Why Does The Work And The Glory Collector'S Set End That Way?

Lightning rips the sky open—then, darkness. The world shudders. On the edge. Endings taste like ash. Fate. Desire. Two strangers crash into each other as everything falls apart. Autumn Winters: heartbroken, haunted, hungry for something more. A name that doesn't fit her anymore. She runs from the ruins of her past, colliding with him. Bastion. A man with eyes like midnight storms. Dangerous. Beautiful. Not from here. His secrets coil around him, thick as the night. Chaos explodes. The city burns. Time turns lethal. Bastion offers survival—but at what cost? Autumn's trust is shattered glass, and every word he speaks slices deeper. Can she gamble her heart on a stranger when the world is ending? Or will she lose herself in the fire between them? Love is the last risk left. And it's everything.

After my family joined hands to send me to prison for three years, I start learning how to behave myself. I do whatever everyone else tells me to do. The day I'm released from prison, my wife, Regina Johnson, sits in the car and says coldly, "If you ever lay those hands of yours on Ty again, I'll…" Before she can say anything else, I jump out of the car, pick up a brick from the side of the road, and smash my hand into a pulp with it. Regina stares at the bone sticking out and goes pale. When we get back home, Tyler Lowe, my adopted younger brother, ambushes me in the bathroom and scoffs. "So what if you're the biological son of the Lowe family? I can just as easily have you kicked out of the family!" Then, he uses a blade to make a small cut on one of his fingers before crying out in alarm, "If you really hate me, Cal, I'll leave right away! Please don't kill me!" Regina and my older sister, Calista Lowe, enter just in time to witness his display. Shaking with anger, they stomp on my wound with their high heels. "You haven't changed one bit! If anything happens to Ty, I'll make you pay for it with your life!" I nod obediently and march straight to the kitchen, where I jump into the massive meat grinder before turning it on. The blood and bits of flesh spray all over Mom and Dad, who end up walking in right then. Mom lets out a shrill shriek before fainting, while Dad forces himself to remain composed as he turns off the power. At this point, even Regina, my sharp-tongued wife, can't find the words to say anything. She stands frozen, her body trembling. When we're inside the ambulance, Tyler clings to Regina, quivering as he says, "This has nothing to do with me! He jumped into the machine himself. You have to believe me!" It's almost impossible for me to stay conscious through the unbearable pain, but I muster the strength to nod along with him. After failing to win over my family, I'd spent three years in prison. Later on, the system told me that if I showed absolute obedience until the day I died, I would receive massive financial compensation and be transported back to my original world.

After completing my system mission, I give up the massive reward and choose to stay in this world because I have a happy, loving family. My sister, Naomi Sullivan, is a world-renowned genius scientist, and every one of her discoveries bears my name. My mother, Gloria Lynch, heads a financial empire that controls the global economy, and she transfers every share she owns into my name. And my father, Arnold Sullivan, is an action star. He's a legendary screen icon, but he retires to watch me grow up. I'm the golden child everyone envies until Daniel Sullivan, their biological son, shows up at our door. Overnight, their love for me vanishes, and I become the outsider who stole the rightful heir's place in the family. Daniel stages a fall down the stairs, and Dad breaks my ribs to make me pay. I take a single bite of Daniel's leftover cake because I'm starving, but Mom locks me in the basement with an attack dog for three days. Then, she has a gold cake made just to cheer him up. All it takes is one offhand complaint that his chest feels tight, and Naomi removes my heart to give it to him, replacing it with an artificial one. "It's just a heart. You're strong enough to handle it. Daniel needs it more than you do." Naomi stands nearby with a tablet in hand, coldly logging the results. "Don't worry. Artificial heart technology is already well established. The survival rate is excellent in theory. You won't die." After my soul leaves my body, I watch Daniel casually toss my heart into the trash. Then, the long-silent system finally awakens. "Clifford, would you like to take back everything you bestowed upon them in exchange for a chance to be revived? This includes your mother's fortune, your father's extraordinary physical gifts, and your sister's incredible mind."

I was sent to a correctional facility by my family for five years. The first thing I learned there was obedience. If people told me to do one thing, I would never dare do anything else. The day my wife, Casey Anderson, came to pick me up, she stood at the entrance and said coldly, "If you dare say another bad word about Roger, I'll make sure you never speak again." The moment she finished speaking, I turned and ran straight into traffic. When she saw me get thrown by the impact of the car, she nearly lost her footing. At the hospital, my foster brother stood beside my bed with a sinister smile. "So you actually managed to survive. But that's fine. I have plenty of ways to kill you and make sure you never make it home." After saying that, he smashed the bowl of porridge onto the floor, then deliberately fell onto the shattered glass as he cried out loudly, "Bobby, if you hate me that much, I'll leave! Please, just let me go!" My mother and Casey happened to walk in at that exact moment. Casey immediately rushed over to help Roger up. My mother, meanwhile, slapped me hard across the face. "You'll never change, huh? If Roger's hand is ruined because of you and he can't play the piano anymore, I'd rather see you dead in this hospital bed." Obediently, I walked toward the window and jumped. The harsh, sharp-tongued woman who had always been my mother—and Casey as well—went completely pale with fear. I happened to crash onto my father's car. Trembling, he threw open the door and shouted for the medical staff. My consciousness gradually faded. Then, a system suddenly appeared and said, "Congratulations, Host. You have completed ninety-nine tragic storylines. Finish this final one, and you will be able to return to your original world and revive your younger sister."

For three years, I worked for my coworkers for free—designing, covering for their mistakes, cleaning up their messes. They used my work to get promoted, to win awards, even to run side jobs on the sly, and I never took a cent for any of it. Then I single-handedly landed the hardest client project the company had ever taken on and walked away with a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. That was the day everyone lost their minds. The same people who'd leeched off me the hardest led the charge, cornering me at my desk and tearing into me in front of the whole office. "The whole concept for that project was a team effort. What gives you the right to keep the bonus for yourself?" "Your work has always been garbage. That free labor of yours was never worth anything anyway!" Worse, they spent the whole night digging up old grievances, stitching together every minor slip-up they could find, and spreading rumors through the entire company—that I'd stalled projects, that my work was worthless, that I'd tanked the department's numbers. Finally, they gave me an ultimatum. "Either split the entire bonus with the department, or pay us two hundred thousand dollars for our trouble. Take your pick." Even the department manager tried to smooth things over, telling me, "We're all colleagues here. You've already got a big bonus—taking a small loss won't kill you. Don't be so difficult about it." Wonderful. So three years of quietly covering for everyone had just produced a pack of lazy, credit-stealing backstabbers. Since they wanted to gang up on the one person who'd always played fair, fine. I was going to lay out three years of original files, timestamps, and proof of exactly who'd done the work—all of it, all at once. And what none of them knew was that the special project behind my bonus was an AI system built to replace every single one of them.

When Jeremiah Jenner, an academician from a research lab, has bombs strapped to him by a malicious criminal, I know that I can save his life by cutting the right wire. But my husband, Callum Johnson, keeps pinning my hand down with all his might. He tells me that I should wait for his crush, Shirley Gibson, to arrive so that she can save the day for once. This was what happened in my previous life. Thanks to Shirley's mistakes, the timer's countdown decreased from ten minutes all the way down to ten seconds. I was the one who had to shove her away and cut the triggering wire based on my experience. That was how I saved Jeremiah's life. Shirley, on the other hand, was so frightened that she passed out on the spot. She became the laughingstock of the entire squad, which led to her leaving the squad due to depression. Callum didn't say a single word. Instead, he dispatched me to the border as a spy. On the day my mission was supposed to be wrapped up, Callum got in contact with me via a secretive channel. Then, he leaked my coordinates to my enemies on purpose. "Couldn't you just let Shirley play the hero for once? Since you like showing off that much, then you might as well stay as a heroine forever in this place!" The next thing I knew, I felt a bullet piercing through my chest. My enemies had me surrounded immediately before burning me alive, resulting in my death. As I breathed my last breath, I saw Callum embracing Shirley while watching me being licked hungrily by the flames from a long distance away. There was nothing but satisfaction in his eyes. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the scene where the bombs are set to be removed. Slowly, I put down the pliers in my hand. Fine. I won't steal Shirley's thunder this time. I'd like to see how the golden couple can maintain their bombastic, passionate relationship in a place that's about to be blown apart.