chapter 01

“The bastard who was supposed to be her fiancé abandoned his own bride and ran away.”

Kaiel Serdian spoke with an expression full of contempt.

The imperial palace was still in chaos. It had only been a few days since Kaiel, who had until recently been the Second Prince, staged a rebellion and seized the imperial throne.

“I knew he was that kind of bastard from the time he was little, but….”

Crown Prince Alix, who had been preparing for a grand wedding and coronation, had disappeared somewhere to escape the blade of his younger brother, Kaiel. In the end, the only one left behind was his poor, trembling bride-to-be.

Kaiel stared at her and gave a mocking chuckle.

“But abandoning his partner and running away like that?”

“Kaiel!”

The woman, forced to kneel before him, glared at him.

In just a few days, she was supposed to become the Crown Princess, and before long, she would have become Empress. But right now, before her future brother-in-law, who had pushed aside his own brother and father and crowned himself Emperor, she was nothing more than a rebel awaiting execution.

“It’s not too late, even now.”

Though trembling with fear, the woman did not lose her composure. Her proud bearing, as though refusing to surrender control of the situation to Kaiel, was befitting of an Empress.

“Confess your wrongdoing to His Imperial Majesty and secure His Highness the Crown Prince. You may not be able to escape punishment, but you should be able to avoid the death penalty.”

“How pitiful, watching you try so hard.”

Kaiel tilted his head crookedly, as though he had no interest in what she was saying. Then he stared down at his future sister-in-law, who was desperately trying to salvage the situation somehow.

“Should I let you live?”

“……Just kill me.”

“That wouldn’t be fun. It would be too easy.”

A cold smile crept across Kaiel’s lips.

The rebellion had been horrific. Countless people who had followed Crown Prince Alix had died, and the Rottner family was among them. Kaiel was, quite literally, sitting upon a throne soaked in blood.

I’d rather he just kill me, too.

Elysia squeezed her eyes shut.

But there was no way Kaiel would grant her such mercy.

“Even His Highness the Crown Prince desperately clung to life and managed to escape.”

“…….”

“Don’t you think I should at least watch how that bastard dies?”

With those words, Kaiel made a small gesture with his hand, and a servant standing in one corner stepped forward.

“So I’ll give you a punishment more merciful than execution.”

“I’d rather you kill me!”

Elysia screamed, but Kaiel’s expression did not change in the slightest.

Instead, the servant who had been summoned unfolded a rolled-up document and began reading it in a trembling voice.

“E-Elysia Rottner. Your crime of conspiring with the Crown Prince to harm His Imperial Majesty and plotting rebellion is exceedingly grave.”

“…What?”

Until that moment, Elysia had not lost her dignity. Now, however, she muttered blankly.

Both the attempt to harm the Emperor and the rebellion had been Kaiel’s doing.

Moreover, the claim that she had conspired with the Crown Prince made no sense. She had merely been his bride-to-be, awaiting their wedding.

“Therefore, Elysia Rottner shall be… sentenced to… e-erasure from the records.”

The servant finished reading, and the other officials standing nearby drew sharp breaths.

The punishment known as “erasure from the records” was a sentence that had effectively been abolished in the present age.

An ancient magical punishment that tore a person out of the world.

Anyone subjected to it would be erased from people’s memories, becoming a person who had never existed in the first place.

“The sentence shall be carried out… immediately. I-immediately.”

“Why would you go this far…?”

Elysia could not understand the situation.

He could have simply killed her. Why would he inflict such a cruel punishment upon her?

Those sentenced to erasure from the records did not die.

Their families, friends, and lovers simply forgot them, while their homes, possessions, and status were all confiscated. Overnight, they became people who belonged nowhere in the world.

What made the punishment truly horrifying was that they could not even tell anyone what had happened.

Because of a powerful magical restriction, the moment someone sentenced to erasure from the records tried to speak about their punishment, their throat would close and their tongue would become stiff. No matter how unjust the sentence was, there was no way to prove it.

That was why people called erasure from the records a “living execution.”

“You think you’ll get away with doing something like this? What if His Imperial Majesty wakes up…!”

“By then, you’ll already have disappeared from this world anyway.”

“Kaiel!”

Elysia abruptly rose to her feet.

Her eyes, burning with hatred, gleamed through her blood-red hair.

“…Do you know something?”

She clenched her fists as she spoke. If she really was going to be subjected to erasure from the records, she felt that she had to leave these words behind before that happened.

“I… hate you enough to wish you dead.”

“I want you to survive, Elysia Rottner.”

Kaiel grinned at Elysia, who stood there in shock, no longer resisting.

“Pitifully and miserably.”

One year after Kaiel’s rebellion.

The Emperor, who had collapsed from the shock of the rebellion led by his own son, eventually passed away without ever regaining consciousness.

Those who had held onto the hope that things might change if the Emperor woke up were ultimately forced to side with Kaiel. Those who refused were executed without exception.

Only after a bloody storm had swept through the palace for some time did the Empire gradually regain stability.

The people, exhausted by the chaos, also began returning to their daily lives little by little. Even those who had once been reluctant to gather together now met in the marketplace and gossiped about the changes taking place in the imperial palace.

“I hear the palace is hiring maids this time.”

“You’re thinking of applying? Who knows what might happen to you if you go in there!”

“But they say the pay is really good….”

“Is that really true?”

Amid the people huddled together and whispering, a clear female voice joined the conversation.

“I heard the palace is hiring new maids. Is that really true?”

“That’s true, but… Are you from this village? I’ve never seen you before.”

The gathered villagers tilted their heads as they looked at the woman.

Hair as red as blood.

Mysterious eyes whose colors seemed to contain the Milky Way.

Firmly closed lips of a deep coral hue.

She was beautiful and alluring, yet no matter how they looked at her, she was a stranger to them. So everyone remained wary.

“You mean me?”

The woman pointed at herself with her index finger and smiled brightly.

There was something strangely elegant about the gesture, and the people stared at her blankly.

Their expressions seemed to say: Was there really a woman in our village with such striking beauty and such a dignified bearing?

“…You probably wouldn’t know even if I told you.”

A woman who had nearly become the Crown Princess.

Yet a woman who had been completely erased from the memories of everyone in the world.

A woman whose name no one remembered.

My name is Elysia Rottner.

Instead of saying those words, Elysia gently shook her head.

“I’m nobody.”

It had taken several months to reach this point.

During that time, she had learned one thing: even if she wanted to say her name, she could not utter it aloud.

Leaving the bewildered villagers behind, Elysia walked out of the marketplace.

After being thrown into the world with nothing to her name, Elysia had survived pitifully and miserably, just as Kaiel had wished.

She took whatever work she could find, but even that was difficult. There were not many places willing to take in a beggar-like woman whose social status could not even be verified.

Still, she had made it this far.

All for the sole purpose of giving Kaiel a taste of hell.

And to reclaim the name she had lost.

It had not been easy. Anyone could not simply enter the palace.

For someone like Elysia, who had no way of proving her identity, the gates of the imperial palace simply would not open.

That was why she could not afford to miss this opportunity.

“I heard the palace is looking for new maids.”

Elysia spoke to the guards at the imperial palace gates, giving them a bright smile.

The guard stared blankly at her beautiful smile before barely coming to his senses and asking for her identification.

“Identification…! I’ll check it.”

Elysia handed over her identification card, and the guard looked down at it with a face that had turned bright red.

“Ah, y-you’re beautiful. So, your name is….”

“Risea.”

Elysia snatched the identification card from the guard’s hand and looked at him.

“My name is Risea.”