I transmigrated into a dark romance novel with a single mission: capture the heart of Alistair Vane, the city’s most reclusive, sanctimonious billionaire. He was cruel, numb, cold-blooded, and untouchable. And he killed me exactly nine times. The first time, he flayed me alive, tanning my skin to bind his personal bible. The second time, he cut me open to remove the unborn child, turning the fetal skull into a sacrificial chalice. The third time, he carved my flesh into "purified" relics, crushed my 206 bones into dust, and scattered them over the Rockies for the eagles to feast on. ... Every time I died, the world reset, and my progress bar dropped back to zero. I crawled over broken glass to pray for him until my knees were ruined. I suffered seventy miscarriages in a single year. When he called me "filthy," I ate mud for three years just to prove my penitence. But he still killed me. It wasn't until the ninth attempt, when my soul was already riddled with holes, that I realized the truth. Alistair Vane didn't have a heart. I begged the System to end the mission, but it was undergoing an update and couldn't respond. However, the glitch delayed the reset. Floating as a ghost, I watched him gently caress the memorial photo of his dead fiancée, Seraphina. His eyes held a tenderness I had never seen directed at me. "Be patient, my angel. Just one more time. Once I kill that wretch again, we can go back to the moment before you took your own life." "If she hadn't drugged me, you never would have walked in on us." "That was supposed to be my wedding, but it became your funeral." The truth hit me like a bullet. He wasn't affected by the reset. He remembered everything. He wasn't a stone I couldn't warm up. He was a man who had hated me to the bone since the moment Seraphina died. My mission had failed from the very start. My spirit followed Alistair toward a heavy oak door covered in Latin verses. What I saw inside stopped my spectral heart. The room was filled with silicone casts of Seraphina’s lower body, arranged in neat, obsessive rows. Alistair, the man who preached abstinence and cold detachment for nine lifetimes, picked up one of the molds and kissed it with feverish devotion. He looked more pious than he ever did in church. Then, stripping off his clothes, he began to use the mold like a man possessed. I watched, suffocating in shock. For nine lifetimes, except for the first time when I used drugs, he had refused to touch a woman. In the fourth loop, when I lost control and kissed him, he felt so defiled that he poured boiling oil over himself to "cleanse" his skin. That was the only time the world reset because the target died. Since then, I never dared to touch him. But now? He was groaning, sweating, losing his mind over a piece of silicone. I looked at his ecstatic face, then at my own ghostly hands—hands that had been bleached white from scrubbing his floors with harsh chemicals. The irony was crushing. It wasn't about piety. He just thought I was dirty. Suddenly, the System came back online. [Host death detected. Initiating reset.] 1 In a blur, I was back in the center of the wedding hall. Alistair was holding the ring, about to put it on my finger. The reset point had jumped forward again. Seraphina stormed onto the stage, tears streaming down her face, a knife pressed to her wrist. "Alistair, are you really going to marry her?" Alistair’s eyes darkened. He reacted instantly, shoving me hard. I crashed into the champagne tower. Shards of crystal embedded themselves into my back. Alcohol seeped into the open wounds. Every breath was agony. But Alistair didn’t even glance at me. He rushed toward Seraphina, grabbing the blade with his bare hand, tears in his eyes. "Angel, don't do this!" He... was crying? For nine lifetimes, I thought his emotions reset with the world. I endured his cruelty because I thought I could fix him. If the System hadn't lagged, I never would have known he was faking it all. "The wedding is off," he announced coldly, holding Seraphina close. I staggered to my feet. "What?" His face twisted into a mask of disgust. "Elara, did you really think drugging me and crawling into my bed like a whore would force me to marry you?" The guests gasped. "Oh my god, she looks so innocent, but she's trash." Seraphina sobbed into his chest. "Alistair, when I heard you two that night... I couldn't take it..." He wiped her tears with infinite gentleness, then turned that gaze onto me like a weapon. "Your cheap tricks make me sick." He grabbed my wrist and dragged me across the broken glass. "You think I don't know? Every single time, you..." He stopped himself abruptly. My pupils dilated. I stared at him. "Every single time... what?" Say it. Admit you know everything. But he just released me, letting me tumble down the marble stairs. Blood from my forehead blinded me. He stood above me, looking like a vengeful god. "Stop trying to seduce me. I will always despise a slut like you." The pain was blinding. Flashes of my nine deaths played like a slideshow. The searing heat of being flayed. The hollow agony of being cut open. The sharp pecking of eagles eating my bones. The System seemed to malfunction, dumping the sensory pain of all nine past lives onto me at once. Meanwhile, he kissed Seraphina, not looking back once. The guests surrounded me, spitting on the floor near my face. "Home-wrecker." "Deserved it." Suddenly, a group of hotel security guards rushed out. At his subtle signal, they began to tear at my dress. I heard his whispered command to the head guard: "After you're done with her, use a champagne bottle to ruin her insides. Make sure she can never carry a bastard child." Lying in the wreckage, I laughed. "Alistair Vane, you're a hell of an actor..." He looked back, his eyes cold. "What did you say?" I wiped the blood from my lip. "I said... I hope you two rot in hell together." Internally, I screamed at the System. "I forfeit the mission." [Host has forfeited. Extraction from this world will occur in 15 days.] 2 It was a stormy night when the guards finally threw me out the back door of the hotel. My body was broken. Blood wouldn't stop running down my legs. My heels had snapped, so I walked barefoot on the asphalt. I looked up and saw Alistair’s bodyguard in the shadows, his phone pointed at me. "Don't block the camera. Mr. Vane wants to watch the livestream." The bodyguard smirked. I straightened my spine as much as I could and limped to a convenience store. Counting the change in my pocket, I had just enough for a roll of bandages. The cashier looked at my bruised face and sneered. "Aren't you that desperate girl who drugged Mr. Vane?" I kept my head down. The TV behind the counter was looping the wedding chaos. SHOCKING: Billionaire exposes bride's drug scandal at altar! The screen cut to a close-up of Seraphina weeping in Alistair’s arms. The cashier turned up the volume. "Look at that necklace on Miss Seraphina. It's made from the ashes of Alistair's own finger bone. That's true love!" Ashes... bone... I took the bandages, my hands shaking. In the fifth loop, he had burned me alive to make "relics." Phantom pain shot through my skeleton. I ran out into the rain, realizing I had nowhere to go. Alistair had seized all my assets, including my small apartment. The rain intensified. I found a dry spot under an overpass and curled up in a discarded cardboard box. My fever spiked. In the haze, I saw the ghost of my sixth life, bleeding out right here on this pavement. I saw the third life, where homeless men attacked me in this exact spot. Every memory overlapped. Hunger gnawed at my stomach. I stumbled toward a nearby dumpster. I found an unopened sandwich, but before I could grab it, a stray dog lunged, sinking its teeth into my arm. I cried out, but stifled it quickly. The dog let go. The wound was deep. Just then, three men approached. "Are you Elara?" The leader held up a phone. Alistair’s cold voice rang out from the speaker: "Do whatever you want. The money will be wired when you're done." "Mr. Vane said we could have some fun," the man grinned, grabbing my hair. "He said you're durable." I struggled. "Get off me!" But I was too weak. A fist to the stomach. A blow to the face. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I curled into a ball, instinctively trying to protect my back—my back that had been flayed in the first life. Ribs cracked. Just as blackness began to take me, sirens wailed in the distance. The thugs scattered, kicking me one last time for good measure. I lay in the mud, letting the rain wash the filth away. At dawn, a street sweeper found me. "Another junkie found in the trash." Then, hurried footsteps. "Yes, Mr. Vane. We found her." It was his assistant. I heard Alistair’s voice on the phone. "Is she alive?" I opened one swollen eye. The sweeper whispered, "Is that the girl from the news? The one who tried to off herself?" Silence on the other end, then the sound of glass shattering. "Suicide? Impossible! She..." His voice cut off. She what? She can't die? I looked at the grey sky and smirked. You think you can still control the narrative, Alistair? Keep dreaming. 3 I woke up shivering uncontrollably. I was locked in a walk-in freezer set to -4°F. My wounds had been bandaged, but the cold made them ache deep in the bone. The room had been set up like a chapel. In the center was a desk made of ice. I trembled, remembering the seventh life. He had bled me dry in a chapel to use my blood as ink. "Copy the Bible. Kneel." Alistair stood at the door, his voice colder than the air. He remembered everything, yet he conveniently forgot that I had absorbed snake venom for him in a previous timeline—venom that flared up when exposed to cold. "And if I say... I can't?" He sneered. "I thought you loved kneeling for forgiveness?" I laughed bitterly. "Since I met you, I have never prayed to a god." That was the last timeline. I had kneeled for eighty-one days to pray for his health. My words seemed to glitch him. A flicker of panic crossed his eyes. "You said it yourself. You'd endure anything for me. Forgotten so soon?" "Kneel for another eighty-one days. Prove you won't harass Seraphina again." Seraphina again. In the first timeline, before she died, he didn't even look at her. He called her a boring, clingy stalker. He publicly declared me the love of his life. But once she died, she became a saint. The cold venom activated. It felt like thousands of ants eating my marrow. The scabs on my knees split open. Blood stained the ice. I passed out.
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