Chapter 1
1
11.34
To protect me, my sister defied the rules of our novel’s world. Instead of showering her affection on the story’s protagonist, the fake young master, she cared for me, the real one.
Every time she was kind to me, the System shocked her with an electric current.
She told me she would rather be electrocuted to death than stop loving her real brother.
And yet, the night before I was due to give the valedictorian speech at graduation, I was abducted. Dragged to an abandoned construction site, I was defiled by a gang of thugs, my limbs were broken, and my tongue was cut from my mouth.
In that abyss of despair, I somehow connected to my sister’s System.
【Host, you sent a live location to the gang, ordering them to torture your brother until he was crippled. Do you not intend to call them off?]
My sister’s voice, cold as jade, echoed in my mind.
“I can’t. This part of the plot has to happen. We can’t let Julian go through it, can we?”
“Besides, Noah is the protagonist of a ‘doted–on–hero‘ story. He’s destined to survive. No matter how much he suffers, he’ll recover completely. This is just making use of his plot armor.”
“When it’s all over, I’ll be twice as good to him to make up for it.”
My heart died.
I stopped fighting death.
“As expected of the top scholar. You’re tougher than most.”
“We’ve had more than twenty guys go at him, and he’s still hanging on…”
In the dim, filthy cell, the instruments of my torture lay scattered around me, slick with my blood and flesh, piled into a small mountain.
A hulking man grabbed my chin, forcing my head up. He saw my lips, bitten raw from the pain, and burst into laughter.
“Well, well. After being so thoroughly ‘cared for‘ by the boys, our little Master Noah is now tender enough to bruise at a touch.”
His thumb smeared across my lips before he ripped the filthy rag from my mouth.
“Speaking of which, we’ve tasted everything else, but I haven’t had a go at this mouth yet.”
“I wonder if it’s any different from the ones you pay for downtown?”
Before I could curse him, another man chimed in with a suggestion.
“Half a tongue tastes even better. More… exotic.”
I saw their eyes fix on me, and I tried to shrink back in terror.
The next second, a hand tangled in my hair, slamming my head against the ground.
A flash of cold steel.
I screamed, clamping a hand over my mouth as blood gushed between my fingers. The pain was a blinding, stabbing agony that made me want
to smash my head against the wall just to make it stop.
Through a hazy fog, someone yanked my hair again….
And in that moment, on the brink of death, I heard a conversation.
A sterile, electronic voice: [Celeste, your brother Noah is at his breaking point. Any more torment and he will suffer a fatal mental collapse! You
must stop this!)
I thought I was hallucinating, that death was playing tricks on my mind.
No
Chapter 1
“No.”
11:34 0
The voice that answered was unmistakably my sister’s. She was the only person in our family who had ever been kind to me, but now her tone
was glacial.
“Noah is the protagonist of fate. He can’t die this easily.”
“Continue. Tell them not to hold back. Only when his suffering mirrors what Julian endured in the original timeline can we successfully cheat fate…
Only then can Julian live a good life.”
The System seemed to hesitate.
My sister, sensing its doubt, added confidently, “He’s been abused since he was a child. This is nothing he can’t handle… It’s just making use of a
resource.”
[When you insisted on binding Noah as the target for this mission, you set this course. Now, we can only see it through.】 The mechanical voice
sighed with resignation.
My sister laughed. “What’s the rush? He won’t die anyway. Better to get it all over with at once than to drag it out…”
Her voice softened, but her words were daggers in my heart.
“He’s the only one in this world who can blind the eyes of fate. It’s not what I want. But only by having him endure Julian’s fated death can our fam-
ily stay whole and live happily ever after.”
“After all, Julian is my brother too. I can’t just stand by and watch him be humiliated and killed, can I?”
“…He deserves a life of peace and security. This is the only way.”
I coughed, a spray of dark blood leaving my lips. The pain was so intense my heart felt like it had been burned to ash.
So that’s all I was. A tool for my sister to use, a substitute to suffer in place of someone else.
“Tch, what a buzzkill. His face is all covered in blood…”
More brutes entered the room. They laid me flat on an iron table, their hands roaming freely.
Two needles pierced my chest, sharp and brutal.
“Man, if the valedictorian shows up to his speech tomorrow with these, haha! If anyone sees them, they’ll all know what a little slut he is.”
“Take more pictures. We could sell them as a collection.”
One of the men set up a high–definition camera, pointing it directly at my face.
Amidst waves of agonizing pain, I was torn open.
Again.
And again.
It was a nightmare, a torment beyond human endurance. And the architect of it all was the one person who had been my reason for living, my
pillar in this cruel world–my own sister, Celeste.
“Hey, scholar,” one of the men whispered, his lips against my ear. “Ever wonder how we found you at the school, no matter where you hid?”
He bit down.
Hard
Through the searing pain, I remembered the endless nightmares of footsteps and shadows that had haunted me. I remembered the conversation
I had just overheard.
The truth settled in my heart like a stone.
And with it, a deeper, more profound despair.
