‘Estelle?’
It was definitely Estelle’s voice. It sounded a little younger than now, but it was unmistakably hers.
‘Why… are you like this, begging like that?’
Caught in confusion, Kaiyan opened the door without hesitation.
“Hah.”
Kaiyan let out a rough breath. It felt like his breath, which had stopped for a moment, started flowing again. In his cleared vision, Estelle was lying peacefully.
“…A dream?”
The surroundings were quiet. The table clock pointed to 2 a.m. He must have dozed off without realizing it after being mentally exhausted all evening.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t something that could happen in reality.
The beloved daughter of the Astria Duke family, imprisoned in a dungeon with clear signs of torture, begging the Duke himself—no one else—for mercy. Even claiming the innocence of the former Empress Serena.
It had to be a dream.
But—
‘Why does it feel so real?’
Normally, dreams feel vague and distant after waking up. But this one was too vivid, too clear. As if he had actually experienced it himself.
Because of that, his chest felt strangely heavy and aching.
Just in case, he gently lifted the blanket from Estelle’s feet. Her exposed white ankles were clean, without a single scar. Both of them.
‘If she had wounds like that, there would’ve been some trace left.’
Of course. It was ridiculous to think he couldn’t distinguish dream from reality.
‘Maybe I just got deceived by something I wanted to see.’
How much better would it have been if Estelle had never betrayed him?
After the Shawenon Lake incident, Kaiyan had wanted to trust Estelle until the end. No—he had actually tried to believe her.
“Did you plan this from the beginning? Seven years… just to eliminate me and my mother!”
“No, no, Iann! That’s not what I meant! I really— I didn’t know anything—”
He had felt sincerity in her desperate denial.
But on the day of the former Empress’s execution, Estelle appeared at the execution ground with the Duke of Astria, expressionless until the very end. After that day, she never again begged him to understand her.
Only then did he realize. He had been completely betrayed—and mocked until the very end.
‘Even after all that… I still can’t let go?’
First love given in ignorance during youth had left a cruel scar.
“Have you ever tried to look at things from another perspective at least once?”
“What you know… what you think… might not be everything!”
“If you’ve already decided to hate me no matter what—”
Perhaps because of Estelle’s emotional expression, Kaiyan’s heart had softened again. He was once again curious about her true feelings.
At the same time, Diana also could not sleep.
Diana sat at a desk beside a window facing a bright full moon, absorbed in a book about mental-type monsters. The book was extremely thick, filled with tiny, densely packed letters.
On a bronze candlestick, melted wax had piled up heavily from a round candle, showing just how long she had been reading.
Yet she still hadn’t found the answer she wanted, and she nervously bit her thumbnail.
“Haa…”
With a frustrated sigh, she turned the page.
Whoosh.
A gust of wind slipped through the slightly open window and blew out the candle flame.
In the dark room, only cold moonlight remained.
“Oh… it’s already past 2.”
Diana muttered weakly and closed the book. The letters seemed to float in the air.
“To think an Empress lost her memories to a mental monster…”
She closed the window properly and muttered again.
“How did the wise Empress end up like that?”
She had pretended not to know in front of Kaiyan, but in truth, Diana had recognized Empress Estelle at a glance. It was a face she could never forget—or should forget.
The reason she acted ignorant was because the Emperor had summoned her while hiding her identity.
Diana’s recognition of Estelle was inevitable—but her arrival in Aeren was coincidence.
When she encountered men searching for her in Orsel, she had no idea the client was the Emperor.
So when she first entered the bedroom and saw the woman lying on the bed, she had struggled to hide her shock.
The Empress who was believed to have died four years ago was alive. And she had lost her memories.
Although her silver hair, once as brilliant as a flowing galaxy, had been dyed black, hair color alone did not make her a different person.
Diana’s fingertips brushed something hanging at Estelle’s neck. It was an oval locket pendant she always wore.
Click.
She opened it carefully. Inside was a small portrait.
A boy who looked about three or four years old, smiling brightly. Diana looked at his face with a nostalgic gaze.
“Noah… I will repay your debt. No matter what it takes.”
After gently stroking the portrait for a long while, Diana closed the locket with a determined expression and tucked it back inside her clothes. Her high-neck outfit was enough to fully conceal it.
The blue full moon night—said to reveal even hidden truths—flowed on, each person carrying their own story.
“Please, Your Grace! Please save Her Majesty the Empress!”
“Shut up! So you’ve finally decided to bring down Astria, haven’t you? Fine—try it. The day my heart stops, you’ll fall into eternal sleep as well!”
“Please! The Empress!”
The bitter taste of blood rose in her throat, but Estelle only begged.
‘This dream again.’
It was the memory of the night before Empress Serena’s execution.
“Is that all? If you dare speak even a single word of the Duke’s family secret, your heart will stop immediately!”
In other words, it was the memory of the day she tried to help the Empress escape, was caught by the Duke, and was subjected to brutal torture—ending with curses and restrictions that sealed her speech.
That night, the Duke tortured Estelle until dawn, then erased all traces with healing potions. After injecting her with suppressants to erase her emotions, he dragged her to the execution ground.
Estelle could do nothing. She screamed inside, her heart tearing apart, but could not express any of it.
Because this nightmare repeated so many times, Estelle now immediately realized it was a dream.
And because it was not just a dream but a repeating memory, the pain felt painfully real.
But the worst part was something else: the dream would only end after she witnessed Empress Serena’s hatred and curse toward her at the moment of execution.
No matter how many times it repeated, she could never get used to this hell.
Still, she had no choice but to accept it in resignation.
“Please! Duke! Please save Empress Serena! I’ll do anything you ask… please…”
No matter how much she begged, it was a hopeless wish.
CRASH!
A sharp metallic sound echoed through the entire underground prison. It was a variable that had never happened before in this repeating dream.
Startled, Estelle turned toward the sound.
‘How… how are you here…’
There stood Kaiyan.
Estelle stood up as if enchanted and walked toward him.
Her legs were numb from kneeling so long that they didn’t feel like her own, but she forced herself forward.
And just as she stepped out the door where he stood—
“Hah!”
She woke up.
A familiar ceiling. Familiar furniture. Warm sunlight flowing through thin curtains.
This was clearly her bedroom.
Her trembling hand touched her face, and she felt hot tears.
It always happened when she had this dream.
“Haa…”
With a shaky breath, her tense muscles relaxed. But her heart did not calm.
‘How did I wake up in the middle?’
For nine years, she had never once escaped this nightmare midway.
‘And Kaiyan appearing too…’
As she gathered her thoughts, more and more things made no sense.
‘Wait… why am I like this?’
As her sense of reality slowly returned, she remembered the last thing—after pouring out intense emotions toward Kaiyan and collapsing helplessly in his arms.