"Rebirth"
Moonlight spilled through the window, cold and clear, painting familiar contours on the bedchamber she thought she'd never see again. Everything was achingly recognizable—yet foreign. She had died. That much she knew. A betrayal written in the cruel script of fate, from the gilded heights of the palace to the exhausted surrender of her last breath. All of it, gone like a nightmare.
And yet—
Here she was.
"A second chance?"
The whisper barely left her lips. Her fingers rose to trace her cheek—the skin still smooth, but the faint redness at the corners of her eyes seemed to hold the ghost of past tears. A tremor ran through her. This wasn’t a dream. She had returned to the day before her death, before the betrayals, before the wounds.
That night, snow had fallen beyond the palace walls, the wind howling like a dirge. She remembered the fear, the despair. The lethal plot unfolding in the shadows. The Crown Prince’s icy ruthlessness. Every fracture of trust, every shard of heartbreak. Now, she stood here again, as if time itself had unraveled to grant her this moment.
Her fingers clenched the edge of the quilt. A slow, steadying breath filled her lungs, but the emotion rising in her chest defied words.
This was her reckoning.
"If I live this life again, I will not repeat my mistakes." The vow seared into her bones.
Every path ahead would be treacherous. Every choice would ripple into the future. But the true test was this: Could she release the past? Could she face herself—not as the woman who had been broken, but as the one who would now wield her own fate?
She rose and moved to the window, gazing at the distant snowscape. The answer had already taken root.
No more hesitation. No more surrender.
"This time," she murmured to the night, "I will not be the sacrifice. This time, the threads of destiny belong to me."
And in her eyes—a spark, sharp and unyielding.
ns216.73.216.174da2
and then Add to home screen.