Chapter 1: What I Realized on the Guillotine
An underground prison where the metallic smell of blood mingled with the damp stench of mold. Bound by ropes, Eleanor Castillo looked down at her hands as she was dragged roughly.
Her fingertips, which once boasted the Empire's greatest mana affinity and emitted a radiant light, had all their fingernails pulled out by horrific torture, leaving only dark red scabs of blood clinging to them.
"Walk, you traitorous bitch!"
At the rough kick of an Imperial Guard, Eleanor knelt on the cold stone floor.
Pain as if her kneecaps were shattering surged through her, but she did not even scream.
No, she could not.
This was because her voice had already become completely hoarse from the brutal interrogation that had continued for three days and nights.
The heavy iron gates of the prison opened, and blinding sunlight poured in. Beyond the sunlight, the roar of the crowd filling the vast square surged in like waves.
"There comes the Witch of Castillo!"
"A rotten, corrupt official who embezzled the royal treasury!"
"Kill her! Off her head immediately!"
Hit by rotten tomatoes and filth flying toward her, Eleanor slowly walked toward the execution grounds.
Her gaze was not fixed on the cold blade of the guillotine, but on the VIP viewing seats for the nobility set up at the front of the square.
There sat the two men she had devoted her entire life to protecting.
Her husband, Duke Valdemar Castillo.
And her only son, Claude Castillo.
The moment Eleanor's gaze met theirs, she had to swallow a hollow laugh of utter disillusionment.
The true culprits who had embezzled royal assets on a massive scale to indulge in luxury and gambling. They had pinned all the blame on her—a wife and mother—and were standing high above, watching from a safe vantage point.
Even on her husband, Valdemar's face, there was a look of relief that this wretched wife was finally going to die, while their son Claude was stroking the waist of his mistress Vivian, who was sitting beside him, and whispering to her, even as his mother was being dragged to the execution grounds.
'Ah, for what on earth have I lived?'
At the tender age of 18, she was married off to the debt-ridden Castillo family as if she had been sold off. She dug into the estate's ledgers day and night in place of her dissolute and incompetent husband, and she squeezed mana, sacrificing her own lifespan to subdue the demonic beasts
She had only one goal: the glory of the 'Castillo' family and to pass on a perfect empire to her own son, Claude.
This is the result. The stigma of being a traitor and the guillotine.
"Kneel, sinner!"
Her neck was impaled on the cold wooden beams of the guillotine by the executioner's coercion. Soon, a merciless axe blade would fall from above.
Eleanor closed her eyes in resignation. She didn't even have the strength left to be angry. She just wished for this terrible life to end quickly.
It was then.
"Mother, no, Mother!!"
Eleanor snapped open at the sound of a desperate scream shaking the square. A small figure rushed into the execution grounds, pushing away the guards' spears and swords with bare hands, oblivious to the hem of her dress being torn.
It was Liliana, the daughter-in-law whom Eleanor had always harshly mistreated, saying, "You are too weak and stupid to be the mistress of Castillo."
Liliana reached out her hand toward Eleanor, even as she was bleeding profusely from the spearhead piercing her shoulder.
The cowardly daughter-in-law, who usually fainted at the slightest bug, was screaming and spitting blood against the Imperial Guard.
Eleanor saw Claude in the stands scowling and shouting.
"Can't you shut that crazy bitch's mouth right now?!"
The guards grabbed Liliana by the hair and slammed her to the ground.
Nevertheless, Liliana tried to approach Eleanor, even if it meant crawling on the floor.
Thick teardrops dripping from her eyes struck Eleanor's heart.
'Why...'
Eleanor's heart began to pound like crazy.
Her husband, to whom she sacrificed her youth and bones, and her son, whom she gave her own blood and flesh, sold her.
She handed it over, but only that poor child, whom she treated like trash and looked down on her whole life, is risking her life to cry for Eleanor.
In that moment, along with bitter regret, immense anger surged through her veins.
'It's wrong. My life is thoroughly wrong.'
What she should have protected was not that rotten Castillo's name tag.
She should have protected that child who recognized jer true worth and reached out to her, calling me 'Mother' until the very last moment.
The executioner's hand went up.
Giggigiri.
The guillotine blade began to fall with a chilling friction sound.
'Oh God, if I were given just one more chance...'
Eleanor glared intently at Valdemar and Claude, who were sitting in the VIP section and mocking her.
Bloodshot eyes appeared.
'This is Castillo, built with my blood and sweat. I lament my arrogance in letting those parasitic scoundrels devour this family.'
Suddenly.
Just before the guillotine blade touched her neck, with a chilling, piercing sound, Eleanor etched the image of Liliana shedding tears of blood into her mind and made a vow as if screaming.
'If I am given even a single chance again... I will cut off the breath of those pieces of trash with my own hands. And I will definitely rescue that child who cried for me from this pit of hell.'
***
"...Gasp!"
Eleanor lifted her upper body, exhaling a rough breath. With suffocating pain, she unconsciously clutched her severed neck.
However, what she felt at her fingertips was not sticky blood or a severed cut, but smooth, warm skin.
“This... what?”
She looked around with confused eyes. It was not a damp, smelly dungeon. A canopy bed covered in the finest silk, floor-to-ceiling windows pouring in dazzling morning sunlight, and the familiar scent of lily of the valley tickling her nose.
This was Eleanor's own bedroom at the Duke of Castillo's mansion. Barely managing to compose her trembling legs, she got out of bed and approached the large full-length mirror as if entranced.
In the mirror, there was no trace of the old, sick prisoner dying a miserable death on the guillotine. Instead, standing there was the true mistress of Castillo, boasting overwhelming beauty that made it impossible to believe she was forty-two years old.
Her silver hair, which seemed to draw long strands of cool moonlight, flowed down abundantly and elegantly to her ankles. As the shattered mana core was fully restored and powerful mana swirled around her entire body, her flawless, pale, and alluring skin shone like porcelain.
In particular, her eyes, deeper and redder than blood, were so arrogant and beautiful that just meeting them sent shivers down one's spine.
It was a perfect figure, as if the dazzling peak of her twenties had been preserved exactly as it was, a sight that even the traces of time dared not approach.
"This is... my old self."
The finger that had had its fingernail pulled out had also returned to its smooth state.
Above all, she felt an overwhelming flow of mana boiling up from deep within her lower abdomen.
Her mana core, which had been completely destroyed by being suppressed by the imperial wizards in prison, was beating perfectly—no, more vigorously than ever before.
Her gaze turned to the silver calendar placed on the desk.
[September 12, 418 Imperial Year]
Eleanor's red eyes trembled slightly.
September 418.
There is no way she would forget this date.
It was exactly one month before the arranged marriage between the only son, Claude, and Liliana, the daughter of the fallen Count Werner family.
The moment she realized that the 'one and only chance' she had so desperately longed for had been given to her like a miracle.
A maniacal laugh burst from between Eleanor's lips.
"Ha... Hahahaha!"
The laughter soon turned into a chilling murderous intent.
At the sound of her laughter, the air in the Duke's inner room sank to a freezing cold. Her eyes in the mirror were vividly red, like the blood seen at the guillotine.
"Valdemar, Claude."
Ruminating on names that made her nauseous just to say out loud, Eleanor smiled coldly at her reflection in the mirror.
"Now it is your turn to ascend the guillotine."
She pulled the bell rope on the bedside table roughly without hesitation.
It was the sound of the curtain rising on a revenge drama.
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