Tears streamed down her face as she shook her head. She couldn't go with him.
Every part of her longed to say yes, but her oath held her back. Leaving with him might have eased her loneliness—but it would only hasten her discovery. Worse, her presence would put him in danger.
Anyone who harbored a witch—especially a heretic like her—would be branded a traitor and punished, perhaps executed.
And just like that, he was gone.
He chose his family—his parents and siblings—over her. As painful as it was, she couldn't fault him for it. She understood.
Areum returned to her usual rhythm of life, but the loneliness became more excruciating than ever before. Someone once said ignorance is bliss—and it's true. Once you've tasted companionship, solitude becomes unbearable.
Despite the hollowness she felt, life had to move forward.
Ten years passed. One quiet morning, her cottage was surrounded by priests and royal knights. They shouted threats, demanding that she surrender and receive God's punishment.
Among the priests stood a young man who looked familiar—then she recognized him. It was the boy she had saved years ago. He now wore the robe of a high-ranking priest.
He stood stiffly, eyes avoiding hers.
So this was who he had become. Not the boy she remembered—but a man cloaked in robes and betrayal. He had joined the church, her enemy.
She could see his mana signature swirling in a myriad of colors—guilt, yes, but far stronger than that was greed. Exposing her wasn't an act of desperation—it was a move to climb the ranks within the church.
Her heart constricted, as if an invisible hand of steel was squeezing it mercilessly. Her teacher had been right all along: never trust anyone. Not even when you can see their emotions—because emotions can change.
Areum was a powerful witch, but not powerful enough to defeat hundreds of royal knights and priests at once. She could astral project, but that wouldn't save her. Her astral body was always tethered to her physical form by an energetic cord. If they destroyed her physical body, she would still die.
So she surrendered.
They bound her and carried her to the royal capital in a cage. For two weeks, they denied her food, giving her just enough water to survive. If not for her ability to absorb atmospheric mana, she might have died in the first week. Her body, still human, needs food as fuel. Mana dulled the hunger, but didn't erase it.
Once they reached the capital, she was dragged into the city square and tied to a wooden stake. Beneath her feet lay dry straw. As they secured her, a massive, angry crowd hurled rocks and rotten food, cursing her, calling her evil.
They poured flammable oils on her —and then they lit the fire.
The pain was indescribable—but mercifully brief. Once her nerve endings were melted away by the flame, sensation faded. What remained was not the agony of fire, but the agony of unfairness and betrayal. She looked out at the laughing, gloating faces of the crowd. They pointed and shouted that she deserved it.
Then, she spotted a familiar face.
It was the boy she had loved.
He looked at her in horror—probably because her melting, burning flesh made it hard to look at—then turned his back and walked away.
Watching his retreating figure, she swore to herself: never again would she trust anyone.
Darkness swallowed her—and that life ended.
When she opened her eyes again, she realized she had been reborn—this time as the daughter of a wealthy family in modern-day Seoul, South Korea.
Unlike in her first life, the mana concentration in this world was much lower—just enough for beings here to survive, but not thrive to their fullest potential. The mining of gems, minerals, and fossil fuels was even worse here, disrupting ecosystems and damaging plant and animal life. Every day, the motherly Earth called on her to help repair the grid.
But Areum couldn't bring herself to do it.
Every time she tried to astral project, her astral body was instantly pulled back into her physical form. Likewise, when she tried to use the Sight to repair the energy grid, her vision would become unstable, making it impossible to complete her task.
Her previous life had left her body so deeply traumatized that it tensed up every time she tried to use her powers. A relaxed, resting-state body was essential—tension disrupted her mana energetic frequency, making it impossible to reach the higher mana vibrations required to channel her abilities.
Areum understood her body was trying to protect her in its own misguided way—resisting her powers out of fear that using them would once again lead to a violent, agonizing death. But her body didn't understand that in this world, people were no longer burned alive for being different.
Still, even if public execution was no longer a threat, being institutionalized for her abilities wasn't something she wanted to experience.
Areum didn't know how to heal, or how long it would take to do so.
Exhausted and disillusioned, she stopped tuning into the Earth and began ignoring its call. For once, she wanted to live like everyone else—even if it meant breaking her oath. Her previous life had been painful despite honoring the Earth's calling, and there was no promise that answering it again would spare her from suffering.
She wanted to know what it felt like to belong—she was too tired of hiding and being shunned.
More importantly, she was no longer an orphan in this life. She had a set of parents—her true, blood-related parents. Although she still couldn't trust them, or anyone else, she wanted to try blending in and not give them a reason to make her life difficult, especially given their societal and political influence.
Years passed, and she soon discovered that living according to the expectations of others and blending in with the norms was not as fulfilling as she had hoped.
In this life, Areum lived a life carved by structure, control, and towering expectations.
Her family was wealthy, but unloving. Her parents worked constantly and were rarely around. Technically, they were a family, but they spoke so rarely that every exchange felt clinical—and never warm.
Every conversation came down to pointing out her flaws and what they wanted her to fix.
From the moment she could form words, her parents instilled one expectation: she had no right to come in second to anyone. Be obedient, serve the family's interests, and never embarrass them in public. Failure meant she was selfish, ungrateful, and undeserving of the life she'd been given.
She wasn't born to be herself—she was born to play a role written by someone else.
At the time, Areum was too naive and inexperienced. She didn't know what a healthy parent-child relationship looked like. She only knew one thing: she wanted to get along and maintain peace within the household. To blend in—after all, wasn't this how everyone else was living?
So she worked. She obeyed. She excelled.
Just as they wanted—she never failed to rank first.
She placed first in school. First in every competition. At fifteen, she graduated from high school early and entered a top-tier business university—just as her parents demanded.
However, it was never enough. Her parents always wanted more, never fully satisfied. They made it seem like it was her duty to toil away in exhaustion every day, and that not conforming meant she was selfish and ungrateful.
By this point, Areum became aware that not everyone in this world lived that way. Some parents were capable of unconditional love. Hers were not.
And making friends was more complicated than she thought.
All her "friends" from high society wore masks when talking to her—polite on the surface, but jealous or emotionally numb underneath. She empathized with them because their parents had forced them to present only the socially accepted version of themselves, hiding away anything authentic.
Over time, they either lost their sense of identity—numbing themselves day after day, doing only what was expected—or developed narcissistic façades to mask the shame instilled by parents who taught them that authenticity was selfish or wrong.
Behind closed doors, many fell into various forms of addiction or sought freedom through reckless and taboo escapism, all to maintain the illusion of control. Areum couldn't pretend not to notice—both her parents were unfaithful. Her father was addicted to drugs, and her mother was an alcoholic.
Over time, Areum learned that hiding her true self made it easier to be accepted—but that kind of acceptance came at a cost. No one ever truly saw her.
She had traded authenticity to avoid loneliness—but in doing so, she became even lonelier. Surrounded by people, yet utterly unseen. Worse, she felt more suffocated than she had in her previous life. At least back then, she could do what she wanted, when she wanted.
One day, at her university graduation, she collapsed while walking across the stage to receive her diploma, causing chaos among her teachers, peers, and the audience.
At the hospital, the doctor diagnosed her with late-stage colon cancer.
Areum wasn't surprised. The oath had warned that turning away from the Earth's call would bring a painful life. She had sensed something would eventually happen—if anything, it came later than expected. Whether it was the consequence of the oath or the toll of years spent overworking herself to meet other's expectations, it felt like the natural price she had to pay.
From that day on, Areum spent every day in the hospital—with nothing official to do. For the first time, she felt free, despite the random, excruciating abdominal pain. Aside from the first week, her parents never visited. She overheard from the nurses that her parents had argued with the doctors, trying to bribe them into administering medications not yet proven safe.
They just wanted their human-sized robot repaired—so she could be useful again.
Thankfully, the doctors were ethical enough to refuse, to her parents' dismay. After a few weeks, they stopped causing a ruckus and never set foot in the hospital again, as if to say they had given up on her entirely.
To cope with the boredom, Areum turned to fiction.
She read story after story—until one day she came across a romance novel called All For My Dearest. It stood out immediately because it featured a character with the same name as hers.
Then one day, after a wave of sudden pain in her abdomen, her legs gave out. She slipped, hit her head on the sharp corner of a table—and passed away. The same way the original Han Areum in All For My Dearest had died.
And just like that, she awoke in the body of Han Areum—the character fated to die in the novel's first chapter.