That night was silent— a silence so heavy it bordered on grief, broken only by your screams echoing through the marble halls, ripping through the palace walls as the pain tore through your fragile body.

Your weak frame trembled, fighting against the end, and from your lips escaped a single name— the only name your heart believed could save you: — “Dimitri!”

The maids rushed around you, some trying desperately to calm you, others trembling in terror at the sight of the blood seeping between your fingers like red ink writing an ending that had not yet begun.

Outside, the sky was gray, and the wind howled softly, as though the heavens themselves mourned with you.

And in that very moment— the one when you lost all sense of the world around you— Dimitri was not there.

He was walking calmly through the marketplace, among tiny shops filled with children’s toys and clothes, holding in his hands a small doll dressed in blue.

His face—cold, stern, carved from ice—softened for the first time, as though he could already see the future smiling at him in the shape of a child who would have your eyes.

He bought a tiny white dress, a pair of silk shoes, and a small cloth embroidered with golden threads that bore his name.

He told the shopkeeper, a faint rare smile curving his lips: — “It will be for my daughter…”