Chapter 1

What a petty death.

The pounding rain that slapped my ears and the thunder that roared across the sky felt as if the world itself were laughing at the situation.

I had been flung from the carriage and my body was a wreck. Broken limbs twisted into grotesque angles, and my abdomen burned with a pain as if stung by something sharp.

Is this my death?

Clad in finery, surrounded by people who envied me — none of that familiar image of myself remained.

How pitiful and ridiculous I must have looked, crushed beneath the overturned, splintered carriage.

…and even as I lay dying, worrying about what others might think of me—what a spectacle that made of me.

“Hahaha! K—kekek. Hahahahaha!”

My laughter was brief; the searing pain in my gut stole my breath and left me gasping.

How did it come to this?

I managed to roll my eyes toward the jewel I held in my hand.

The God’s Jewel…

Even amid the carnage, the transparent gem did not lose its light.

People believed the jewel was blessed by the gods and that it granted the owner’s wish.

As more cases of wishes coming true circulated, desire for the jewel spread; yet those who had their wishes granted all met grim ends.

The miner who first found the gem fell ill with an incurable disease and died; the noble who owned the mine went mad. A high-ranking noble who bought the jewel at auction was murdered by his son, the head of a knightly house—who had been in perfect health—died of a rare illness. The entrepreneur who had once grown fat on endless wealth suddenly lost everything and died alone on the street.

Eventually the jewel passed to the hands of a maiden of a baronial family who became a holy woman; it came to be called a cursed relic.

At first, I considered the relic someone else’s problem.

Even without a wish-granting gem, I lacked nothing.

But at a banquet attended with my eldest brother, Saint, I saw it.

“Look over there, Grace. The relic’s owner is that tacky little noblewoman. How vulgar to parade it about like that.”

It might have been something I’d never see in my life.

“Honestly, you’d suit the owner’s place better than she would — don’t you think?”

The moment I set eyes on the relic, an ugly, intense desire bloomed inside me, mocking all my previous thoughts.

I want that jewel.

Living up to its cursed reputation, after the relic had been entrusted to the holy woman her parents disappeared. I approached the grieving girl amid the throng like a hyena.

I became a friend to her loneliness, offered comfort, and did things that were not like me.

All for one purpose: to obtain the relic. I would do anything to reach that goal.

When the holy woman was driven to the brink by crippling debts her parents had incurred, I demanded the relic in exchange for mercy.

When she realized I had watched her misery and done nothing, despair swallowed her.

“How could you, Lady Grace? How could you do this to me?”

Tears spiked with sorrow and resentment, betrayal swept over her.

She cried bitterly.

“The curse will fall the moment you take the relic,” she warned.

“Even if you regret it later, the curse will remain — you’ll live in pain!”

Her last desperate pleadings were merely part of a game to me, a ritual I endured to win the prize.

“Calm yourself, holy lady.”

If only I hadn’t gone to the temple to get the relic… if only an unforeseen meddler had not interfered, everything would have been perfect.

“Princess, relics fall under the temple’s jurisdiction. Even as a princess, your coercive behavior is unacceptable.”

“You mean to suggest His Excellency, Sir Leandros the holy knight, will step in and clear the debt for her?”

Of course the meddler could do nothing more than fume and then withdraw.

The holy woman’s worried heart turned to resentment, and soon she cursed me.

“I want Lady Grace to drown in the same torment as I have. No—go mad!”

At her words—filled with hatred and malice—I smiled faintly.

To lose one’s reason to sorrow. How foolish.

My sneer enraged the holy knight.

“How long will you live like this? Please, cease these actions unbecoming of you, princess!”

He tried to stop me until the end, but he could not follow the carriage. I left the temple elated, basking in the satisfaction of having obtained what I wanted.

And now this is the end.

The coachman and the escort who followed us perished instantly when the carriage struck a massive rock. The maid who had been with us disappeared without a trace.

Was the curse real, then?

If so, my final scene would be recorded in mockery.

At least, if you made a wish you wouldn’t have to die thinking it was unfair.

I’d spent my life trying not to become the subject of other people’s ridicule, and it stung that my life should end so absurdly. It was bitter, but what could I do?

I closed my eyes and—

…then, as if a clogged airway opened, my consciousness snapped back.

“Hah!”

My vision cleared and I stared at a familiar ceiling with disbelief.

“My room?”

I staggered to my dressing table and stared at my sweating reflection.

I looked younger than before; my hands gripped the mirror as confusion painted my face.

“How did this…?”

On the vanity lay a small box.

That’s…

With a flicker of hope I opened the gift—the golden music box my parents had given me for my eighteenth birthday.

Am I eighteen? That can’t be. I was definitely twenty.

Why had I become younger? Had I not died?

Could it be…rebirth? In this younger body?

I pinched my cheek and felt pain.

It wasn’t a dream. A new life had been granted to me.

A smile spread across my bewildered face.

“All right then.”

I, the only daughter of the noble Apferdita ducal house, would not have ended in such a petty death.

“The curse my foot.”

I banished the shameful memories that had clung to me in death.

A little ember of anger kindled anew.

Some mere relic robbed me of my life?

Whether it was blessed by the gods or protected by the temple mattered little now.

If it had brought me misery, I would repay it tenfold.

This was how I—an infamous villain—lived.

Eighteen. Around this time that bastard Cardinal had that scandal with a moneylender, right?

I told the maid entering my room to fetch a reporter from the Letport Gazette.

“Send a reporter from the Letport Gazette. I’ll give them an exclusive that’ll disgrace the temple. Come to the ducal estate at once.”

At that moment I brimmed with hopeful plans for the second chance I’d been given.

“Hah, gasp.”

Blood seared along my flank as I ran to evade an assassin, clutching the wound, my strength ebbing until I fell.

“Ugh.”

Raising my head with difficulty, I saw the black night sky and a full moon, its pale light making me grit my teeth.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

After my first return I had lived like the world belonged to me. I ruined the temple’s reputation and ignored the relic entirely. But on my twentieth birthday someone murdered me mysteriously, and I was reborn again.

Each time, I woke on my eighteenth birthday.

Fear began each rebirth, and nothing seemed to change.

I died again on my twentieth birthday, and returned to my eighteenth.

Death and return repeated until my life was a shambles.

You deliberately came to the countryside estate instead of the capital! I stayed in hiding and didn’t do anything, and yet I still die?

I isolated myself in the hopes of surviving this time.

Catching my breath in frustration, I found the statue of the praying goddess—the temple’s emblem—revealed in the moonlight.

Why must I go through this?

I had shoved the statue aside in disdain, but here it was again at the worst possible moment.

“The curse will fall the moment you take the relic.”

“Even if you regret it later, the curse will remain — you’ll live in pain!”

“I want Lady Grace to drown in the same torment as I have. No—go mad!”

I could no longer deny that my life was cursed.

“There you are. I told you there’s no point in running.”

The assassin—my maid assigned to serve me—sneered at my disheveled figure and lifted a blade.

Behind the gleaming blade smeared with blood, the goddess statue met my eyes.

“I was so sick of tending to an evil woman like you.”

I had long resented the gods for cursing me and had avoided looking in the direction of the temple, but endless deaths had filled me with fury.

If a god exists at all, tell me what to do so I can escape this curse.

“May you never rest peacefully.”

I would do anything.

She swung her sword with a face void of her usual warmth.

Please!

At the tenth death, everything went white.