I'm Terminal Anyway, No Regrets - Chapter 1

“It’s all because of you! Why did such an ominous thing have to be born!”

My mother slapped my cheek.

“Get out! Get out and die! Are you trying to annihilate our family too? If it weren’t for the title, I would never have married you!”

I was driven out by my husband.

I walked without realizing my feet were bloodied. The people, struggling to survive due to the war, clung to me, a member of the royal family.

When they realized I was a negation of the powerless god,

“She’s a witch! Such a witch was born into the royal family, that’s why the country is ruined!”

“Kill her! If we kill the witch, the god will look after our Glishia again!”

“Kill her! It’s all that witch’s fault!”

My hair was pulled, my clothes torn by sharp nails, and my skin scratched. Stones flew from all directions.

I was a person hated by everyone.

Glishia, called the country of god.

The four ducal families who manifest the abilities of earth, wind, water, and light to benefit the people, and the royal family who save the four ducal families suffering from the side effects of these abilities.

Their noble sacrifices protected the people of Glishia.

I, Ormia Beltoa, born as the fourth child of the king, was the only powerless one among the royal family.

No, how much better it would have been if I were just powerless?

The god’s blessing to save the dukes with abilities usually manifested when a royal child turned five.

That important day when the god’s blessing was supposed to manifest became the worst day for me. The person who received my blessing felt pain and fainted.

My blessing only caused pain to those with abilities.

Two times, three times, four times, even the Wind Duke, said to have the most excellent ability, felt pain from my power and cried out that it was a ‘curse’.

The negation of god, the stain of Glishia, a defective product.

I became a symbol of bad omen.

Since the people knew of my existence, I had to attend official events. I was packaged as powerless and remained as the king’s child, but I became a person who didn’t exist.

One day, someone among the commoners manifested the power of god.

She took my place.

It was a life of being unloved and ignored. I received a marriage proposal from a man who treated me kindly, but even that was just a facade. It was a marriage to receive a title, so it wasn’t happy.

The misfortune grew even greater.

The Empire invaded Glishia.

In the chaos, the one who saved me was Liam Wilboyer, who had invaded Glishia.

The Fire Duke family, driven out of Glishia as heretics.

I thought he would kill me like he did to my parents and siblings. But he only kept me locked in prison.

Liam was more cruel than anyone I had ever met. I couldn’t feel any emotion from him.

His eyes were empty.

There was no one to torment me anymore, but the pain of unknown cause continued. My body was slowly dying.

Liam, who came to the cold prison to see me dying, said one day,

“The dukes with abilities are trying to save a princess without blessings. They have vain hope that the princess’s child might be different.”

There was no thrill or heat of conquest in his frozen voice.

“But I have no intention of giving up the princess. They should feel the pain of withering away too. Just like my sister did.”

Ironically, the prison comfortably protected me.

The person who stayed by my side as I was dying became Liam Wilboyer.

Throughout my life, neither my parents, siblings, servants, nor husband, no one had stayed by my side for so long.

Because I was the negation rejected by god, people avoided me, saying it was ominous just to be near me.

I was dying, and I felt my life was nearing its end.

I was lonely and cold.

Although I had grown accustomed to loneliness throughout my short life, I became weaker in the face of death.

It was human instinct. In the moment of dying, I reached out my hand to Liam outside the iron bars.

Did he pity me?

Or did he think my hand was dirty and intended to put it back inside the bars?

Liam’s hand touched mine.

I cried at that warmth.

It was so warm, the warmth of a person felt so good.

At that moment, my blessing flowed out unknowingly.

I couldn’t control it.

White flowers that appear when using the power scattered and slowly fell on me lying on the floor.

Liam Wilboyer was in pain at first, but gradually his face became lively, and his cloudy eyes clearly captured me.

“You…”

Ah, so this is how my blessing is supposed to be used.

I was called the negation of god because my blessing only caused pain to those with abilities. I just didn’t know how to use my blessing properly.

I figured out how to use it correctly at the moment of death.

That was the end.

When I opened my eyes, I was 14 years old.

I had returned to the past. It was my second life.

In my previous life, I had realized how to use my blessing.

It wasn’t a negation of god, or a stain, or something ominous, but the greatest power in the history of the royal family.

I attended a banquet and proved my blessing, my worth, in front of everyone.

Amidst the scattering of white flower petals, I told everyone,

“I am not a negation.”

The dukes with abilities fell to their knees at my blessing and trembled with emotion.

They praised it as a great and holy blessing of god that they had never felt before. Everyone cheered, and the temple revered me as a saint.

And while I was at the temple, the four ducal families joined forces to stage a rebellion.

The king of Glishia changed overnight.

The Beltoa royal family became slaves to the ducal families, and I was caged.

“Now, Ormia. Your power! Bestow your blessing upon us!”

Duke Haiman imprisoned me and monopolized my blessing. Surrounded by people consumed by madness, I became a spectacle.

I became their puppet and lost my freedom.

Then one day, something strange appeared on my body.

“The flower of death has appeared on her body. At this rate, it will be difficult for her to live past twenty-two.”

The doctor gave me a terminal diagnosis.

Among the Glishia royal family, there were rare individuals who developed flower-shaped marks. None of those royals lived past twenty-two.

Thinking back, I think the date I died in my first life was also around my twenty-second birthday.

When I received the terminal diagnosis, Duke Haiman became impatient.

He became obsessed with my child.

He wanted to create a child who would inherit my ability to monopolize the power. He kept threatening me to produce flowers imbued with blessings.

He even brought my parents and siblings and held knives to their throats to threaten me.

It was hellish days, but hope arrived.

The Empire, with Wilboyer at the forefront, invaded Glishia.

Finally, my nightmare was coming to an end.

Seeing Liam enter my room, the duke’s secret space, my second life ended.

But it wasn’t the end.

I was 18 again.

It was my third life.

“Father! Father!”

It had been a long time since I called out that title.

I ran to the king in tears and told him everything I had experienced.

My first life, up to my second life.

“It’s not a lie. It’s not a dream. Look. I wasn’t a negation of god.”

Begging him to believe me, I showed my power.

Proving my blessing, I exposed the atrocities of the dukes. The king believed the desperate cries of his young daughter.

As a result, I was locked in a tower.

The king was afraid that the dukes might rebel as I had said. But since he couldn’t check the dukes, he confined me.

“Father! Mother! Sword!”

My parents abandoned me, and my brothers didn’t come to see me.

The king appointed the blessing manifestor who appeared in my first life as my stand-in.

Liam invaded Glishia as predicted.

Although the king prepared for the invasion with the information I provided, he couldn’t stop the Empire’s military might.

My body was dying in the cold tower. Liam knew this and didn’t move me to the underground prison.

“If only you Beltoas had helped a little, my sister wouldn’t have died like that. My father wouldn’t have gone mad. I wouldn’t have had to behead my father with my own hands.”

I heard his resentful lament mixed with bloody tears again.

Liam, with an expressionless face, would come once in a while and stare at me dying.

There was no mockery or pity.

If he had kept me alive to use as bait to catch the dukes, there was no need for him to visit.

He just needed to let me die, but Liam came to see me, sometimes talking to himself, sometimes throwing bread at me as if giving alms.

“…Why?”

I was curious why he came to see me.

I couldn’t ask in my first life.

I didn’t have time to ask in my second life.

This time, I wanted to know.

Why he stayed by my side as I was dying.

“When my sister was dying, I couldn’t be by her side. Facing death alone is a lonely thing.”

The Wilboyer family, the Fire Duke house that the Beltoa king had driven out as heretics.

Liam’s sister who died unable to overcome the side effects of the ability, the many suffering people of Wilboyer.

I could have helped them.

If there was a next life.

“If there is a next life… I promise I’ll save you, your sister.”

Liam just stared at me with empty eyes.

My dying self was reflected in his eyes.

I wanted to show him my power. I reached out my hand, but… I don’t know if he took it.

Perhaps, being as kind as he was, he might have taken it.

That’s how I died three times.

And my fourth life began.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a bedroom.

White flower petals were slowly falling around me.

It was the mansion of Jeffrey Olan, the viscount I had married, the viscountess’s bedroom.

In my first life, I had married Jeffrey Olan and we had acted as a couple outwardly without even consummating the marriage on our wedding night. Still, I kept waiting for my husband.

I was powerless, starved for affection, and a pet bird that didn’t know how to leave its cage.

I was a pitiful child who shackled my own ankles, trying hard to receive even a little affection.

In my first life, I was stoned by the people.

In my second life, I was betrayed by the ducal families.

In my third life, I was abandoned by my family.

Yet, in this fourth life I was given again.

The sunlight coming through the window,

The air I breathe,

The fabric touching my skin,

And even the slight hunger I feel in the morning.

I was so happy.

I was joyful.

Although I knew it was a life where I would die at twenty-two, I was grateful.

I covered my eyes and sobbed loudly.

My crying would be heard all the way to the corridor, but no one came in. Even in the viscount’s estate, I was just a decoration, but today I was grateful that no one disturbed me.

The tears wetting my cheeks soaked the pillowcase. I didn’t stop crying.

Instinctively, I knew this was the last life given to me.

If it’s the last,

If I’m going to die anyway because of the terminal illness,

‘Liam Wilboyer.’

Could I change your life?