Fantasy

She was born on a cursed night, abandoned at the gates of a dying citadel with nothing but a broken pendant and a black mark burned into her chest like a brand from heaven itself. For thirteen years, the girl with no name dug spirit stones from the earth while nobles crushed her beneath their boots and called her property. They took everything. Her name. Her freedom. Her right to bleed without permission. They forgot one thing. Even the forsaken have teeth. Beneath a collapsed forbidden cave, Amaya finds something the heavens buried on purpose. An ancient corpse. A forgotten throne. A cultivation scripture so cursed even the gods refused to claim it. The Ashen Heaven Scripture does not reward talent or noble blood. It feeds on suffering. On hatred. On every scar they carved into her body and every scream they forced her to swallow. She was the perfect vessel. Now the slave girl climbs. Not for justice. Not for mercy. Not even for freedom. She climbs because every cultivator who ever looked at her like she was nothing will one day look up at the sky and realize the darkness descending is her. The heavens cast her away. She will return the favor.

She has been killed six times. Always by the same hands. Always by the men fated to love her. Across six lifetimes and five shattered worlds, she dies the same death — not by strangers, not by enemies, but by the one soul the universe itself bound to hers. The Emotionless Emperor kills her on palace marble. The Strongest Under Heaven beheads her at a cliff's edge. The Star Emperor pierces her with starlight in a collapsing galaxy. The King of the Dead strangles her while weeping. The Dragon Monarch crushes her in hands that were meant to hold her. And in her sixth life, broken beyond grief, she simply stops breathing on her own. She wakes before the God of Destiny — and learns the truth that destroyed everything. The God grants her one final life. One world where all five powers exist. One chance to choose differently. She enters her seventh life with no intention of choosing anything — except survival. She is eighteen, razor-sharp, and carrying six lifetimes of grief behind serene eyes. When The Iron Sovereign, The Heavenly Saint, The Celestial Emperor, The Eclipse Pontiff, and The Crimson Dragon King all look at her across the same room for the first time, she already knows their faces from her nightmares. She doesn't run. She plans. But the universe has its own agenda. And the five men who murdered her across time are starting to remember. The question was never whether they would love her again. The question is whether love — and the people carrying it — can survive what it cost before.

In the middle of a small yet tidy room, Aurora lay fast asleep. Her pale skin, as well as her beautiful face, would immediately make one address her as Sleeping Beauty. It was ever so befitting of her because she actually answered the name of the fairytale character. The only odd thing in this picture-perfect tale was the way Aurora was restlessly writhing on the bed already downed in cold sweat. She seemed to be having a nightmare as her arms flailed aimlessly, and she groaned continuously. Her beautiful face was morphed into a frown as tears escaped from beneath her kids and trickled down the sides of her face. She was indeed a sorry figure, which was a far cry from the fairytale we all knew. Soon, her body froze before she jolted awake in a sitting position. She panted like she had just run a marathon, and her eyes searched the room frantically, looking but not seeing. Her eyes were dazed and unfocused as she seemed to not be mentally present. She soon regained her breath but kept staring at a blank wall facing her bed. She stayed in that position for what seemed like hours but was actually minutes. Ring! Ring! The alarm clock on her bedside drawer blared continuously, disturbing the eerie silence that had engulfed the room ever since Aurora woke up. That seemed to do the trick of snapping her out of her haze and reverie as she jolted, and her eyes finally cleared up. She shook her head and turned to the direction of her bedside drawer before reaching out and hitting the alarm clock. Silence.