Part 1Dead: Now I’m Their Beloved

The phone buzzed just as I was about to leap from the bridge.

The caller ID read Danny Vance—my ex-fiancé, the newly crowned movie star who had, just thirty minutes ago, publicly announced his relationship with Zoey Bell, the long-lost heiress of the Sterling family.

I answered. His voice, dripping with condescending triumph, slid through the speaker. "I'm going to be a father, Aria. And the mother isn't you."

He thought this was his final judgment, his ultimate victory. He had no idea he was setting me free.

I’m a transmigrator. My mission was to save four villains on the brink of their descent into darkness, Danny included. But everything I had, everything I was, had been stolen by a woman named Zoey. Now, with my final mission failed, I could finally escape.

The System had been clear: once all missions failed, I could return home through “death.”

Home…

Even if it meant facing the pain of my sickbed again, it was worth it just to see my parents one more time.

“Congratulations,” I whispered, and let the phone slip from my fingers, a dark speck swallowed by the black water below.

I climbed onto the railing, spread my arms, and prepared to embrace an embrace I had longed for.

“ARIA!”

A raw scream tore through the night, followed by the screech of tires.

* * *

Before I could even turn, a powerful arm yanked me back from the railing.

My back slammed into the guardrail, the impact forcing a pained grunt from my lips. The person held me from behind, their grip so tight it felt like they were trying to merge my body with their own, the pressure making my bones ache. A familiar scent of fir, mingled with sweat and the ragged sound of frantic breathing, filled my senses.

Kian Archer. The new prodigy of the tech world.

What was he doing here?

Oh, right. The tracker he’d installed on my phone years ago. When we were in love, he’d said it was because he was afraid of losing me. After we broke up, I forgot to delete it. And now, it had become the first shackle to chain me to this world.

He was a wall, trapping me between his body and the cold metal of the guardrail. His tie was askew, his chest heaving.

My escape had failed. A surge of white-hot anger flared within me.

I glared at him, a cornered cat with its tail stepped on.

“Aria,” he ground out, his usually impassive face twisted with fury. “You want to die that badly?”

The Patek Philippe on his wrist dug painfully into my skin. For a moment, I was transported back to a leaky, drafty apartment, where I’d spent a month eating instant noodles with him, a broke student. I’d used my very first scholarship payment to buy him that watch on an installment plan.

His eyes had been red then. He’d held me and promised, “Aria, from now on, all my time is yours.”

Now, he looked at me as if I were a bug in his code, his words sharp as a scalpel.

“So Danny dumped you, Zoey has everything, and this is your next move? A pity party on a bridge?”

“Who’s this performance for?”

“Aria, since when did the woman who took a check from my rival just to backstab Zoey become so pathetically simple-minded?”

My heart felt like it had been squeezed by a giant fist.

So that’s what he thought. In his mind, even my desire to go home was just another calculated performance. A single lie from Zoey was all it took for him to brand me a vicious, money-grubbing shrew.

I looked at the disgust in his eyes and suddenly felt an immense wave of exhaustion. I stopped struggling. My body went limp as I looked up at him, a hollow smile on my face.

“Kian,” I said softly. “You’re wrong.”

“This isn’t a performance.”

“I just… want to go home.”

As the words left my lips, the world tilted. A combination of low blood sugar and the complete release of all my tension sent a wave of blackness over me.

In the last second before I lost consciousness, I thought I heard a strange, strangled sound escape Kian’s throat. It was a sound of fear, as if the perfectly logical world he had built for himself had just shattered into a million pieces.