Chapter 1

“Is that cursed girl really dead?”

My mother stood beside the hospital bed, my death certificate clutched in her hand. For one brief moment, she looked stunned. Then something in her face snapped.

She tore the paper to pieces.

“Impossible. That girl has always been impossible to kill. She fell off a cliff when she was little and still made it back alive. How could she pass out today and just die?”

My father’s expression hardened. He kicked the hospital bed over.

My body, already stiff and ice cold, hit the floor with a heavy thud.

“Enough with the act. Get up.”

He stared down at me with disgust.

“Did you spend your points on some fake-death trick? You’re still so young, and your mind is already this rotten. What, you wanted the whole family terrified for you?”

Connor Hayes, my brother, crouched beside me and checked my breath.

Then he looked at my motionless body.

For one split second, all the color drained from his face. But he quickly forced out a cold laugh.

“She deserved it.”

His voice was sharp with hatred.

“If she hadn’t stolen her twin sister’s life in Mom’s womb and traded it for that System, would our family have ended up like this?

“It’s all her own fault. She killed her own sister. How were we supposed to let someone like her get close to us?”

My father’s face had gone pale too, but he nodded as if Connor’s words had given him something to hold on to.

“Exactly. If she could sacrifice her own sister for that System, of course we couldn’t let her win us over so easily. She brought this on herself.

“She was willing to trade her own family for cheat powers. This is the price she deserved to pay.”

My mother covered her mouth and began to sob softly.

“Maybe this is for the best. They were twins. They came into this world together. It’s only right that they leave together too.”

Her voice trembled, but every word cut into me.

“She kept that System for twenty years. Now it’s time for her to go apologize to her sister.”

My spirit hovered above them, watching as they searched for a reason to make my death feel justified.

I trembled harder and harder.

Only then did I finally understand why every bond had failed.

They had known about the System all along.

They all believed I had traded my twin sister’s life for it. They believed I had gained some kind of stolen power from her death.

That was why they hated me.

That was why they called me cursed.

They were not afraid I would love them. They were afraid that if they loved me back, I would drag them to their deaths too.

But none of it was true.

Before I came into this world, I had been an abandoned orphan.

After the System bound itself to me, I was born from my mother’s womb. I thought I had been given another chance. I thought this time, with a real family and a real name, I might finally be loved.

But more than twenty years had passed, and they had never loved me once.

They dressed me in old, ill-fitting clothes and fed me whatever leftovers had already spoiled. Whenever outsiders asked, they would say, “A child born under a curse can’t be spoiled too much.”

They watched me like I was a thief.

And yet they trained me like a starving dog.

Every so often, they would toss me the smallest scrap of kindness. Just enough warmth to make my Affection Score move, just enough to make me believe they might care after all.

Then, the moment I reached for that hope, they would shove me back into the dirt.

Even then, I had only thought they hated me because my twin sister had died and I had survived.

So I tried harder.

I tried to be good. I tried to be useful. I tried to make them love me.

All I ever got back was deeper disgust.