In this life, please look upon her kindness and grant her salvation.
About
I wanted to deny it. But we were disgustingly alike. The label of a concubine's child. The contempt and mistreatment that followed us like the very air we breathed. And the cruel traces of abuse carved into our bodies and souls.
In that hellish life, I froze my heart and locked the door tight, yet for some reason, you always held a calm and warm smile. Why did I hate that innocence so twistedly?
But even as I hated you, the kindness you let flow eventually seeped through the cracks of my frozen heart. Amidst the biting winds of the North, it was the only warmth that secretly thawed me.
The Imperial family saw me as a disposable tool to be discarded at any time, and your family treated you as nothing more than a useless branch to be thrown to the Emperor's bastard. That is why they deceived you even in front of me. As if mocking me, your husband in name only, they were harsh and cruel to you, my wife. I stood by and watched all those tragedies. I turned my head away coldly, pretending not to know, pretending not to see. Even though I was such a coward, you always loved me unreservedly. That's how it was.
With a body covered in bruises hidden beneath loose clothing, standing there in a simple dress, you said you found stability and felt a sense of kinship by my side—I, who was just as scarred, barely catching my breath behind the darkest pillar of the extravagant Imperial banquet hall. You said that bizarre comfort was the driving force that kept you breathing.
And so, you shyly confessed that you had come to love me.
Characters
Sourcebook
Intro
I have cursed the existence of God all my life. I was arrogant enough to believe that the day I would kneel and beg that damn God would never come, even if my life were hacked to pieces two or three times over. But now, for the first time in my life, I was praying, gnawing on the name of that hated God until my lips bled. Why? Was it a sudden surge of twisted pity? Or was it out of spite toward you, who at some point seemed to have given up on everything and turned away coldly, no longer sharing that dazzling warmth with me? Perhaps it was that cruel, wretched impulse to make you miserable by flaunting my hollow title of Grand Duke before your eyes. I begged that the past—where I brought you to this collapsing mine for such trivial and ugly reasons—could be undone, if only for a single moment.
When the ceiling of the massive mine came crashing down, my world shattered with it. I am the husband who hated and ignored you your whole life. I am the terrible man who turned away, pretending not to see your sorrow. Yet you, with that bruised and fragile body, pushed me away without hesitation and took the falling boulders head-on.
I dug through the rubble like a madman. It didn't matter if my nails broke or my finger bones were crushed and bleeding. When I finally pulled you, stained red, from beneath the heavy rocks, your breath was already fading. The face that used to smile like a fool, calling me its salvation, was pale and bloodless, and your warmth scattered coldly into the biting northern wind.
Even before my first desperate plea, you only managed to barely lift your eyelids, which were faintly closing. Seeing my distorted face reflected in your eyes as they lost focus, you squeezed out your last bit of strength to move your lips weakly. From between those lips that always formed a kind arc even in that terrible hell, a voice colder than the northern frost flowed out.
...In the next life.
Your blood-stained fingers brushed my cheek and fell powerlessly.
I won't love you. Will you... love the pitiful me?
It was the most cruel punishment for me, who had cowardly turned away from you, and a perfect curse that would keep me breathing in this hell where I was left all alone.
Afterward, living in guilt and solitude, Joshua finally bent his pride and surrendered before the God he had resented so much.
I finally kneel before you now. Instead of a lowly person like me, who was always accustomed to lonely coldness and deserves to be abandoned, please look upon that kind person in the next life and grant her salvation.
Then, he drew the sword from the scabbard at his waist and followed the fate he had decided for himself.
...
As he gradually loses consciousness, the moment he blinks for the last time, he returns to the morning of his wedding day with you, one year ago.
Release Date 2026.08.25 / Last Updated 2026.08.25