The second the pool water rose over my lashes, I heard Beth’s stiletto heels crush the crystal champagne tower. “Loyalty?” She crouched at the pool’s edge, the tip of her scissors pressing against the neckline of my wedding gown—its silver gleam stabbing my eyes. “You stole Edward from me for three years, and now you hide behind a chastity monument?” Foam dripped from my chin into the water—green-tinged, like tears gone sour. Guests formed a half-circle around the pool, phones raised, lenses fixed on my soaked lace bodice—where a small patch of dark red bloomed: skin torn open by her fingernails moments earlier. “Look closely.” I seized her wrist—and yanked. The scissors plunged with a dull *thunk* to the pool floor. As Beth shrieked and tumbled in, I whipped off my veil and looped it tight around her throat. At the explosion of water, every livestream feed flickered—three seconds of static snow. A backdoor I’d planted last night, deep inside the villa’s security system. She thrashed, choking, pearls flying from her ears just before vanishing down the drain. I leaned in, lips brushing her burning ear: “Stepmother dear… In your husband’s study safe—the third compartment—you’ll find seven paternity reports.” A sharp, rhythmic *click-clack* echoed from the doorway—leather on marble. Not Edward’s usual Oxford shoes. Boots. Military issue. I wiped foam from my eyes and looked up. Framed in the arched entryway, backlit by the sun, stood a man in black tactical gear. A rusted copper bell dangled from his left ear. The faded eagle insignia on his shoulder patch matched—exactly—the one pinned to the lapel of the officer who stood beside my father’s casket fifteen years ago. Beth froze. Her nails dug deep into my forearm. “...Colonel Lin? You were declared KIA in Afghanistan.” He didn’t glance at her. His gaze locked onto my left hand—my ring finger. Where a diamond should have glinted, only a faint pale line remained. “Anna.” His voice was raw, like sandpaper dragged over corroded iron. “Your mother’s last words were this: *So long as that ring remains, the one who took the fall for you hasn’t died yet.*” The pool water shimmered—an unnatural, electric blue. I looked down. Beneath my waterlogged wedding skirt, glowing digits rose slowly from the depths: **07:23:11** Seven hours, twenty-three minutes, eleven seconds—left on the countdown.

The glass doors of the hospital lobby shattered inward just as I crouched in the corner of the pediatric IV area, swabbing the palms of a little girl with a fever using an alcohol pad. She was delirious with heat, clutching the cuff of my white coat. Her voice was faint: “Sister… are you the one who gave me the injection last time—the one that didn’t hurt?” I didn’t answer. Just pressed the pad even more gently. Then—screams tore through the air. “Lin Wan! You actually have the nerve to show up here?!” My ex-husband, Chen Zhe, seized his former wife’s arm. His wedding ring still gleamed on his finger, blindingly bright. “You’ve brought *him*—some random man—to steal our child?!” Behind him stood a man in an Armani suit, his gold watch catching the light as he calmly adjusted his cufflinks—her current husband, Xie Yan. “Steal?” Xie Yan smiled faintly—soft-spoken, yet the entire hall fell half a beat silent. “Dr. Chen, the third coronary bypass you performed? I stepped in and completed it. Dare you claim your daughter is standing here today because of *your* hands—hands that have trembled for three years?” A murmur rippled through the crowd. I kept swabbing the girl’s palms. The sharp scent of alcohol spread like a silent fuse. Then—she seized. Not from the fever. It was status epilepticus—the EEG report had just flashed in. The monitor shrieked. Red alarm lights pulsed across the tiled floor, like blood beating. The head nurse rushed over, shoving me aside: “Hurry—call Chief Lin!” No one answered. Because Chief Lin wasn’t in the lobby. She was inside the ICU, gowned in full isolation gear, kneeling on one knee—barehanded, steadying an ECMO pump on the verge of failure. The seventh-generation artificial heart-lung system she’d personally modified. The only person in the hospital qualified to recalibrate its parameters. Meanwhile, in the center of the lobby, Chen Zhe pointed straight at me: “*Her!* That new night-shift nurse! She altered my daughter’s medication records yesterday—*in secret!*” Xie Yan turned—and locked eyes with me. Three seconds passed. He removed his watch and tossed it to his assistant. “Clear Operating Room One. Then call Director Shen—and tell him: ‘Qingluan is awake.’” Silence crashed down—absolute, suffocating. Even the monitor’s shrill beep seemed to stutter. I finally released the girl’s hand, rose, and smoothed my white coat—its hem stained with fresh, glistening alcohol, shimmering cold-blue under the lights. I pulled off my mask. At my left earlobe, a silver earring shaped like a needle caught the light—the insignia of the National Young Neurosurgeon Championship, melted down and recast by my own hands. Xie Yan walked toward me. His dress shoes crushed rumors beneath each step. He stopped before me, bent, and picked up the alcohol pad I’d dropped—his fingertip brushing mine, damp with antiseptic. Then, in full view of everyone, he gently traced the old scar running across the back of my hand—the one carved by splintered bone three years ago, in a field hospital in Africa, when I’d held open a child’s neck wound with my bare hands to extract shrapnel lodged in the carotid artery. “Dr. Lin Wan,” he said softly—yet the chandeliers above hummed in resonance. “It’s time you returned to the operating table.” The LED screen mounted high in the lobby flickered once. Then switched automatically—to live surgery feed. The surgical lamp flared. A pair of gloved hands lifted the titanium neuro-dissector—the only three such instruments in existence. The camera panned slowly upward. Revealing a face calm to the point of austerity. And eyes—washed clean with alcohol, yet forever stained with blood.

Aidan is dumped by his girlfriend on their wedding day and quickly marries Flora, the CEO of the Vale Group. What seemed like a peaceful life turns chaotic when Flora suspects Aidan might be the lost heir, Wyatt. As their fates intertwine, Aidan gets caught in family power struggles... What secrets lie beneath this sudden marriage?

Emma was working the night shift at the convenience store when the glass door slammed open. A blood-soaked man staggered in and locked the door behind him. She recognized those eyes—three years ago, at the crash site, he had held her dying body and wept until his voice broke. Back then, she was called Lena Walker. Now she’s Emma Kim, living under a new identity, even her heartbeat trained to lie. "Don’t call the police," he gasped, knuckles pressing against the counter. "They’re trying to kill me… because of you." Footsteps echoed outside. Three shadows passed across the window. Without hesitation, she lifted the counter flap and pulled him into the back. She brought antiseptic, gauze, a needle and thread. Her hands were steady—not like someone saving a life, but fulfilling a fate. He stared at her. "You’ve changed." "And aren’t you alive too?" she shot back coldly. "Didn’t you swear to die with me after I was gone?" Before the words faded, gunfire exploded outside. Glass shattered. A man kicked the door open, gun aimed at her head: "Walker bloodline—you're due to pay." Lucas lunged. A struggle erupted. A bullet grazed her cheek. Blood dripped onto his lips. He suddenly smiled. "Remember this taste? You once said blood was your favorite perfume." When the police arrived, they found the two of them sitting in a pool of blood, laughing at each other like lunatics. The media captured it all. The headline rocked the city: *Behind the Nightclub Shooting: Lovers or Accomplices?* But only Emma sensed something was wrong. In the moment before he lost consciousness, he slipped her a note that read: *You’re not Lena. Who are you?* And on the last page of her diary, written in unfamiliar left-handed script: "This time, I’ll kill you."

I went blind saving an old woman with white hair. The whole city was talking—Miss Pennington was going to repay my kindness by making me her grandson’s wife. But no one knew the truth—it wasn’t gratitude. It was atonement. When Luke Pennington first saw me, he sneered, "You’re a good actor. A delivery guy willing to risk your life for a hundred thousand in reward money?" He thought I was just another poor scammer, kneeling outside the hospital, faking a sob story for sympathy. I didn’t explain. Because that night, the rain was too heavy, the ambulance lights too blinding—I only remembered how her falling silhouette reminded me of the old grandmother who once gave me a warm bowl of noodles as a child. So I said, "Fine. I’ll marry you." On the eve of the wedding, he stormed into my room with a bottle of red wine, mocking, "Name your price. How much to walk away? The Penningtons won’t let you down if you divorce quietly." I didn’t speak. I stepped off the bed barefoot, trembling hands sliding down his pants, fingertips brushing the tip of his leather shoe. Then gently, I held it. He froze. After that, he started coming every day to put eye drops in my eyes. His fingers always paused slightly against my eyelids. Smiling, I asked, "What are you looking at?" "You," he said. "Making sure you're really blind." I replied, "You’re not ugly. You just don’t want to be seen." Then she appeared—my so-called “mother.” Dressed in cheap clothes, she took the check and tore up the contract in front of Luke. "This marriage is a transaction. She knew the chairman was your grandmother all along. Every move was calculated!" Luke turned and left without a word. The night he threw the engagement ring into the fountain, the entire Pennington family laughed at how foolish I was. But three days later, I removed my sunglasses in court, facing the judge and the press. "There’s something I’d like to say now." "I’m not Joedy. The real Joedy died in a fire three years ago." "And I… am the illegitimate daughter you abandoned in that burning house." The courtroom erupted. Security footage played—showing me rushing into the smoke to save someone. And that “mother”? A nurse paid to take my place. I stood, turning toward Luke in the gallery, his face pale. "You said this marriage was fake." "But tell me—of every tear I’ve shed for you, which one wasn’t real?" Silence swept the hall. Suddenly, he stood, walked slowly toward me, knelt on one knee, and slipped an old ring back onto my finger—the one he had secretly carved by hand when I wasn’t looking. "Joedy," his voice cracked, "this time… let me beg you. Don’t go." Outside, sunlight poured through the windows. I closed my eyes—but for the first time, I truly “saw” the light.

As the wedding reached its third movement, the city's bells abruptly fell silent. I stepped into the hall through a pool of blood, my sword dragging behind me, screeching against the stone floor. My black war robes, long torn to shreds by the northern blizzards, flapped like a tattered banner in the wind. The assembled nobles recoiled in unison—except the emperor. He remained seated, fingers tapping lightly on the arm of his throne. Tap. Then again. "Jean Suel," he finally spoke, his voice like a fissure cracking across an icefield. "Your mother stood just like that before she died." I laughed. With a flick of my blade, I sent seven imperial guards flying. Suddenly, text erupted before my eyes— 【Fate Line Activated: Regicide or True Dragon Heir?】 【Warning: Current Affinity -99. Princess is weeping behind her veil.】 【Hint: Your mother’s keepsake is hidden inside the wedding ring. Look now!】 The princess’s fingers trembled slightly. That ring, engraved with the empire’s twin eagles, shimmered under the candlelight in an eerie crimson hue. I knew that shade well—twenty years ago, when she smeared poison onto the marriage decree and murdered my mother, her nails were stained the same red. "Do you really think you're here to crash the wedding?" The emperor rose, his dragon robe rippling as if caught in a gale. "This marriage was set up for *you* from the start." With a thunderous crash, iron nets dropped from the four corners of the hall. Twelve elite assassins emerged from hiding. But I spun around, drew my sword—and the hilt snapped, revealing half of a yellowed baby swaddle cloth embroidered with a star map only royal blood could know. "Wrong," I sneered, plunging the blade into the old scar over my heart. The moment my blood touched the star map, the entire imperial ancestral temple began to tremble. Text flooded my vision: 【Truth Unlocked: The Outcast = Exiled Crown Prince】 【System Announcement: Revenge Meter at 100%. 'Crown Seizure' Ending Unleashed】