**Chapter 1**
“It will be a year at most. I’m afraid, with a body like this…”
The blind physician trailed off, his voice laced with hesitation.
He instinctively braced himself, already imagining the storm that would follow.
First would come the demand—*“Can you take responsibility for what you just said?”*—then the inevitable outburst, someone grabbing him by the collar and screaming at him to fix it, *no matter what*.
It wasn’t the first time. He’d seen it dozens of times—nobles too highborn to accept the frailty of flesh. As he fumbled for the right words, wondering how to reason with this particular patient of status, something unexpected happened.
The wrist he had gently held for the examination slipped from his grasp.
There was no trembling fury, no grief-stricken limpness—just a composed and deliberate movement.
And at that moment, he knew he had misjudged her.
“I see. That will be all. You may go.”
The woman’s voice was cold and level, issuing dismissal with unsettling clarity.
It wasn’t what one expected from someone who’d just been handed a death sentence.
But the physician, who had spent his life tending to the sick and dying, recognized that voice.
That calm, that stillness.
It was the voice of someone who had already accepted death.
“…I’ll prescribe something for the pain. If it lasts more than two hours even after taking it, return to me. I’ll give you something stronger.”
“What a waste of effort. You might as well have brought them all from the start.”
A dry, almost amused breath escaped her lips.
The woman found his cautious tactics amusing.
“Very well. Do as you please. But remember—anything you’ve learned here stays here.”
Permission was granted.
That meant he could see her again—at least once more.
No, he couldn’t save her.
But he could make sure the time she had left wasn’t spent in agony.
That, he believed, was the duty of a healer.
“Escort him to his carriage. Quietly. Make sure no one sees.”
At her order, a maid stepped forward and took his hand.
“I—I’ll show you the way.”
Her fingers trembled faintly.
The poor girl was clearly shaken by what she’d just heard.
She must not have known the extent of her lady’s condition.
How much pain had her mistress hidden?
How alone had she been through it all?
The physician clicked his tongue silently, pitying the girl who smiled with an emptiness that ran deep.
But he said nothing.
A woman of her standing would never want anyone’s pity.
—
“Haah…”
An hour had passed since the diagnosis, and Lysithea Aster pressed her fingers to her brow with a weary sigh.
She had long known something was wrong.
Ever since she’d suffered a violent fever at sixteen, it was as if her body had broken apart inside.
Her strength had waned, illness had become frequent, and she’d been forced to give up the things she once loved.
The life she had so desperately tried to prove worthy of began to fall away piece by piece.
For years, her family physician had insisted that it was merely fatigue, some vague weakness in her constitution—nothing more.
And for two long years, she’d swallowed every tonic handed to her and endured.
Then, six days ago, she’d collapsed.
Coughed up blood. Lost consciousness.
The commotion from her maid, frantic with worry, had led to the summoning of a renowned physician.
A blind man, they said. Brilliant despite his infirmity.
And he had told her she had a year left to live.
A single year.
The clarity of that number sent a shiver through her.
It was uncanny—like someone had read a secret written only she should have known.
Of course, he must have been a true genius.
Which is why she hadn’t scoffed at his attempts to sugarcoat things.
She let him speak, even smiled at his efforts to downplay it.
A physician of his caliber might at least lessen the pain.
But as she heard the sentence pronounced, Lysithea never once entertained the idea of surviving.
She never hoped for a way to live.
Because the ending—*her* ending—was already written.
That was how this world worked.
It was a terribly *familiar* kind of story.
A world where magic existed—born from the stars themselves, drawn from the constellations that guided each mage.
A world where the male protagonist was, of course, a powerful magician.
He had it all: striking looks, peerless magical ability, and the legacy of one of the three ducal houses.
Tragedy? Naturally—he was an orphan, having lost both parents in a mysterious accident.
A noble fiancée arranged through political convenience? Check.
And, just like every tale of this kind, he would one day meet *her*.
The true female protagonist.
A kind, beautiful girl who saves him in a moment of crisis—her life force draining as she channels magic she shouldn’t possess.
A girl from a fallen barony, scraping by in poverty.
Touched by her sincerity, the male lead would bring her into his household and treat her like a queen.
The fiancée would grow jealous and try to sabotage them.
Through trials and misunderstandings, the protagonists would fall in love.
The jealous fiancée would ultimately destroy herself.
That tired, worn-out fairytale?
Lysithea Aster was the fiancée.
The villainess.
She had known the truth since she was sixteen.
The fever she’d suffered that year had brought with it a dream—vivid and precise—of a book she had never read but somehow remembered in detail.
The characters, the world, even the names—they were all unmistakably real.
Her real.
And she was supposed to die at nineteen.
At first, she fought it.
Refused to accept it.
She tried to change her fate.
To defy the ending.
But every time she did, the story pushed back.
The dreams—visions—always came true.
“No… this time will be different,” she’d tell herself.
And each time, she was wrong.
Hope had turned to poison.
Once she let it go, life became easier.
But one detail she hadn’t seen coming—her death wasn’t the consequence of her greed or scheming.
It was simply written that way.
Terminal illness.
*A villainess with no future.*
No need for the story to elaborate on something so trivial.
Lysithea scoffed, collapsing onto her table, her body pulsing with pain like needles piercing her skull and heart.
This world wanted her dead.
Everything was moving forward just as the story demanded.
No one would mourn the villain’s end.
Suddenly, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed through the hall.
The door burst open, and Mari rushed in, breathless and pale.
“M-my lady! Are you in pain? Where—where does it hurt?”
Her eyes were swollen and red, her voice thick from crying.
She must have overheard the diagnosis.
“The painkillers. Bring me some water too.”
Lysithea forced herself upright and leaned against the chair.
Mari, hands trembling, fetched the medicine and helped her drink.
As the potion dulled the worst of the pain, Mari wiped her mistress’s face and hair with a cool cloth.
Lysithea, feeling slightly calmer, spoke softly.
“What did you hear that frightened you so badly?”
She already had a good guess.
And sure enough, Mari hesitated.
But when Lysithea didn’t press, the girl eventually gave in.
“Th-the young lord Spencer… He encountered a beast last night. A terrifying one.”
“I see. He’s alive, I assume?”
“They say he is. B-but…”
“It’s all right. Go on.”
“They say… the woman who saved him has been taken into the Spencer estate.”
Mari blurted the last part like a secret she was afraid to say aloud.
Lysithea slowly opened her eyes, her golden irises gleaming with strange light.
“Lillian Rose.”
Mari flinched in surprise.
“H-how do you know that name? D-do you know her?”
She hadn’t. Not until now. Not until fate had revealed her.
Mari tilted her head in confusion. Had her lady planted the girl there somehow?
“Who knows?”
Lysithea neither confirmed nor denied it.
Lillian Rose.
*The* heroine of the story.
“Mari,” she said quietly, “if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?”
This world had taken even tomorrow away from her.
“My lady…”
Mari’s eyes welled up again.
“Wouldn’t it be silly to suddenly become kind just because I’m dying?”
Regret and redemption were for protagonists.
Not villains.
“If I’m going to die anyway, I’ll just keep living the way I always have.”
Selfishly. Recklessly.
Just as the villainess was meant to.
