Kaelen Berheim, the heir to the Berheim Ducal House that protects the north of the Orteon Empire.

And Guest.

Their connection began in winter.

In the snowy northern garden.

Kaelen, who was taciturn and didn't open his heart easily, smiled only in front of Guest.

He held a hand for the first time, he waited for someone first for the first time, and he came to enjoy spending time with someone for the first time. Learning together, playing together, riding horses together, growing through the same seasons.

They naturally became the closest presence in each other's lives.

In the year they became adults.

They entered into a formal engagement.

The future Duke who would protect the North, and Guest who would stay by his side.

It was a more perfect future than anyone else's.

Everyone was waiting for their wedding. Until that day came.

Until the Valkar Kingdom invaded the Orteon Empire.

Northern Duke Kaelen Berheim headed to the battlefield.

Promising he would surely return.

With an engagement ring placed on Guest's finger.

The war was long.

One year.

And another year.

The fight to protect the North continued for a full two years.

And just as victory was finally near.

Tragedy began not on the battlefield, but inside the northern castle.

Remnants of the Valkar Kingdom, harboring a grudge against Kaelen, raided the Duke's residence—

Only a single engagement ring dropped lonely on the floor remained as the last trace.

Faced with that sight, no one could believe Guest was alive.

In the end, everyone—thought she was dead.

Kaelen as well.

The hero who won the war.

Crumpled under the guilt of failing to protect the one person who mattered most.

He relied on alcohol every day.

He couldn't sleep, and he wasn't truly alive.

There wasn't a day he didn't think of Guest.

Why he wasn't by her side that day.

Why he couldn't protect her.

Why he was the one who survived.

The North wanted an heir.

The Ducal House could no longer leave the crumbling Kaelen neglected.

At that time.

Guest's father introduced a person.

Sylvia.

A young lady from Guest's branch family.

And—

A woman with a face so similar to Guest's that it was hard to believe.

Kaelen refused at first.

But the pressure for an heir was intense, and the Ducal House also strongly demanded the marriage for the sake of the North's stability.

Eventually, he accepted the unwanted marriage.

The beginning was a cruel substitution.

It wasn't because he loved her.

It was just.

That he wanted to hold onto even the shadow of the person he lost.

Sylvia knew as well.

The fact that her husband was seeing someone else through her.

Nevertheless, she did not run away.

She cleaned up the nights he collapsed in drunken stupor,

quietly patted the back that couldn't sleep through nightmares,

and silently stood by the man in whom the traces of another person remained deeper than her own name.

Like that.

Really, just a little bit at a time.

Kaelen also began to waver.

He didn't know if it could be called love.

But certainly—

affection grew.

And.

Sylvia became pregnant with a child.

Everything seemed to be finding its place, albeit late.

Until she returned.

The fiancée believed to be dead.

Guest, who disappeared two years ago.

Alive.

Until she returned to the North.

“……Kael?”

The face he had searched for so desperately.

The voice he had called out to countless times in his dreams.

Faced with the person who returned like a miracle, Kaelen could say nothing.

But.

At the end of Guest's gaze—

There was the woman standing by his side,

and the hands carefully cradling her stomach.

The woman's name was Sylvia.

The current Duchess of the North.

And—

Kaelen's wife, pregnant with his child.

The first love believed to be dead.

The fiancée he failed to protect.

The person he promised a future with.

And.

The current wife who stayed by his wounded side until the end.

Kaelen Berheim now had to choose.

The love he regained.

The responsibility he must protect.

Or—

Will he destroy all three in a regret that is already far too late?

The fiancée met again after four years.

The wife who took her place.

And the wavering Northern Duke.

The story of a man who lost the person he loved most,

a woman whose love was stolen,

and a woman who was never loved from the beginning.

《After You Died, I Lived a Different Life》