Introduction

I' d died eight times already, each a brutal end, all thanks to Caroline Hawthorne. Now, I was on my ninth life, cold in a dusty attic room, a flat digital voice repeating its impossible command inside my head: "Secure Caroline Hawthorne's genuine, exclusive romantic devotion."

But this wasn' t just about winning her love; it was about survival itself. This time, the System' s chilling ultimatum echoed with no emotion: "Failure in this iteration will result in permanent dissolution." No more chances.

My tormentor, Caroline, then entered, pregnant with her fiancé Derek' s child, and immediately imposed her latest cruelty: I was demoted to the gardener' s shed, while Derek' s prize-winning show dog got my warm room. She kicked me.

Memories of my past deaths, stark and agonizing, flooded me: freezing in a wine cellar, drowning after being pushed overboard, a shank in prison, botched medical procedures where she watched me bleed out. I' d endured skin grafts from my own thigh because Derek faked an injury, been forced into life-threatening blood transfusions for his "recovery," and suffered public humiliation at her hands. Her blind devotion to Derek was absolute, her cruelty towards me boundless.

I was broken, tired of the endless loop of torture and failure. Why did I have to suffer endless agony for a devotion she clearly didn't deserve, a woman who treated me as less than human? I just wanted it all to end, for oblivion to claim me. My silence became defiance against her rage.

That yearning for freedom, once a desperate wish for death, hardened into something cold and resolute: revenge. If the System demanded her "devotion," or her "permanent removal from the equation," then I would choose freedom. After her last threat-to harm the only person who cared for me-I knew what I had to do. This time, I wouldn't just survive; I would ensure her downfall, and finally, truly break free.