When my morning training session ended, I immediately made my way back toward my chambers to prepare for my other lessons. Wanting to take a shortcut, I decided to pass through the garden—and that was where I saw her.

  The Empress.

  She stood beneath the arch of flowering vines, her pale skin almost glowing under the soft morning light. Her long, golden-wheat hair cascaded like silk down her back, and her eyes—sharp and cold—shimmered with that same sapphire-blue crity that once made people call her the empire’s living jewel.

  She looked serene, poised as ever. But I knew better.

  That calm exterior masked a heart capable of cruelty.

  When I was younger, I used to wonder why, despite being my mother, she had never once shown me affection. Not a smile, not a kind word, not even the warmth of a distant gaze. All her attention, all her tenderness, was reserved for my younger brother, Sirius.

  For a long time, I tried to earn even a fragment of what he received. I told myself it was my fault—that I simply wasn’t lovable enough. That if I just tried harder, I would be worthy.

  But everything changed at the end of my first life.

  The day before I was executed—after being accused of high treason—I received an unexpected visitor in the prison cell where I was being held.

  It was her.

  A part of me, foolishly, had hoped that at the edge of death, she might offer some sliver of comfort. A final gesture of maternal warmth.

  I was wrong.

  Instead, she delivered only cold disdain. Her words were knives, and she wielded them without hesitation.

  She humiliated me, told me how deeply she despised me

  Then she told me the truth.

  I was not her son.

  I was the child of her twin sister—the woman she called a traitor, a seductress who had lured the Emperor, her husband, into betrayal.

  And me? I was the living embodiment of that shame. The bloodstained proof of a scandal she had spent her life burying. A constant reminder of the one humiliation she could never erase.

  She hadn’t just hated me—she had waited for the moment to destroy me. And when the chance came, she seized it with elegant precision.

  It was her influence that ensured I would be branded a traitor. She was the one who pushed for my execution, weaving poison into pace whispers until the decision seemed justified—even inevitable.

  It had been her wish all along.

  And just before she turned to leave my cell, she delivered the final blow—cold and triumphant.

  She confessed that it was her doing that led to my mother’s death during childbirth. That she had pnned it with meticulous care, ensuring no suspicion would ever fall on her. And with cruel pride, she boasted how even the Emperor would live out his days never knowing the truth.

  Her final gift: the knowledge that I had been born into this world on a bed of blood, betrayal, and vengeance.

  And she had orchestrated every piece of it.

  The truth had shattered something in me that day.

  Not the betrayal. Not the hatred.

  But the realization that all my life, I had been reaching for a mother who was never truly mine to begin with.

  A phantom warmth. A lie I desperately clung to.

  And in the end, she made sure to tear it from me, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but silence... and poison.

  Even now, standing here in this life, five years before that moment, her presence still stirs something hollow inside me. A wound that no longer bleeds, but aches all the same.

  She didn’t notice me as I stood there by the garden path. Or perhaps she did—and simply didn’t care.

  Some things never change.

  I turned to walk away, not wanting to linger longer than necessary.

  “Your Highness?”

  The voice was soft, hesitant. I turned slightly to find a young knight-in-training standing nearby, half-bowing as he approached. His face was flushed from running, and he looked unsure whether to speak or retreat.

  “Yes?” I asked, my tone more even than I expected.

  “The Commander sent me to ask if you would be returning to the training grounds tomorrow as well. He… was surprised to see you this morning.” The knight lowered his gaze slightly. “Everyone was… talking about it. No one expected it. Some of the older knights said… maybe something has changed.”

  I paused for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. I’ll return and will continue from now on.”

  A flicker of something passed over the boy’s face—respect, perhaps, or disbelief—but he bowed once more and quickly retreated.

  I stood still for a moment longer, the chill of the Empress’s memory still lingering in the morning air.

  Let her ignore me, I thought.Let her believe what she wants. The truth doesn't need her approval anymore.

  I had returned—not to seek love from the wrong pces, but to rewrite what had once gone so wrong.

  Let her keep her crown. I would build something greater than a throne can ever offer—a legacy.

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