowers was all too obvious.

His dark hair gleamed purple in the moonlight.

“Do you have any regrets?”

“I don’t have regrets anymore.”

“In that case, are you satisfied?”

Adrian stopped directly in front of Grace and glanced behind her. The sources of the gunpowder and blood smells that had filled the corridor before his arrival were there.

Traces that nakedly captured someone’s rage. If so, was the one who had unleashed that anger truly satisfied?

That was why Adrian asked, but Grace merely smiled faintly.

“This is my choice. So don’t make that expression.”

Grace raised her hand and lightly brushed the corner of his eye. He had been crying without realizing it. She took one last look at his face, then closed her eyes.

It happened in an instant.

Grace died without even feeling the sensation of being cut.

***

Where did it all go wrong?

Daughter of Duke Casper Merseden, the youngest daughter of the ducal family. Titles she should have been called by, but never once was.

Why couldn’t she be acknowledged as family or even as a person?

The young Grace constantly questioned herself.

The answer to her question was surprisingly simple. Simple enough that a single sentence from a maid when she was barely ten years old resolved all her doubts.

[Miss, you’re not the Duke’s real daughter, you know.]

To the Duke and his two sons, Grace was merely a stranger.

[Your appearance is clearly different from them. Didn’t you know?]

It was a very simple reason, one that even a child could understand.

So it wasn’t hatred without cause. There were legitimate reasons to hate her. That realization brought some relief.

However, even though she could understand it, Grace still felt a sense of deficiency. Having never been loved since birth, she didn’t even know where this deficiency came from, and unconsciously pursued her family’s love and recognition to quench her heart’s thirst.

She practiced swordplay until her hands blistered to become worthy of the ducal family known for martial arts, and stayed up all night learning etiquette and knowledge so as not to bring shame to the ducal family’s honor.

Firmly believing that if she tried hard enough, she would eventually become family.

But the end result of her desperate struggle was a life with an expiration date.

[Why me…… What did I do wrong!]

An unknown disease. Something that couldn’t even be clearly identified as a disease came upon her. Foolishly, she didn’t look into the details of the illness at the time.

She optimistically concluded, ‘I won’t die from this anyway.’

Having never caught even a cold until she turned eighteen, she arrogantly assumed that even if she fell ill, she would recover quickly. It was a complete misjudgment.

What started as mild symptoms worsened with each passing day.

At first, she just felt slightly nauseated and dizzy, but later her internal organs deteriorated to the point where she frequently vomited blood. Headaches that felt like someone was digging into her temples with a blade became constant companions.

And at some point, her fingertips began to turn black with flower patterns.

Initially, she didn’t understand what these flower patterns meant. But when she touched objects around her and immediately collapsed from weakness, she quickly realized their significance.

Flowers had bloomed where her fingertips had made contact. Flowers that instantly blossomed using life force as nourishment. Real flowers emitting a sickeningly sweet fragrance.

The flower patterns gradually spread from her fingertips throughout her entire body. When the patterns covered her hands and arms, she could no longer hold anything. When they covered her feet, she could no longer walk.

It didn’t take long before the patterns enveloped her entire body, and she became so weakened by each blooming flower that she was confined to bed.

Even in this condition, the flowers blooming over her bed continued to gnaw away at Grace’s life force.

She had no strength to move a finger, and even breathing was a struggle. She knew without being told that death was imminent.

There was no fear. Only indignation filled her heart.

[Please…… find me…….]

Despite being so sick, so weak—why did no one come to see her? Why did they leave her to die?

The Duke and her two older brothers. Her precious family who had never once considered her as one of them.

If only she had a little more time, if only she had stayed by her family’s side a little longer, perhaps she might have been acknowledged as family. Then she wouldn’t have to die alone like this.

Unable to let go of these lingering attachments, she closed her eyes at the age of twenty, surrounded by resentment, regret, and silence.

Eerily colorful flowers bloomed where she had lain. No one knew those flowers were traces of Grace’s existence.

That was the end of her first life.

And her second life began immediately.

The moment she opened her eyes, she realized she had regressed to when she was fourteen years old. She naively considered the regression a miracle or gift from god, and wanted to use this second chance “productively.”

“Brother, brother! I know the future!”

She thought that since she knew the future, she could be helpful to her family, and if so, she might become part of their family. She thought it might be possible this time.

How complacent and foolish she had been.

“Brother, you know! That wasn’t my intention when I spoke! Please listen to my side of the story!”

She was nineteen again. Framed for killing the sole heir to the throne in place of her family, she was branded a witch by the temple and imprisoned in the imperial underground dungeon. It was a place where cold and damp air clung to her skin day and night.

“Hmm, oh my. That’s why I repeatedly told you, Ray. Always be careful with your words.”

“I did everything for the family…… ugh!”

She couldn’t finish her sentence as she suddenly vomited dark red blood. The disease from her first life had returned, and her body was already in tatters.

“For the family, you say. Yes, if you truly care for the family, then die quietly. Thanks to you, the ducal family’s reputation has fallen, so it’s only right that you die to make amends, don’t you think?”

“Oh, brother……? Why would you say such things……”

“But there is good news. The temple knows about your condition and has chosen the saint as your executioner. Your moment of death won’t be too painful. Well, I’ve never died, so I wouldn’t know.”

His voice was more unpleasant and colder than the air in the underground prison.

“For the crime of proclaiming falsehoods to deceive the people and mocking god. For this, the witch, Grace, shall be beheaded.”

“Hu, huhu, haha…… hahahaha, ahahahahaha!”

A few days later, her execution was announced. The moment the saint with his drawn sword appeared in her field of vision—her head firmly secured—she burst into hysterical laughter like someone who had gone mad.

In her first life, she had died alone with no one knowing, but this time she would be beheaded surrounded by a crowd, under hateful gazes. She couldn’t help but laugh.

But among that large crowd, her family was absent. In a way, it was to be expected.

To them, Grace was merely a consumable. There was no need to confirm the end of a consumable that had served its purpose.

Only as the blade fiercely descended, about to touch her neck, did Grace finally realize.

No matter what efforts she made, she could never become part of the ducal family, nor would she ever be able to.

……If there was even a “future” to speak of.

Her third life began immediately after her beheading. Again at fourteen years old. The same starting point as the previous regression.

However, when she regressed again, the emotions Grace felt were not joy, delight, relief…… none of those.

It was despair. The thought of endlessly repeating deaths that weren’t truly deaths made her heart collapse.

From her past life experiences, she knew she would inevitably contract “that disease” at eighteen.

Although she had been beheaded at nineteen in her previous life, the age of death from the disease was twenty.

No matter what efforts she made after the regression point at fourteen, no matter whom she met, at twenty she would inevitably die, and everything she had built would disappear with another regression.

There was no “future.”

With that thought, she decided to do nothing. She wanted to live aimlessly, having lost all motivation.

But she couldn’t. A goal emerged.

A goal she desperately wanted to achieve even if it would become a momentary bubble—revenge against those she had considered family.

For this, she befriended the saint and hired a mercenary.

She needed the saint to kill her family and die with them. To make the saint appear at the right moment, she needed a mercenary to hold him back.

After achieving her goal, Grace was beheaded again by the saint.

That was the end of her third life, and then……

“……Please get up now, Miss.”

One death by disease, two beheadings. And after the third regression, her fourth life began.