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Chapter 01
The Villainess’s Son
“Why…?!”
Bright red blood dripped onto the floor from the sword piercing through my stomach.
It hurt.
The pain was so horrifying that I couldn’t even scream. Yet before the agony, one question slipped from my trembling lips.
“Why… why would you do this?”
The one who stabbed me was someone I knew all too well.
Emil Ronciste Calixte.
My precious friend. My only childhood companion. A pitiful boy shunned by others simply because he was born as the son of a villainess.
That boy, whom I trusted as much as my own family, was now delivering death to me.
My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the floor. It hurt. Hugging my abdomen with shaking hands, I watched my arms quickly stain red with blood.
“Answer me, Emil… why?”
“…I’m sorry.”
I’m truly sorry, Bell.
Kneeling before me like a knight swearing an oath, Emil gently caressed my cheek.
Contrary to someone who had just stabbed me, he was crying.
He was a boy who had endured endless mistreatment without shedding tears, no matter how much it hurt him.
That proud child now looked down at me as I crumpled helplessly before him.
“…Rather than living like puppets, perhaps this is better for both of us.”
He muttered words I couldn’t understand, his unfocused gaze drawing closer.
The moment I saw his eyes, I realized it.
The madness of that villainess.
It had finally passed down to Emil as well.
Kindly, Emil caught me as I lost the strength to hold myself upright and laid me across his lap.
A drop of tears splashed against my cheek.
Ah… I truly thought this life had been happy.
My stomach, pierced by the sword, hurt so much.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die!
But against my will, my eyelids kept growing heavier.
“…I’m sorry.”
And then—
Emil said something, but I couldn’t hear him clearly.
That was how my second life came to an end.
My mother was the heroine.
Ismeralda Ephrish.
The heroine who was murdered by the villainess suffering from madness, Robelin Castone—the sole imperial princess of the Castone Empire.
If the story ended with the protagonist dying, it would have been absurd.
But a heroine was a heroine for a reason.
Even after dying again and again, my mother always returned.
“I wanted to become closer to you.”
“…Princess Robelin.”
“But I must pay for my sins.”
As scenes flashed past like fragments of a dream, I remembered the novel I had once read.
No One Saved Her.
A book I had bought a collector’s edition of in my previous life, despite barely scraping by and even skipping meals for a day.
Its story followed the heroine, Ismeralda, who suffered twelve deaths and regressions at the hands of the villainess.
Even in circumstances that would have driven anyone insane, Ismeralda never abandoned her convictions and continued opposing Robelin.
And that Ismeralda was my mother in this life.
Am I seeing the past because I died?
I watched my mother—the heroine, still young and fresh-faced, yet strangely composed from countless regressions.
In the prison, silence filled the air as two women faced each other across iron bars.
“At first, I couldn’t understand Your Highness,” my mother said quietly. “But now… I think I understand, at least a little.”
“My sins will never disappear,” Robelin replied. “Nor would I dare insult the dead by pretending nothing happened. But…”
This feels familiar.
The moment I heard those words, I realized it.
This prison scene—
It was the final chapter of the novel.
“Ismeralda, would you check on my son from time to time?”
The imperial princess, her black hair darker than midnight itself, was a woman consumed by madness.
Despite the fact that this woman had killed her more than ten times, my mother calmly accepted her request.
“Of course, Your Highness. Please don’t worry. That child is innocent.”
“That makes three debts I owe you.”
Robelin.
A notorious villainess who, in her madness, slaughtered innocent people without hesitation.
Her madness did not lessen her punishment.
Still, the cause behind her insanity was enough to awaken even Ismeralda’s sympathy.
“If none of this had happened,” Robelin asked softly, “do you think we could have opened our hearts to one another?”
“Of course.”
“I wanted to know more about you.”
“You already do, Your Highness,” Ismeralda said with a faint smile. “You know parts of me that no one else does.”
Their meeting was brief.
When their conversation ended, Robelin offered my mother one final smile.
My mother returned it with a small one of her own.
Even knowing their history, it was difficult to understand the meaning behind those smiles.
Robelin stepped back from the bars.
“You should go now.”
“May God guide Your Highness’s path.”
I followed my mother out of the prison.
The moment we stepped outside, the scene changed as though the pages of a book had turned.
