The scalpel glints under sterile white light, but I already know what comes next—I’ve lived it.\n\nThis time, I don’t scream as the anesthesia takes me. I remember everything: Abby’s weak smile, her mother whispering, ‘It’s not murder if she doesn’t matter.’ They took my heart like it was theirs to claim.\n\nNow I’m breathing again, drenched in sweat on a cold slab in a forgotten morgue wing. Lena says I’ve been dead for three days. Says I shouldn’t be alive. But I am. And I remember every name.\n\nI leave the city behind, tracking whispers through black-market networks until I find him—Eugene, the man they call the King of Ashes. His estate looms behind iron gates, guarded and silent. My hand trembles as I press the intercom.\n\n‘I’m your daughter,’ I say. The line stays dead. Then, minutes later, the gate creaks open. No welcome. No embrace. Just a single light turning on upstairs.\n\nHe’s waiting. And I don’t know if I’m walking into sanctuary—or another kind of death.