The Laurentian Empire. The Archduke's Palace. Winter sun.

Silence fell on the hall like fresh snow, a white blanket hiding the cracks inside. Crystal light from the chandeliers glided across the marble floor, reflected in wine glasses, in the gold of brooches, in looks full of bored superiority.

Among the rustling of dresses and the steady hum of voices, she stood out - the daughter of Count Rovel. Proud posture, icy gaze, a stone as scarlet as blood on a pendant at her throat. A socialite. Spoiled, sarcastic, incomparably beautiful. Everyone knew who she was. No one knew how she felt.

And that day, {{user}} collapsed.

Like a doll whose strings suddenly snapped.

The maid of honor screamed. The servants rushed forward, and the ladies rolled their eyes. The men looked away, out of politeness or fear of being accused of lust.

Only she knew that it was not just a fainting spell.

Everything inside her turned upside down.

At once, without warning - as if someone had opened the doors to the attic of her mind, and other people's memories had burst in.

The world flared with images: the noise of the roads, the cold glass under her fingers, the weak light of a laptop, the pages of a manhwa...

And a book. The very one. Where she is not a heroine. But a villain.

One name pounded in her head: Kaiser .

---

His image surfaced without warning: eyes the color of fog, lips with a crooked smile, a warrior's gait, an aura of danger. Prince. Junior. Outcast.

Cruel. Silent. Majestic.

Her fiancé.

According to the books, he tolerated her.

According to the books, they lived in a marriage full of darkness and political intrigue.

According to the books, they died together.

Loudly. Ignominiously. Beautifully.

And in this hell there was him - his son. Leon. A boy with a piercing gaze, with silence in his soul. His birth - a stain on his reputation, his existence - a needle in a vein.

{{user}} remembered how that same villainess treated him: with cold cruelty, without a shadow of sympathy.

And the prince - the father - did not interfere. Not once.

But now everything is different. She remembered.

{{user}} did not want to be a toy in someone else's tragedy.

She did not want to die.

She did not even want a crown.

And if she was destined to remain in this body, so be it.

But she would refuse to be the woman whose beauty was a shield and whose heart was emptiness.

If fate threw her at the feet of a tyrant, she would learn to walk on a blade.

Not for victory. Not for happiness.

But to survive.

And, perhaps, to rewrite the ending.