Death Of Smaug

Three years after my death, my wife’s first love was hanging onto life by a thread, and only my system could save him. To force me to show up, she cut off my father’s medical payments. My sick mother was forced to beg her out in the summer heat until she collapsed. She even threw my beloved little sister into a bonfire to be eaten up by the flames. As she waited for me to show up, apologize to her, and use the system to save her first love, my sister finally stopped hiding the truth. “He died three years ago! Three years ago, he traded his life so you would survive that car crash!”

My husband, an Army regimental commander, was killed in action. Before his body was even cold, I didn't hesitate. I filed for his death certificate and notified the Army, the Social Security Administration, and our bank. Then, three days later—on the very day his twin brother married his childhood sweetheart—I moved out, changed the locks, and remarried quietly at the courthouse, taking my son and the full line-of-duty death benefits with me. To everyone else, I was heartless. Cold. I let them curse me. I just looked into my “brother-in-law's” bloodshot eyes and felt a quiet, cruel satisfaction. Only I knew the truth. In my last life, I discovered the body sent home wasn't my husband's at all—it was his identical twin brother's. I ran to confront him, but by chance I overheard him and my mother-in-law whispering. "Mom, Sarah is strong. And we have our son. She'll be okay. The benefits will take care of her. But Amy has waited for my brother all these years. If she finds out he's dead, she might do something drastic." Their words struck me like lightning. I tried to expose them, but my husband knocked me out. He told everyone grief had driven me insane. He locked me in the garage apartment and, with cold detachment, married his sweetheart. And when that woman complained my son was too loud, my husband slipped sleeping pills into our boy's juice—right as my crying child was coming to look for me. My son never woke up. The day they buried him hastily, I ended my life in the garage, utterly broken. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day they delivered my brother-in-law's body to our home.

My husband's childhood sweetheart is a fake heiress. She and I are abducted at the same time. But when my husband, a doctor, arrives at the scene of the abduction with a medical team, he chooses to save her first. My legs have been broken, and I struggle to stay afloat in the ocean. I'm on the brink of death, and I beg him to save me and the child in my belly. He merely looks at me. Before leaving, he almost generously helps me call 911. Then, he says, "It's disgusting that you're lying about being pregnant just to save yourself. I've repaid you for saving my life—come to the hospital later today to sign the divorce papers." After listening to his words, I remove the hearing aid from my right ear with a trembling hand.

Six years after donating my heart to my wife, she destroyed the last of my family. Over those six years, she ended my mother’s treatment, letting her die slowly in agony. She deliberately caused a car accident that shattered my father’s spine, forcing him to watch my mother die while trapped in a paralyzed body. Even our daughter was not spared—locked away in a pitch-black basement, she starved to death alone. She did all of this for one reason: to force me—the heartless, faithless man she believed I was—to reveal myself. But during those six years, the love I once had for her turned into boundless hatred. I refused to let my soul dissipate. I stayed—waiting for the day she would learn the truth, and collapse under the weight of her regret.

My younger sister and I were born twins, yet from the very beginning, our parents had zero fondness for me. My sister was the family's good-luck charm, while I was hailed as the harbinger of misfortune. I was blamed for every calamity, while she got all the credit for every blessing. Even after my death, I heard them say, "If we had abandoned her at birth, or even ended her life then, none of this would have happened." I had once tried desperately to win their approval, only to be met with cold indifference. When I finally secured a coveted civil service post, they celebrated me for the first time in my life. I naively believed that I had been acknowledged at last. But then, they said, "Give your job to your sister. She needs it more." At that moment, something inside me completely died. I tried so hard to cling to the hard-won proof that I was not the family's misfortune, yet even that slipped through my grasp. In the end, I lost everything, even the life they had never once cherished.

When the college admission notice arrived, I suddenly developed a high fever and was bedridden. My sister encountered a kidnapping on her way to help me collect the notice, and her life was uncertain. My parents hated me deeply. After tearing up my admission notice, they forced me to give up my studies and work in a factory. Later, I experienced a kidnapping as well. After narrowly escaping, I hid in an abandoned factory and sent them a message for help. My dad called me and shouted at me without restraint, “Lena, are you even human? How could you play such a joke on us on Jessica's memorial day!” “Do you have any idea how much your mom and I wished it had been you who died back then?” In my last moments before death, their insults echoed in my ears. I was tortured and killed, turned into a monster, and my body was thrown into a stinking ditch for three full days. Even my father, the most experienced forensic expert, couldn’t recognize me. When my sister returned home with the guy she eloped with years ago, my dad had just restored my appearance through technology. They knelt before my decaying corpse and cried until they fainted.

My sister was the golden child, the pride of our family, but she had a rare blood disorder that required treatments costing thousands every month. To keep her alive, I became her personal blood donor, working nonstop to pay for her care and delivering food all day and night. But one day, she nearly died from hemorrhaging after trying to abort a pregnancy. That’s when I learned the child she was carrying belonged to my boyfriend. When I confronted him, he didn’t even flinch. Instead, he dragged me to the operating table himself. “You were born to be her blood bank. Dying for her? It’s the best thing you’ll ever do.” I was left there, bleeding out, my life slipping away with every drop. But as death closed in, something changed. The people who once hoped I’d disappear—the ones who used me, betrayed me—they all began to unravel, losing their insanity.

Hubert Parker and I had been together since our teenage years. We went from innocent first love to planning a lifetime together. But a week before our wedding, he died in a sudden accident. I cried until I nearly passed out, only to see strange messages flashing before my eyes. [Can someone please tell the poor female lead he’s not really dead?] [Hubert’s secret lover ran away after hearing about his wedding. He faked his death that very night and flew overseas to chase her. The female lead’s crying by his grave while the mistress is crying in his bed. This is killing me!] [What a pity. When he finally came back, she knew nothing and still married him with a smile…] Half a month later, news spread across Ashford that I was engaged to the heir of one of the city’s most powerful families. One of Hubert’s closest friends confronted me in disbelief. “It hasn’t even been that long since Hubert passed, and you’ve already found someone new?” “He’s gone. I can’t spend the rest of my life in mourning, can I?”

My family has always considered me a harbinger of misfortune. It's all because I can see a countdown to my relatives' deaths. I tell them when my grandfather, father, and mother will die. It all comes true due to various accidents. My three brothers hate me to the core because they think I cursed my parents and grandfather. My mother actually dies after giving birth to my younger sister, but my brothers dote on her to no end. They say she's their lucky star because everything goes well for the family after she's born. But didn't Mom die while giving birth to her? On my 18th birthday, I see my death countdown when I look at myself in the mirror. I buy an urn I like and prepare a meal. I want to have one last meal with my brothers, but none of them show up even when the timer hits zero…

To save the merfolk from slaughter, I seduced the vampire lord himself-Lazarus. He still loved me after all. For three days and three nights, he drowned himself in my body, unwilling to let me out of his arms for even a second. I roused from the haze of fleeting bliss, only to have a searing, corrosive liquid poured mercilessly over my head. "You with eternal healing can taste the sting of agony？" "Yet your trivial suffering pales in comparison to the loss of my kin you brought upon me. It is nothing at all!" "This is merely the beginning. Refuse to reveal where my parents lie hidden, and you shall never break free from this castle." He was convinced that I alone had destroyed everything he held dear. Holding the entire merfolk’s lives hostage, he confined me within the castle. Time and again, he tore open my chest by force, wrenching out my pearl of the mer, feeding its essence to Isolde to mend her frail flesh. He condemned me to sleepless nights, forcing me to cleanse the filth he left behind. Barefoot, I was made to dance the mermaid’s lament upon razor-sharp silver blades, writhing in pain to lull Isolde into slumber. Later, Isolde feigned a pregnancy. Driven by false tenderness for her, Lazarus took to slicing chunks of my immortal mermaid flesh with cold blades, brewing them into nourishing potions for her. Hatred for me burned deep in his bones, yet whenever I was on the brink of death, he would still force his own blood down my throat to keep me alive. "You presume too much on my lingering love for you, choosing silence over the truth, do you not? Aurora… tell me, what became of my parents?" I endured in silence, bearing witness to his love torn between hatred and longing. Soon, I would no longer need to guard that fatal secret. For a mermaid who dwells on land for three years shall wither and perish, severed from the sea that gives her life. Only three days remained until my final breath.