His Vengeance, My Deliverance

For eight lifetimes, I endured Julian Blackwood' s contempt, believing I could "rehabilitate" him and redeem my system-granted freedom, my student debt gone, my mother's cancer cured.

In my eighth attempt, I mistakenly fell in love and became pregnant, only for him to force a brutal miscarriage, branding me a "vessel of filth" before drowning me.

A system glitch prevented my usual reset, leaving me a ghost witnessing Julian confess to a hologram of his dead fiancée, Eleanor Vance.

"Just one more time," he whispered to her, "I only need to kill her one more time."

My mission was a lie: I was "the filth," his target for a relentless, repeating revenge across nine lives, the tenth meant to "reset the world" for him.

He wasn't a man to save; he was a monster.

The profound injustice and betrayal of realizing my entire existence had been a meticulously planned, endless torment ignited a cold fury within me.

My suffering was merely an instrument of his personal vendetta, not a path to rehabilitation.

Then, the world corrupted.

"Reset Initiated. Final Loop Engaged."

I gasped awake at Julian's engagement party, sent back further than ever before.

This wasn' t another chance to heal him-it was my final, terrifying loop to finally escape the monster who' d orchestrated my nine lives of hell.

I was done playing his game.

This was my ninth life. My ninth attempt to save Julian Blackwood.

The system' s objective was clear: "Rehabilitate Target: Julian Blackwood."

The reward was just as clear: my student debt wiped clean, and my mother' s terminal cancer cured.

So I tried. For eight lifetimes, I tried.

I endured his coldness, his contempt, his fanatical obsession with "purity." I told myself it was a shell, a defense mechanism built around a wounded soul. I thought I could heal him.

In my eighth life, I thought I' d finally succeeded. He let me close. He even smiled. For a fleeting moment, I felt the warmth of a normal life. I fell in love. I got pregnant.

That was my biggest mistake.

"You are a vessel of filth," he whispered, his voice as sterile as the medical room he' d built in his penthouse. "This... transgression... must be cleansed."

He forced the miscarriage himself. I remember the cold instruments and his colder eyes. He had the embryonic tissue cryogenically frozen. A memento, he called it. A monument to my failure.

Then he drowned me in his sensory deprivation tank, the one he used for his "purification" rituals. The saltwater filled my lungs. Darkness took me.

I expected the reset. The familiar, disorienting lurch back to day one.

But this time, it was different.

[System Glitch Detected. Reset Delayed.]

The robotic voice echoed in the void. I was a ghost, a disembodied presence floating in the penthouse I had just died in. I saw my own body, pale and still in the isolation tank.

Julian didn' t even look at it. He walked to a wall that slid open with a hiss, revealing a vault. He stepped inside. I drifted after him, pulled by a force I couldn' t explain.

The vault wasn't minimalist like the rest of his home. It was a shrine. Her clothes hung in glass cases. Her letters were framed on the walls. And in the center, a life-sized hologram of a woman with sad, beautiful eyes glowed in the dark.

Eleanor Vance. His dead fiancée.

Julian reached out, his hand trembling as he caressed the hologram' s cheek. His cold facade shattered, replaced by an expression of agonizing love.

"Eleanor," he whispered, his voice breaking. "Just one more time. I only need to kill her one more time."

My non-existent heart stopped.

"She remembers, you know," he continued, speaking to the hologram as if she were alive. "Every time, she comes back. But I remember too. I remember all nine. This next one, the tenth, will be the final one. It will be enough to reset the world. To reset it back to the day before the party. Before you left me."

He looked at the hologram, his face contorted with a hatred so profound it was terrifying.

"It was her fault, my love. She drugged me. You saw us, and you thought... you thought I betrayed you. But I never did. She is the filth that ruined us. And I will erase her. Then you' ll come back to me. You' ll be real again."

The world around me warped. It wasn't trauma I was meant to heal. It was vengeance. I was the target of his endless, repeating revenge. The mission was a lie.

He wasn't a man to be saved. He was a monster to be escaped.

[System Reset Initiated. Final Loop Engaged.]

The world dissolved into static.

I woke up with a gasp, the feel of champagne bubbles on my tongue. The air was thick with expensive perfume and the low murmur of high-society chatter. I was at the engagement party. Julian and Eleanor' s engagement party.

The system had never sent me back this far.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I knew what was coming. I saw her across the room, Eleanor, looking like a tragic porcelain doll in her white dress. Her eyes found mine, filled with a pain that was all too familiar to me now.

Then she looked at Julian, who stood beside me, his hand resting possessively on my lower back.

"Julian?" Eleanor' s voice was a fragile whisper. She took a step, then another, her eyes locked on his hand on my body.

Julian didn' t move. He just watched her, a flicker of something cold and calculating in his eyes.

Eleanor' s face crumpled. She stumbled back, knocking over a tower of champagne flutes. The crash silenced the room. She snatched a large shard of broken glass from the floor and held it to her wrist.

"Eleanor, no!"

This time, Julian moved. But not toward her. Not at first.

He shoved me, hard. I stumbled sideways into a waiter, sending a tray of drinks crashing to the floor. The cold liquid and sharp glass bit into my skin.

Then he rushed to Eleanor' s side.

"My only love," he cried, his voice ringing with panic and devotion. He carefully took the glass from her hand, cradling her as if she were the most precious thing in the world.

The guests gasped, their eyes turning from the dramatic scene to me, the disheveled, drink-soaked girl on the floor.

Julian turned his head, and his eyes met mine over Eleanor' s shoulder. They were filled with icy triumph.

He held his weeping fiancée close and pointed a shaking finger at me.

"Her! It was her! She' s a slut, a gold-digger! She drugged me, trying to trap me!"

The accusation hung in the air, thick and poisonous. Whispers erupted. "Disgusting." "From the working class, you know." "What did she expect?"

Eleanor sobbed in his arms, playing her part perfectly. Julian comforted her, all while his eyes burned into me, a silent promise of what was to come. He gestured to two burly security guards.

"Get her out of my sight."

They hauled me to my feet. My arms screamed in protest. As they dragged me away, my bare legs scraping against the broken glass on the floor, Julian leaned in close, his breath hot against my ear.

"I know you always come back, Chloe," he whispered, his voice a venomous caress. "But this time will be different. This will be the last time."

He straightened up and spoke to the guards, his voice loud enough for the nearest guests to hear.

"Take her to a back room. Have some fun with her. And make sure she can' t carry anyone' s child ever again."

The guards grinned, their grips tightening on my arms.

They dragged me toward a service door. The pain from the glass, the humiliation, the raw, brutal truth of his hatred-it all crashed over me. But as they shoved me into the dark, foul-smelling room, something inside me didn't break.

It went quiet.

The pain from nine deaths flooded my senses. Drowning. Freezing. The agony of a forced miscarriage. It all converged into a single, clarifying point of light.

This was futile. This was hell. And I was done.

As the first guard' s hands tore at my dress, I closed my eyes and spoke to the only power that mattered in this world.

"System. I quit. I' m abandoning the mission."

A cold, mechanical voice answered in my mind, a sound no one else could hear.

[Request Confirmed. Mission Abandoned. Subject Chloe will be extracted from Target World in 15 days.]