As the carriage slowed down, she opened the curtain to see a woman screaming as blood gushed from her wrist.

“I told you! I’m going to die! I really said I would die!”

The man standing across from her was so shocked he could only stare at her blankly.

“How dare you leave me like this? You said we’d get married when you became manager. I’ve been waiting for four years!”

As the woman raised her knife to slash her arm again, the bystanders rushed in to intervene.

“Miss, calm down!”

“Someone stop the bleeding!”

People gathered around and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

Meanwhile, the man disappeared into the crowd.

“Wow. What a terrible guy. Leaving his lover whom he made wait for 4 years…”

Luni’s voice trailed off, her focus on the scene.

The reason being Ermedillin’s expression, who hadn’t blinked once, was now deathly pale.

Caught off guard by Ermedillin’s sudden change, Pellio and Luni exchanged glances but neither had an answer.

“Your Highness! What’s the matter? Snap out of it!”

Even when Luni gently shook her shoulder, Ermedillin’s frozen body showed no sign of thawing.

How much time had passed?

Finally, Ermedillin’s lips moved.

“Kyungsoo… Park Kyungsoo…”

“!!”

The enigmatic word that Ermedillin cried out every night in her sleep.

Luni had always wondered what it meant; that word now came out of Ermedillin’s mouth.

The moment that name she had only uttered in her dreams was spoken, her dammed emotions began to overflow.

They had been together for 7 years.

The time they knew each other was practically a lifetime.

Park Kyungsoo, the boyfriend of Hyeyoung, was more like family than a lover.
The day he abandoned her, Hyeyoung didn’t just end a longterm relationship.

That day, she lost her family.

The sorrow and loss were so great that she couldn’t fully grasp her emotions at that moment.

And just when she had barely talked herself out of suicide, death came knocking.

When she opened her eyes, it was an entirely different world.

A plain orphan woman had become an empress overnight.

To transform from Yoon Hyeyoung to Ermedillin, and to avoid a predetermined miserable fate, she pushed her emotions aside.

No, while struggling to adapt, she might have unknowingly turned away from her feelings.

But those emotions weren’t the type to simply disappear just because she put them off or ignored them.

Caught up in the situation before her, she failed to realize, but they certainly existed within Hyeyoung.

Seeing a woman gripping her bleeding wrist, Ermedillin remembered herself standing by the Han River that day.

The biting wind of the late winter by the Han River couldn’t affect her.

There was no time to feel any other pain, as sorrow, hatred, emptiness, and memories of twenty years flowed through a large hole in her heart.

“Ugh, uh… uh…”

The accumulated emotions burst all at once, leading to respiratory distress.

Ermedillin had always experienced sorrow from her childhood, so she didn’t even know she harbored such intense emotions.

“Your Majesty!”

Suddenly, unable to breathe, Ermedillin had Rooni screaming for the carriage to move.

“Call the priest right now!”

Pellio also shouted urgently at his servants.

“Uh, uh… uh…”

Ermedillin, who was gasping for air on the floor of the carriage, finally started to cry.

On the carriage floor made of purple velvet, dark spots spread from her tears.

“Your Majesty! Breathe, breathe! A priest will be here soon!”

Rooni was sobbing and patting Ermedillin’s back, but it wouldn’t easily bring back her breath.

Pellio could only tremble, as there was nothing he could do for her.

Soon, the priest arrived.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

Pellio flung open the carriage door and pushed the priest inside.

The priest examined Ermedillin for a moment, then shook his head.

“She is not sick. I have infused her with divine power to stabilize her mind, but Her Majesty must calm herself.”

“Damn it!”

At that moment, a curse flew out from Pellio, known for his composure.

“Out… outside…”

Ermedillin seemed to try to say something.

“Outside?”

“Out… outside… her…”

Pellio immediately realized that Ermedillin was referring to the woman bleeding outside the carriage.

Unable to understand Ermedillin, a frustrated Rooni frowned, as Pellio ran out to call another priest.

“Check on this woman!”

The priest rushed over, applied a tourniquet to the woman’s bleeding wrist, and cast a spell for emotional relief.

Ermedillin, who had regained her breath, slowly emerged from the carriage.

Catching Ermedillin’s earnest gaze, Pellio gave a faint smile and nodded.

“Phew. Thank God.”

Finally calmed, Ermedillin slowly walked over to where the woman had collapsed.

The onlookers naturally parted to make way for the noble lady.

Ermedillin finally reached the woman and knelt on the ground, wiping away her stillflowing tears.

The woman didn’t know who the noblelooking person in front of her was, but she began to cry even more at the warm touch on her cheeks.
Ermedillin said nothing to the woman.

The onlookers had expected Ermedillin to either stop crying, get up, or say something, but she remained silent until the end.

She simply continued to stand by the weeping woman’s side.