Chapter 1

When Arthur brought his fallen comrade's widow Elena and her son into our knight's estate, I didn't cry or make a scene.

I simply packed our belongings in silence with my daughter Lilith, moving out of the master bedroom.

"Elena is struggling alone with her child," I said calmly to Arthur. "We'll move to the basement so you can better care for them."

On Lilith's seventh birthday, Arthur gave her a magical glider model. Elena's son Damian cried and demanded it for himself.

Lilith expressionlessly handed over the toy: "Father says little brother has no father now, so you'll be his father. As his big sister, I should let him have it."

Arthur was pleased by our tolerance and generosity, but gradually noticed something—I no longer seemed to love him, and our daughter no longer warmed to him either.

He didn't know that in my past life, he had thrown us out of our home for that mother and son. During the winter blizzard, while Lilith and I starved and froze, he gave all our gold and mana stones to Elena's family, leaving us to die of cold and hunger.

After my rebirth, my daughter and I stopped fighting, stopped competing.

But we would never need Arthur again.

When he wanted to carve out my daughter's Star-magic eyes to save Damian, I finally dropped the pretense and called upon my brother—the Abyssal Duke.

Time for this hypocritical holy knight to practice his "Greater Good" with his own Light Core.

…

The heavy oak door slammed shut, cutting off Arthur's retreating footsteps. The entrance hall of our Mage Tower lay in absolute ruin. Smashed potion vials bled blue and gold magic across the stone floor. The acrid smoke of ruined alchemical reagents burned the back of my throat.

Lilith stood quietly beside a shattered wooden display case. She didn't cry. My seven-year-old daughter simply reached out with her small boot and kicked a jagged piece of glass aside.

"Can we please stop letting Father find us?" Lilith asked. Her voice sounded far too old, stripped of any childhood innocence. She looked up at me, her star-flecked eyes hardening. "My birthdays would be much happier if they never came."

The words twisted a physical blade in my gut. I dropped to my knees, ignoring the glass crunching under my weight, and pulled her against my chest. Her small hands gripped my tunic tightly.

"I promise," I told her. My voice shook with raw, unswerving fury. "We will move further this time. To the very edge of the Winterlands. He will never find us again."

We packed immediately. I shoved enchanted silver coins, spell scrolls, and bundles of dried blood-root into our leather rucksacks. I strapped my heavy alchemy kit to my belt. The residual magic in the room hummed, restless and agitated, matching the violent thumping of my heart.

I paused at the doorway, hoisting the heavy pack over my shoulder. I looked back at the hearth. I had spent three grueling months carving protective fire runes into those stones. The hearth had finally started to push the damp cold out of the tower. It felt almost like a home. Now, it was just another shelter we had to abandon. Bitter resentment flared in my chest.

The chill of the stone floor dragged my mind backward. Back to my previous life. Back to Arthur's pristine, sunlit knight's estate. Back to the exact night he dragged Elena and her son, Damian, through our front doors.

"Her husband died under my command," Arthur had declared that night. His silver armor still dripped with freezing rain. He pushed the weeping Elena forward into the warmth of our hall. "It is my duty. My honor. You must understand, Aria. Make room. Be generous to a war widow."

I swallowed the protests burning on my tongue. I obeyed his sacred 'Greater Good'.

That generosity became a weapon. Elena took the guest rooms. Then she took the sunroom. Then, I walked into the grand hall to find her standing by the fire, wearing my ancestral Star-woven cloak. The deep blue magic hummed against her shoulders.

I demanded she take it off. Arthur stepped between us, his hand resting on the hilt of his holy sword.

"It's a piece of cloth, Aria!" he snapped, his face tight with disappointment. "Don't be so incredibly petty. She lost her husband. Have you no pity in your heart?"

By the end of that month, Lilith and I were sleeping down in the underground alchemy lab.

The basement was a nightmare of damp earth and volatile leylines. The chaotic magical energy seeped straight into Lilith's bones. Mana-sickness hit her fast and hard. She burned with a terrifying fever, violently shaking on a thin, moldy cot.

I ran upstairs to Arthur's study. I demanded a healing potion from the estate's vast stores.

Arthur didn't even look up from his ledger. "Lilith is older. She has your bloodline, she can endure a little fever. I must save the potions for Damian. The boy has a weak chest."

The final blow came quickly after that. I walked into the parlor to find Elena on her knees. She sobbed hysterically, clutching her cheek. A red handprint marked her pale skin.

"It's my fault!" Elena wailed, peeking at Arthur through her trembling fingers. "I shouldn't have used the kitchen! I'll take Damian and leave. We'll brave the monsters outside!"

Arthur didn't ask me a single question. He didn't look at my perfectly clean hands. His face twisted with righteous disgust.

"You would strike a defenseless widow in my house?" he roared. "Pack your things. Get out of my territory. Both of you."

He threw us out into the Winterlands. The blizzard hit two days later.

The memory crashed over me, suffocating and violently cold. The wind howled like a slaughtered beast. Lilith's breathing turned into a shallow, wet rattle. Her small body went terrifyingly slack in my arms.

I dragged her back to the estate gates. I fell to my knees in the deep snow, beating my bloody, frostbitten fists against the iron bars. I begged. I screamed for a scrap of bread, for a single ember of fire.

Arthur stood high up on the balcony, wrapped in thick furs.

"The supply wagons are delayed," he shouted down at me over the roaring wind. "I must conserve the food and potions for Elena and the boy. This is your punishment, Aria. Learn from it."

He turned his back and slammed the heavy oak doors shut.

Through the frosted glass windows, I saw the bright, warm glow of the hearth. I smelled roasting meat. I saw a silver platter piled high with honey cakes resting on the long dining table.

Outside, the temperature plummeted. I curled my body completely around Lilith, desperately trying to give her my fading body heat. But her skin was already turning to ice. I held my dead daughter in the pitch dark. The cold ate my fingers, then my lungs, then my heart. We died right there. Two frozen statues buried under the snow, starved and abandoned in the name of his immaculate 'honor'.

I gasped, snapping violently back to the present.

Phantom frostbite burned my skin. My lungs heaved, sucking in the dusty air of the ruined Mage Tower.

My blood boiled. The sheer, blinding rage of the memory made my fingertips spark with raw, destructive purple magic. I looked down at Lilith. She stood beside me—alive, breathing, perfectly warm, holding her little travel bag.

I tightened my grip on my wooden staff until my knuckles turned white.

Arthur wanted to play the holy martyr. He wanted to sacrifice us on the altar of his reputation.

Let him.

I survived the freezing hell once. I tore my way back from the grave. I will never beg at his iron gates again. I will never let my daughter shiver in the dark for the sake of his twisted morality.

"Come, Lilith," I said. I kicked the ruined door open. The freezing air of the Winterlands slapped my face. I welcomed the sting. "Let's go build our own empire."