chapter 2
“Gasp!”
Hystia shot awake in a cold sweat, breathing heavily as she frantically touched her neck.
“I-I’m still attached….”
She was relieved to be alive, but only for a moment. Soon, she realized the room felt both unfamiliar and strangely familiar at the same time.
“Wait… this place….”
“Hystia, are you alright?”
The door opened and a woman entered. The moment Hystia saw her, her thoughts froze.
“...Mom?”
“I heard you crying, so I came to check. Did you have a scary dream?”
The approaching figure of her mother felt unbelievably surreal.
She looked far younger and more beautiful than in Hystia’s last memory, and she was holding a newborn baby in her arms.
Seeing the baby’s reddish-brown hair, Hystia unconsciously murmured,
“Elvin?”
“Elvin? But Elvin’s right here.”
Her mother laughed and pointed at a little boy clutching her skirt.
“Ani! Nuna! Ani!”
Elvin stretched out his short little arms and pointed at the baby. Then that child must be the third sibling….
“We decided on her name today. Ani Frost. Isn’t it cute?”
Giggle—
Ani laughed at her mother Anna’s touch. Everything unfolding before Hystia’s eyes felt unreal.
“Oh my, Hystia!”
Anna let out a short scream.
Large tears had begun streaming down Hystia’s cheeks.
“Emergency! Nuna’s crying!”
Declaring it a crisis, Elvin ran noisily around the room. Soon, a man entered.
“What’s going on?”
“Dear, Tia suddenly started crying. I wonder if she’s hurt somewhere….”
“My, let me take a look.”
In the midst of tears clouding her vision and confusion overwhelming her senses, Hystia finally noticed the man touching her forehead with his warm, calloused hand.
“She doesn’t have a fever… but just in case, should we call a doctor?”
“...Dad.”
The man froze.
Then his eyes widened as if he had heard the impossible.
“Tia, what did you just…?”
“Hic… Dad!”
Hystia threw herself into his arms with all her strength and burst into tears like a child.
The man didn’t even have time to rejoice at hearing his stepdaughter call him “Dad” for the first time. All he could do was comfort the crying girl in his arms.
‘This isn’t a dream. There’s no way a dream could feel this… real!’
The horrifying events that had felt like a nightmare now seemed as though they themselves had been the dream.
For twelve long years, Hystia had carried the burden of raising her younger siblings alone. Now, embraced once again by the parents she had missed so desperately, all the fear and grief she had bottled up finally burst free at once.
“Khmm. So, Tia… who am I again?”
“...Why do you keep asking?”
“Because I want to hear it. Could you call me that one more time?”
“...Dad.”
“That’s right. I’m your dad. Thank you for accepting this old man as your father.”
After finally calming down, Hystia blushed at the gentle hand patting her head.
Soon, Anna and Derek left the room with teary eyes, saying they would prepare breakfast. Even through the door, Hystia could tell how overjoyed Derek was that she had finally accepted him as her father.
“...Come to think of it, I really never called him Dad before.”
The man she had called father was Derek Frost, Baron Frost, and Anna’s second husband.
Her biological father had died in an accident when Hystia was three years old, and when she turned five, Anna remarried Derek.
As a child, Hystia had never been able to accept Derek as her father, even after her mother gave birth to her half-siblings.
As time passed, she gradually came to think of him as family, but by then too much time had gone by for her to call him “Dad.”
The first time she ever called Derek father… was after he died.
“Thinking about it now, I feel sorry for Father.”
In truth, Hystia did not share a single drop of blood with Derek.
Yet Derek willingly registered her as his own daughter and raised her without discrimination. No—in fact, he cherished her even more than his biological children.
Now that she was older, she understood just how difficult that truly was.
“...But how did this happen?”
Hystia looked down at her tiny hands.
They were no longer the rough, scarred hands worn down by years of hardship, but the soft little hands of a child.
She climbed out of bed and walked toward the mirror in the corner of the room.
Reflected in it was tangled wheat-colored hair—lighter than brown but darker than blonde—and bright green eyes reminiscent of a forest.
And what caught her attention most of all—
Instead of the exhausted face of a woman in her thirties, a child with smooth, youthful skin stared back at her.
“...Ani was just born, so I must be eight years old.”
Then had she truly returned to the past?
Perhaps the prayer her sibling whispered in her final moments had reached the heavens.
Whatever the reason, she had returned from that horrific future.
“I’ll never… never live like that again.”
For a brief moment, she basked in the joy of returning to the past. But soon, Hystia’s body trembled.
Her parents had been taken from her by another branch family, and for twelve years she had raised her younger siblings alone.
After enduring all that suffering, she had thought hope would finally come.
Yet instead, she had been killed without warning.
“...We didn’t do it! Then why are you killing us?!”
Thinking of Leonhardt, Hystia furiously pounded her pillow to vent her rage.
Only after letting out her frustration for a long while could she calmly assess the situation.
“To think the Young Duke was alive….”
Leonhardt had supposedly died ten years ago.
But twelve years earlier—when she was eighteen and lost everything—she had fled to another region. After that, she never learned exactly what happened within the Winston Ducal House.
“First, let’s organize this.”
Hystia searched the room for writing supplies.
“This should do.”
Those were the major events.
But Leonhardt had not died. He had survived and gone around taking revenge on the branch families, including hers.
“Then the news of the Young Duke’s death wasn’t an accident either.”
She could roughly guess why he had become entangled in such a thing.
Two years before his life was threatened, Leonhardt had lost his parents in an “accident.”
At the time, he was only eight years old.
A child that young could not lead a ducal house.
According to imperial law, one of the branch families had to be appointed as his guardian.
The guardian would govern the duchy in the Young Duke’s place until he came of age.
What an irresistible position that was.
Even when a mere baron died, greedy relatives fought viciously for inheritance rights—so for a ducal house, there was no need to say more.
“In reality, most of them were consumed by greed.”
The Frost family was also a branch family, so Hystia had attended the Duke and Duchess’s funeral with her father.
She did not remember much because it was so long ago, but one thing remained vivid in her memory:
The swarm of adults surrounding the young duke, who had only recently lost his parents, their eyes burning with ambition.
“And the person appointed as guardian back then was definitely….”
Mallus Humphrey.
Hystia remembered hearing that he had been close to the Duke and Duchess during their lifetime. But perhaps, in truth, he had coveted the ducal house all along.
“...Even Harbor coveted our Frost family. There’s no reason Humphrey wouldn’t.”
The Winston Ducal House had five branch families in total: Humphrey, Harbor, Eldora, Greenwood, and Frost.
Among them, only Humphrey was a count family; the other four were all baron families.
Though they were branch families, the Winston line had very few direct descendants, so all of them were connected through older generations.
“Our Frost family… has the weakest position.”
They governed a small territory in the south, but it was neither prosperous nor known for any remarkable specialty products.
Its only real advantage was that it stood at the entrance to the route leading from the capital to the duchy, meaning there was a steady flow of travelers.
Most people headed for the ducal territory passed through there.
“...We could’ve made decent money from inns and lodging businesses, but in the end, we still went bankrupt.”
There was a reason Harbor had been able to seize the family.
The Frost family had fallen into crushing debt.
Shortly before her parents died, they had invested heavily in a major business venture and been swindled out of everything.
On top of that, several other disasters struck one after another, pushing the family to the brink of ruin.
To resolve the crisis, her parents had gone to seek help from another branch family.
And after leaving on that journey…
“...They never came back.”
At only eighteen years old, Hystia had no ability to solve the family’s problems.
Moreover, she was neither Derek’s biological child nor of noble birth, so the other branch families fiercely debated whether she had any legitimate right to inherit the title.
In the end, they concluded that Hystia was unfit to lead the Frost family. Then rumors spread that the Harbor family might kill not only her, but also her siblings.
So she had fled overnight.
“In the end, all of this was orchestrated by the Harbor family.”
She had discovered the truth later while investigating them through an information guild, driven by thoughts of revenge.
Her parents being scammed, the string of disasters, even their deaths—
All of it had been arranged by the Harbor family.
Hystia viciously crumpled the paper with the Harbor family’s name written on it.
“This time, things will never go your way.”
She had no intention of allowing the same future to repeat itself.
“Then what can I even do right now…?”
It was good that she had been given another chance at life, but what exactly could she accomplish in the body of an eight-year-old child?
Neighhh—
As she pondered deeply, the sound of horses came from outside.
Hystia looked out the window.
“Speak of the devil….”
The man stepping down from the carriage was Victor Harbor.
Baron Harbor—and the very man who had driven them from the Frost family.
The memory of him struggling to suppress his smile at her parents’ funeral made rage surge inside her.
Clenching her fists tightly, Hystia hurried downstairs.
“Oh my, Baron Harbor. What brings you here at this hour?”
“I heard you had a daughter and thought I should offer my congratulations. I wondered whether Baron Frost could even have children, but it seems you managed to have two after all.”
“Hahaha, it’s all thanks to my wife’s blessings. Don’t stand out here—please, come inside.”
The two men exchanged hollow laughter and meaningless pleasantries.
At that moment, Victor—about to enter the house—met eyes with Hystia.
Hystia did not miss the way his eyes narrowed for a brief instant.
“Father!”
“Oh, Tia. Are you feeling better now?”
Hystia descended the stairs and threw herself into Derek’s welcoming embrace. Then she glanced sideways at Victor as though nervous of him.
“This child is your wife’s…?”
“Yes, my wife’s daughter. Hystia, greet Baron Harbor.”
Unlike his gentle smile, Victor’s gaze was razor sharp.
‘He hated hearing me called a Frost.’
To him, a mere commoner pretending to be nobility was intolerable.
To suit Victor’s obsession with noble propriety, Hystia gracefully lifted the hem of her skirt.
“My name is Hystia Frost. It is an honor to meet you, Baron Harbor.”
“...It seems you’ve been taught proper etiquette.”
Though he left the words unspoken, it clearly sounded like he wanted to say, “For someone like you.”
Still, Hystia could see how surprised he was.
“My goodness, Tia. When did you learn to do that?”
She had been so focused on Victor that she forgot about Derek. When Derek looked at her proudly, Hystia darted her eyes around awkwardly.
“Well… I learned from the noble lady who visited before. She said that a lady should at least know the basics.”
“Yes, that’s certainly important. We should hire a proper etiquette teacher for our Tia.”
“Haha….”
“Ahem. Baron Frost, may we head inside now?”
“Ah, yes! Tia, let’s talk more about this later.”
Derek guided Victor toward his office.
Watching them walk away, Hystia slowly wiped the innocent smile from her face.