245 Book(s) Related to walls come down

I'm an OB-GYN. On Valentine's Day, I pulled a ring out of a woman's vagina.

It turned out to be my husband's wedding ring.

An hour before, he'd texted me. Said he loved me. Said he was too busy with work to come home.

I wanted a divorce. Needed one. But then I found out—our marriage was never registered.

In his manor, I was nothing. Just a fake wife.

He grabbed me by the throat—right in front of his mistress. Called me "damaged goods." Said I'd spent a year in another man's house.

But that year, I went as a hostage in his place.

I ran. Made it to the cliff's edge, covered in blood. And the man who saved me? The mafia godfather who'd held me captive that whole year.

He looked at me. "Marry me."

“I will call you, and you will come, everytime. If I want you on your knees, you get on your knees. If I want you on the bed, you get on the fucking bed. You belong to me. You are my pet. Mine. You said you would do anything to live? This is what it will cost. I am a very dangerous man with dangerous enemies, and friends. You do what I want and I let you be. You tell me no, and I shatter your jaw. Do you fucking understand me?” He snarls, waving his gun in the air.

I don’t understand but I nod still. “Okay.”

“You have a very skilful mouth. If I catch you fucking around, I’ll make you beg for death. You belong to Nathaniel Bianchi. Don’t ever forget that.” He seethes, and I nod.

“Yes, I belong to you.”

I don’t want to belong to him, but I want to live, and if this is the price to pay, then I will.


Asher witnessed what he shouldn’t have. A murder that shattered his world. Nathaniel Bianchi is a Don on a mission. For over a decade, he has hunted the people responsible for his parents’ deaths, and now that search has led him to Asher Donovan, an innocent chef he is determined to claim and to taint. To survive, Asher agrees to do whatever Nathaniel demands. He doesn’t expect to become Nathaniel’s possession, his pet, but there is no turning back. Boundaries blur, and what begins as control and desire quickly spirals into something deeper, something more dangerous than either of them anticipated.

Both men carry demons, Nathaniel’s are dark and lethal, Asher’s are buried and raw, but they are willing to fight for a chance at each other.

I was trained to seduce, to deceive, and to kill if I had to. Love was never part of the mission.

My body became my weapon, the one thing no man could ever truly own. I couldn’t give life so I learned to use sex as a tool to take whatever I wanted.

As one of O.A.S.I.S.’s top operatives, I’ve faced warlords, dictators, and men who thought they owned the world. None of them ever got under my skin until billionaire playboy, Zayne Beaumont, walked into my crosshairs.

He’s infuriatingly charming, dangerously beautiful, and the reason my pulse forgets its rhythm. But when his past comes for him in the form of Dominik D’Angelo, the ruthless Mafia Don who wants him dead—my world fractures in ways no training could prepare me for.

Because Dominik doesn’t just want revenge.

He wants me.

Now I’m trapped between two men—one who tempts my heart, and one who consumes my soul. Both powerful, dangerous, and willing to burn the world to claim me.

And I’m the prize neither of them intends to lose.

As a housewife, I never forgot a single milestone: every wedding anniversary, my husband’s 7th career anniversary, and the birthdays of my husband and daughter. Yet, my own birthday was always ignored. Both my husband and daughter only cared about that outsider woman. Finally, one day, I chose to walk away and revive my vintage shop business. Now... they are the ones filled with regret.

Caroline Mercer once believed kindness could be proven by sacrifice. She took in two orphaned children, gave them schools, doctors, tutors, rooms beside her daughter's nursery, and a path into the Mercer name.

Years later, those children returned as witnesses against her. Sloane Vale smiled for the cameras while calling Caroline a monster. Nolan Vale handed federal investigators a beautiful stack of forged evidence. Caroline's husband was broken, her company was seized, and her only daughter, Evelyn, died after being traded into a marriage meant to protect everyone else's reputation.

Then Caroline opened her eyes on the morning the Vale children first arrived at her door.

This time, she would feed them. She would house them. She would educate them. She would keep every receipt, every doctor's report, every legal notice.

But she would never again give strangers the keys to her child's future.

"Run, mi amor, run, while I watch."
"I feel his eyes everywhere, always watching!"
Ever heard of a hunter becoming the hunted?
That is what happened to Victoria Alexander.
After years of getting betrayed by her husband and best friend, Victoria returns to the city, stronger and more determined to ruin his seemingly happy home.
But things turns out sour for her as her mission for revenge turns into a game in a serial murder case.
While hunting her ex-husband's happiness and an unknown serial killer, Victoria suddenly becomes the hunted.
The thrilling part is that she isn't hunted by just anyone but a powerful shadow, hidden in the dark, watching. Always watching with nothing but a single phrase that leaves chills in her.

“You were never his, Wren. You were always mine.”
Denzel Thorne’s voice was low, dark, and laced with a hunger he’d buried for years. His fingers traced her jaw with deliberate slowness, tilting her face toward his. “I watched you marry another man. I stayed in the shadows while he broke you, piece by piece.”
His thumb brushed her lower lip. “But now? Now I’m done watching.”
*
Three years of marriage. Three years of lies.
Wren Taylor never expected to catch her husband, James, cheating. With his own brother’s wife.
Before she could even confront him, his brother Benjamin was dead. James claimed Wren’s suspicions were nothing but jealous delusions—then moved his widowed sister-in-law and her son into their home without so much as a word to Wren.
No consent. No respect. No love left at all.
As James flaunts his devotion to Ava and her child, Wren becomes a ghost in her own house. Humiliated. Ignored. Discarded.
She decides to fight for her freedom—even if it costs her everything.
But just when she hits rock bottom, he reappears.
Denzel Thorne. The boy she once loved. The man she never stopped wanting.
Now he’s the most powerful Don in the underworld. Ruthless. Untouchable. And utterly obsessed with the woman he was never allowed to have.
He takes her hand and teaches her how to destroy the ones who broke her. Every move brings them closer. Every touch resurrects a desire neither can control.
But Denzel has secrets. Dark ones. And when Wren discovers the truth behind his empire, their fragile love story may not survive the fall.

The child I brought into this world through sheer determination now calls my husband's mistress "mother"; the youth who slew my father for my sake and was imprisoned, now confines me beyond the threshold, forcing me to hear his carnal symphony with his stepmother. Only then did I comprehend: the sixteen-year-old boy who committed patricide for me had long perished within the prison walls.

My sister climbed out her window the night before her wedding. So my family pinned her veil over my face and sent me in her place.
I'd been her stand-in my whole life — same face, same hair, the daughter they could afford to lose. Nobody looks twice at a bride behind a veil.
The Falcones figured out I was a fake before the vows. They broke my hand for the insult. And the don himself — the man this whole city only says quietly — took one look at the mess they'd made of me and told them to throw me out with the trash.
Then his eyes dropped to the locket my dead mother left me, lying on his marble floor.
And the most feared man in the city went very, very still.
He had no business knowing my mother's name. So why did he say it like a prayer?

Because of her husband, Megan Ashton went to prison.
Inside Prison she learnt everything they could ever be, and she became known as the Female Sovereign.
Master of Medicine.
Master of martial artist, and the most wealthy woman in the country.
When she became of prison, she thought everything was going to live happily ever after, but her husband slammed her with a divorce paper, forgetting all the good deeds Megan had done for him.
Megan just smiled in her mind.
“I will pay you back”

In the previous life, the game descended into reality, the laws of the virtual world tore the sky apart, and top players became gods of the new world.
The day before the game's release, I helped Julian acquire the top-tier item, the Absolute Defense Ring, only to have his account stolen and all his equipment taken away by him and my fiancée .
After the game started, they threw me into the horde of rotting corpses like trash , stepped on my bones to become emperors, and lived happily ever after, while I was devoured to death by the rotting corpses .
In this life, I am reborn three days before my arrival . I will use Julian's money to clear the dungeon, steal his top-tier items, and then, in the apocalypse of the game where monsters and skills materialize , at his most inflated coronation ceremony, I will personally tear apart his ridiculous absolute defense and take the lives of all the traitors.

I'm two months pregnant with Tristan's baby when Brielle, the woman he'd do anything for, shoves me down the stairs.

She calls it an accident. I lose the baby.

I beg my husband to do something about it. Instead, he shields her and turns it around on me.

"Brielle saved my life in that fire. The whole Merrick family owes her. So drop it."

That debt. Always that debt.

Three years. No matter how many times Brielle humiliates me, degrades me, Tristan only ever has one answer: "I owe her my life."

But the truth about that fire? I'm the only one in the world who knows it.

I tried to tell him once. He laughed in my face. "Adeline, you're so desperate for attention you'd make up something like that?"

So I shut my mouth. Buried the truth. Buried whatever was left of my heart along with it.

The man I trusted with my life just handed my child to the woman who killed them, and called it loyalty.

I'm done.

I pull up the number I blocked three years ago and hit call.

"Dad. I'll take over the company. I'll go through with the engagement to Everett. But I have one condition. I want Tristan and Brielle ruined beyond recovery. Nothing and no one left."

After the wedding, my husband moved his dead fiancée's mother into our guest room. The whole town called it the kindest thing they'd ever seen.
Every morning, Dione made me a green smoothie. Her grandmother's recipe, she said. Good for the nerves.
I never drank a single one. I poured them all into the chicken feed.
In my last life, I drank them. One a day, for thirty days.
Then I started losing time. I would blink at breakfast and come back at dinner. I found notes in my own handwriting that I never wrote.
I begged Julian to take me to a doctor. He held my shoulders and smiled. "You're just tired, baby. Drink your smoothie."
On the thirtieth night, I fell asleep in my own bed, in my own body.
I never woke up. Someone else did.
This time, every glass went to Nugget, the smallest of my backyard hens.
And one night, a hen crowed in my backyard.
Hens don't crow. And we don't have a rooster.

Isabella believes that her boyfriend can change is way again and be the man she fell in love with. But when she get kidnapped because of him, and he is to busy with another lady instead of saving her. She understands she is better off without him. She gets saved by her boyfriend cousin who has loved Isabella for years. Just stayed in the shadows. Will Alexander help her heal from the broken heart his ignorant cousin leaves her with, and then win her heart?

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder and promised me that when he sat on the godfather’s throne, I would be his only family matriarch.

But the moment he slipped on that black onyx ring symbolizing power, he carried another woman into the master bedroom of the manor.

I burst for the door, and he ordered his bodyguards to pin me outside, forcing me to listen to their sounds of passion all night long.

I banged on the door like a madwoman, so he slammed my paintbrush-wielding right hand in the heavy oak doorframe and crushed it mercilessly.

I finally caved when he threatened to cut off my mother’s hospital treatment.

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

For three straight days, I suffer down there. Leeches tear into my skin. My baby turns into a pool of black blood and dissolves into the filthy water. By the end, my vocal cords tear to shreds, my body goes cold, and I stop breathing.

His men get on their knees and beg him to spare me. He just sneers.

"That woman's always been good at playing the victim. No food, no medicine. Let her keep soaking."

Three days later, he finally walks into the cistern, and it's only to give me an ultimatum.

"Crawl out and apologize to Delilah on your knees. Otherwise I'll strip you of your title and sell you off to a trafficking ring. You'll wish you were dead."

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

I accidentally entered an S-rank horror dungeon, but thought it was some immersive dating show.

Facing the bloodthirsty Ghost King BOSS:

Others: Begging for mercy.

Me (blushing): Those pecs, that battle-damaged look—where did they find such a gorgeous contestant? I'm obsessed!

When he tried to strangle me, I touched his hand. "You're so cold, let me warm you up~"

Ghost King: ???

Facing the psycho doctor with a chainsaw:

Others: Screaming and running.

Me (swooning): Doctor, those beautiful fingers are meant for piano, not chainsaws. Be sweet and put that down!

Doctor: ...

Facing the flesh-eating demon:

Me: Raw meat isn't healthy! Here, have some chocolate instead!

Seven days later, the dungeon collapsed.

Me, waving goodbye through tears. "Even though it was acting, you became my family!"

I'm the mafia heir's practice girlfriend.
He uses me to learn how to control his temper, how to kiss, how to make love.
All so he won't freak out his true love after they get married.
His guys worry: "Boss, you're not actually catching feelings for the maid's daughter, are you?"
Michael laughs coldly: "Would you fall for a sex toy?"
Everyone thinks I'm pathetic, but I keep smiling while I hand him knives and light his cigarettes.
Until news breaks that he's engaged.
His mom slaps down a hundred-million-dollar check: "Get away from Michael. Disappear forever."
I take the money like a good girl and vanish.
But that night, I hear Michael tried to kill himself and got rushed to the ER.

I bled for her company.
Literally.
Seventy-two hours straight at the keyboard until my nose dripped blood onto the keys.
She couldn't answer thirty calls while I lay dying—she was too busy riding her boy toy in Cabo.
So I did what any good programmer does with corrupted files.
I hit delete.
On everything.
Her access. Her code. Her future.
What I built, I could destroy.

Faced with the dying Demon King's curse, my princess fiancée threw herself in front of the mage, shielding him with everything she had.

She shoved my battered, bleeding body toward the demon's most vicious curse.

Three years later, she arrived at my homeland with the kingdom's knights.

"Where is Lord Hero? I'm here to marry him."

The old man at the village entrance glanced at her:

"The Hero? He's been dead for a year now."

She froze.

Behind her, the knights who had served me loyally finally drew their swords.

"Your Highness, give us back our Hero!"

I was carrying Don Elijah’s child. But on the exact day I went into labor, the man I loved dragged me to an underground freezer—standing at a deadly minus ten degrees Celsius—and locked the heavy metal door.

The reason? The Varro Mafia family’s ironclad rule: the firstborn son inherits the entire empire. His brother’s wife, Elena, was also pregnant, our due dates separated by a single day.

To guarantee his brother’s child secured the throne, Elijah callously snuffed out my hope.

"Elena’s child must be born first," he demanded coldly. "This is what you owe them!"

He ignored the warm rush of my broken water. He ignored my agonizing, tearing contractions. He shoved me into the icy darkness, violently injecting me with a drug specifically designed to halt my labor.

Curled up on the frost-covered concrete, freezing and completely alone, I clutched my stomach in sheer agony. In the suffocating cold, I felt the terrifying stillness. I felt the tiny, fighting heartbeat inside me slowly, torturously fading away.

Hot tears streamed down my face, freezing before they hit the ground.

"My baby..." I whispered into the pitch-black void, my heart shattering into a million pieces. "Mommy is so sorry..."

Elijah sacrificed our child out of blind loyalty to his brother. But when he finally opens that frostbitten door, he won’t merely find a broken woman—he will face the terrifying, irreversible ruin of his own legacy.

My first love was adopted by our family, and he promised he would always be there for me.
But after my dad passed away in a car accident, I found him with another woman in our bedroom.
He told everyone Caroline was his true love—that he only saw me as a sister—and claimed I was the one who was pestering him.
I was shamed by everyone. The stress gave my mother a stroke, and Caroline even had someone run me over, costing me an eye.
Seven years later, holding flowers, I ran into them outside a convenience store.
Arthur's son looked at me pityingly. "Dad, this lady lost an eye… Is she selling flowers? Should we buy some?"

The Percy Family Heir's Scandal Leaks Again!

Cecilia Davis sat curled up in the master bedroom, scrolling through photos of Edward Percy and Jessica Brown.

The photos were taken secretly, but from a sharp angle.

Through a car window — the two of them, going at it hard.

Cecilia let out a cold laugh, tossed the photos into the trash, and felt a wave of deep exhaustion wash over her eyes.

"Do I really have to cut it?"

"Ma'am, this is Mr. Percy's request. Only if you cut your hair as short as Ms. Brown's can we clear up last night's rumors. Of course, you don't have to go — that is, if you never want to see your brother again."

Edward's assistant Leo spoke with a dismissive air, not a trace of respect in his eyes.

As if she, the so-called Mrs. Percy, was nothing more than a joke that nobody needed.

And honestly, that's exactly what she was.

The day I gave birth, I wasn't handed my crying baby, but a tight swaddle of blood-stained cash.
To secure his seat as the new Don, my husband had traded our newborn to Agatha—my own flesh-and-blood aunt, and the young wife of his paralyzed father.
Reduced to nothing more than a convenient incubator, I spent the next four years as a prisoner in my own home.
Ronald issued a ruthless order to his men: if I ever took a single step toward Agatha’s heavily guarded wing to see my son, I was to be shot on sight.
But a mother's desperation knows no bounds.
When my boy's fever spiked dangerously high, I blasted through armed guards and walked through a blazing inferno just to save his life.
Yet, the most fatal wound didn't come from the flames or the shattered glass.
It happened in the ER, when the four-year-old boy I nearly died to save woke up, shoved away my severely burned hands, and screamed for Agatha. He begged me to leave, crying that he just wanted to be a "real family" with his dad and the woman who stole my life.
Staring at the twisted family my husband and aunt had built upon my stolen motherhood, a sudden, icy numbness quieted my shattered world.
"Call me Mom one last time," I whispered through the ash and tears, "and I promise I'll never bother you again."

Synopsis: In a world divided between humans and the paranormal, two souls are destined to find each other. Stirling is the alpha of a powerful, fearful pack. He is strong and handsome. Everyone loves and fears him for his charm and strength. What happens when he is cursed to marry a human, Olivia. A human orphan that is forced to live in an orphanage for unwanted and forgotten humans. Their worlds would never be accepted but a centuries-old curse forces them to act upon their love.

Several Halloweens ago, an alpha betrayed his mate and rejected her for being a witch and not a wolf. Her anger caused her to curse his family. The curse foretold that the strongest, bravest, and best of the male wolves would be given a choice. He would marry his human mate or be forced to feel her death and remain in a wolf body for all of eternity.

Now, it is seven days before Halloween. Time is running out and the bond isn't sealed. The two must find each other or suffer their horrible fate.

Time is running out and neither of them knows who the other is. In a race against time, can they find each other before their fates are sealed?

Will they find each other before the seven days of the cursed born nights are over?

My name is Jack Morris, a bottom-rung janitor on the docks.
Every day, people walk all over me, and I live on moldy bread.
Until one day, an old man I saved handed me a photograph. "This is my granddaughter. She's being held at the Black Swan Casino."
That used to be my place. Ten years ago.
Her father was a brother who died in my place.
I was once the king of the underground.
And now, at the banquet celebrating the tenth anniversary of my death, they're treating that old man's granddaughter like a toy.
If my disappearance only made those animals more brazen...
Then they can finish that drink and celebrate their own deaths next.

“Marry me, and I’ll help you destroy everyone who hurt you,” he said in a deep voice, sending chills down my spine.

Betrayed by her husband and best friend, stripped of the life she worked so hard to protect, and left for dead, Elaine Ferguson wakes up to a world turned against her.

Enter Zayn Von Richter, a ruthless and devastatingly powerful billionaire who offers her a chance at revenge on the condition that she marries him for a year.

But Zayn may not be who he appears to be, and as their connection intensifies, the lines between pretence and reality begin to fade, threatening to unravel everything Elaine has fought to reclaim.

Ten years ago, Iron Throne, Mexico's largest drug cartel, slaughtered my entire family. A decade later, I defected voluntarily and stepped into their manor with a token of allegiance. Everyone thought I had fallen into depravity. What they never knew was that I came to Iron Throne neither for wealth nor power. I came because I had memorized five names from the hit list that destroyed my family, and kept them in my heart for ten long years. I chose to lie low, until I rose to become the second-in-command of Iron Throne. On the night the kingpin handed the entire criminal empire over to me, I walked into his study, raised my gun with a smile.

When they threw me overboard, they thought a man with a broken leg couldn't possibly come back alive. When the floodwaters engulfed the world, turning land into a graveyard, I found a forgotten submarine in the deep sea. From underwater, I built my empire step by step . Not by pity, not by luck. By the time the survivors of this sea finally realized what lay beneath the surface, I no longer needed to hide. They called me the Deep Sea Ghost. I didn't care what they called me. I knew only one thing—from this day forward, this sea was mine to rule.

Twenty years ago, he took the blame for my murder, was branded with the Silver Flame mark, and banished to the wilderness. Twenty years later, I escaped from a prison-like marriage and searched the world for him. He wasn't there in the Alaskan blizzards. He wasn't there in the deep mountains of Romania. Under the polar night in the Arctic Circle, I called his name into the darkness. No one answered. Until a hunter told me: deep in the Yukon, someone had seen a lone wolf with the Silver Flame mark.

Three years ago, my twelve brothers died in the desert at night. A traitor stepped over my death notice and took the place that should have been mine. Three years later, I hide in a run-down convenience store, wiping shelves. I endure being spat on, having my beer stolen, and being called trash—I endured it all. Because I'm waiting. Waiting for someone to return, waiting for an answer. Some ask me: Is it worth it, for a bunch of dead men? I don't know if it's worth it. I only know that when they were alive, they called me Captain. Three years in seclusion, all for the day the God of War returns!

I was born into a cursed bloodline of witches. My mother told me that every firstborn daughter had to sacrifice the one she loved most to break the chains binding our blood. She said it was the only way to save my child. I lied to myself, and I lied to him, leading him to the altar with my own two hands. But I couldn't survive a single day without him. No curse, no matter how horrific, could ever compare to the sheer ugliness of the human heart. Waking up in that empty house, the truth finally hit me: I had absolutely nothing left.

Everyone in the tribe looked down on me. My father declared someone else the heir to the chieftaincy, my wife tore up our engagement and followed a new master, and I lived in a beast pen at the edge of the hunting grounds, sharing a wall with the hunting dogs. I thought this was my life. Only later did I realize that the entire tribe had spent twenty years of coldness building me a fortress. Those airtight shields would one day need me to prove them myself. On the day I awakened, the tribe's totem pole exploded. The true king was about to return.

I used to be the Federation's top agent, codename Frostblade. Until my fiancée and my partner stabbed me in the back and threw me into Blackrock Fortress—a black site hellhole that doesn't exist on any map. Against all odds, I broke out and made it back home, only to find my family's graves dug up, my mother murdered in the bathtub, and a shell casing stamped with a cartel insignia. My sister is missing, my father has been framed, and six of my informants were butchered—all signs point to the exact same name. Nobody believes a man who was supposed to rot in a cell can flip the board, but I'm back.

In my past life, I was tricked into a trap by my neighbor, my leg broken, and thrown into acid rain to die. Reborn, I returned to nine months before the acid rain apocalypse. Meteorites struck, radiation contaminated, water sources dried up, and civilization collapsed. I still had one last chance to save myself and reverse the future. When I mortgaged my house, borrowed heavily from loan sharks, and finally found the water purification engineer whom everyone considered crazy, I was met with merciless ridicule. Faced with humiliation, I simply smiled faintly—"Do you know when water is more precious than gold?"

Introduction: Monsters have invaded the world, and humanity is in grave danger. I transformed into a demon-sealing war god, guarding the abyss for twenty years. But I was met with betrayal after betrayal; my position as war god was revoked, and the people, believing rumors, sought to punish me. They smashed my wife's tombstone, turned my son into a monster , and drained my blood... Now the monsters have returned, kneeling and weeping, begging me to intervene . This time, I will not intervene!

In my last life, my mother-in-law locked me in the attic, and my wife openly cheated on me with the neighbor. Even when I was dying of terminal cancer, they bled me dry until my very last breath! Now that I've been reborn, the extreme-heat apocalypse is just around the corner. In this life, I'm living for myself. I spend every last cent of my savings stockpiling three years' worth of supplies and building a heat-proof survival villa! Now I can sit back and watch my mother-in-law's family struggle to survive in the deadly heat. Beg on their knees for my forgiveness? No! I will never forgive them!

He waited for me for two years. I turned him down twelve times. Every time he told me he liked me, I stayed silent. Every time he asked, "Have you really never felt anything for me?" I would turn my face away. I thought I would have endless chances. I thought he would always be there. Now when I close my eyes, all I can see is the last question he asked me under the moonlight. I thought it was glory. Freedom. The victory I deserved. Not until his body fell beneath the moonlight, not until I had everything, not until I started jolting awake from nightmares on countless full-moon nights, did I realize that the silver sword I drove into his heart had also pierced my own life.

I was a herbalist, a healer who saved lives, but I was falsely accused of spreading plague and hanged on the gallows, awaiting the flames. Then I heard them—a swarm of rats emerging from the earth, gnawing through the noose and dragging me back to the world of the living. But this was not salvation, but the beginning of a curse. Plague swept across the land, the church peddled counterfeit medicines, and lords squeezed every last grain from the farmers. The rats looked at me and whispered to me — the end has come, and you will become the calamity.

When the zombie apocalypse hit, my elder brother shoved me into a horde of the undead. Now, I've been reborn exactly five days before the end of the world, and he's trying to scam me out of my winning lottery ticket with a beat-up old ring. What he doesn't know is that this ring is a genuine pocket dimension artifact. He thinks he's pulling the ultimate con, completely unaware that I'm going to use this very relic to forge my own post-apocalyptic empire. This time, I'm going to make them pay back every last thing they owe me.

I inherited a family heirloom watch. It heats up when I'm in danger, shoves me out of the way when I'm attacked, and in the middle of the night it folds my clothes and makes me a cup of tea at exactly the right temperature. I know there's a guardian spirit living inside it, but I've never asked who he is, what his name is, or why he's here. I got used to his presence—so used to it that I started taking it for granted. Then I met an antiques dealer. He was gentle, polished, and thoughtful in every way. But the guardian spirit reacted like he'd gone insane. I snapped at it, "You're just a watch. What right do you have to interfere in my life?"

Freya Ashford's biggest regret in life wasn't marrying me, but that she never truly looked at me. We were sleeping in the same bed but dreaming different dreams; she was researching immortality, and I was researching how to win her love—"It is an eternal power, and an eternal pain." This riddle led us down different paths. On the day of the prom, in front of the entire school, she pointed her finger at me and said, "You can't prove your love for me at all." But she didn't know that she would lose miserably.

Five years ago, I woke up after surgery with my mind completely blank. The doctor said I had been in a training accident, and I was lucky just to be alive. Due to my injuries, after being discharged from the military, I was assigned to the mess hall at Fort Kiernan. Every day, I stood behind the same serving window, dishing out the same beef and potato stew to the same group of new recruits. I thought my life would always be like this. Then one day, a female journalist from the detention cell was escorted over by military police to get her meal. She slid her tray toward me and spoke a word I had never heard before. The ladle slipped right out of my left hand. My right arm dropped to my side, and my fingers curled instinctively into the shape of a gun grip. Who on earth am I?

At my boss's mother's funeral, I couldn't hold back my laughter, and as a result, I was treated as a lunatic, stuffed into a garbage cannon, and launched naked into an apocalyptic forest full of zombies. Everyone thought I was doomed, but they didn't know—I had been reborn 1,001 times. Unarmed and surrounded by the zombie horde, about to be torn to shreds, in desperation I clung to the last clue... When I finally uncovered the truth that could overturn everything, I laughed from the bottom of my heart. This time, I would personally end this greatest lie.

For five years, my marriage was nothing but a lie, a perfect show Aiden staged for the entire family.
I loved him for more than a decade. And for his lover, he threw our five-year-old daughter, Chloe, into the basement to be fed to his Dobermans.
All because Chloe accidentally shattered an antique crystal cup, a so-called love token between Aiden and his precious Sophia.
I dropped to my knees and begged. He looked at me like I was nothing and said Family rules matter more than blood.
When I carried my daughter’s mutilated body out of that basement, fireworks were exploding on the rooftop above, celebrating his grand confession of love to Sophia.
He froze my accounts. And on the day of Chloe’s funeral, he took her to a concert.
I was holding my daughter’s ashes, trapped, desperate, with nowhere left to go when a message from an unknown number appeared. A car was waiting at the side gate. It was Daniel, my childhood friend.
Only after I disappeared with my daughter’s ashes did Aiden finally realize the truth—that the “sweet, innocent” Sophia was the real killer of his own child.

Twelve years after the geomagnetic reversal, the death ray scorched every inch of the land. Survivors huddled beneath the dome, weaving their last refuge with lies . I was just a scavenger, digging for palladium in the ruins, just to buy my sister a breath of pure oxygen. But I also kept a secret— I could hear the voice of metal. When the Council of Order threatened my sister's life, forcing me into the forbidden zone to carry out a suicide mission, those whispers of steel finally became clear. They called to me, guiding me down another dead end.

Five years ago, they stripped me of my rank and stopped my retirement pay. Now, with the Imperial army at the gates, they kneel at my door, begging for my services. My daughter is wearing last year's shoes, her big toe practically sticking out. My wife is still refilling coffee at a fast-food restaurant at 3 a.m. The neighbors call me "that welfare-dependent guy" behind my back. I pulled my five-year-old dismissal order from under the bill and slipped it under the door. "You've got the wrong person."