When Tara pushed open the door, Saudariya was “casually” sliding a stack of gold-embossed résumés toward the interviewer’s hand. She didn’t glance at Tara—only tapped a fingertip against the pigeon-egg-sized sapphire brooch pinned to her chest and smiled like she’d just unboxed a limited-edition handbag: “Oh—you’re *that* Ms. Tara—the one who ‘delivered takeout for three years while completing an online jewelry design course’? How serendipitous. I received a milk tea from you just last week—the cup sleeve even bore Amity University’s initials.” The air stilled—for half a second. Tara didn’t remove her bag. Didn’t adjust her collar. Didn’t smile. She simply slid her laptop to the edge of the table, screen up—not a PowerPoint, not a portfolio cover, but a live-rendering 3D modeling video: a ring where ivy coiled around a human phalanx, each leaf vein rising and falling as if breathing; inside the band, impossibly fine Latin script scrolled: *Non dono, sed creo.* (I do not give—I create.) The interviewer instinctively leaned forward. Saundariya let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “This design? I submitted it as my junior-year final project.” She pulled out her phone and tapped open a yellowed image of a classroom assignment. “See? Same vine motif. Same phalanx structure. Ms. Tara—you don’t even copy properly. You replicated the very spot my professor marked in red: ‘Anatomical error.’” Every eye in the room locked onto Tara’s face. She finally lifted her gaze—her voice low, like a blade drawn slowly across glass: “Ms. Saudariya—this ‘junior-year project’… was Fall 2021, Amity University’s *Biological Form Modeling*, Week 7 assignment—correct?” Saundariya’s smile froze. Tara tapped her trackpad—screen flashing instantly to a timestamped internal university system screenshot: Saudariya’s grade record for that semester clearly read **[ABSENT]**. Below it, a TA’s note: *“Student submitted no assignments. Final grade auto-assigned: zero.”* “What you copied,” Tara said, closing her laptop with a clean, metallic *click*, “was the ‘make-up exam exemplar’ I uploaded anonymously to the department’s shared repository—and the login credentials you used? They belonged to your TA.” Outside, a plane tree leaf struck the windowpane—a muffled, drumlike thud. Saundariya shot upright, chair legs shrieking against the floor. Her hand flew to her sapphire brooch— Tara watched, still and silent: “Don’t remove it. That ‘sapphire’? I swapped it—last week, from the sketchbook you left behind at the café.” The interviewers held their breath. Tara stood. Her tailored sleeve brushed the table—she didn’t touch the untouched glass of water beside her. She walked toward the door, back straight as an unsheathed blade. “Oh—and one more thing,” she paused, not turning, “while delivering takeout, I also restored three antique timepieces for Amity University. One of them now hangs on the president’s office wall.” The door closed. In Saudariya’s trembling fingers: a synthetic sapphire, slowly fading to gray.

The wedding in Ganjabad felt wrong from the very first blare of the shehnai. Sunita sat before the mirror, draped in a crimson veil embroidered with gold thread—its folds concealing half her face. Yet the reflection showed no bashfulness—only the cold, sharp glint of a blade. Her fingers moved slowly over the ancestral silver serpent pendant at her throat: icy, heavy, like an old wound that had never healed. Vikram arrived not on horseback, nor in a palanquin—but in a modified jeep, roaring into the courtyard. Its engine shook dust from the eaves; its tires crushed scattered jasmine petals, kicking up a fog of scent and grit. He leapt out, shoved aside the elder’s offering of sacred water, and yanked off the seven-looped red thread bound around his wrist—blood beading where the string snapped. “Today isn’t a wedding,” he grinned at the stunned assembly, flecks of chili seed caught between his teeth. “It’s me taking back what was stolen from my father thirty years ago.” Before the last word faded, a figure emerged from the shadow beneath the archway—robed in black, nameless, left eye covered by a copper eyepatch streaked with rust. He held no weapon—only a freshly brewed cup of masala tea, steam curling upward, its rim marked by the faint, smudged imprint of a lip. “The tea’s gone cold, Vikram,” he rasped, voice like sandpaper dragged across bronze. “Your father drank one sip—right before he died.” Silence swallowed the hall. Even the drummer forgot to strike his drum. The elder surged to his feet, silver beard trembling. “Raj Singh! You should have perished in the scorched earth of ’94!” “No,” the man with the copper eye murmured, gently blowing across the tea’s surface. “I’m the ash you couldn’t burn away.” At midnight sharp, fireworks tore open the sky—not golden or red, but the sickly, searing green of military signal flares. In that flash of light, Sunita ripped off her veil—and slammed the silver serpent pendant deep into her palm. Blood welled, dripping between her fingers, sinking into the cracks of the courtyard tiles—seeping down, down, to the unmarked bones buried there thirty years ago. Gunfire erupted just as she dropped the final cube of sugar into Vikram’s teacup. Sweetness—to mask the taste of gunpowder. And to mask— the truth that they had never met before. This wedding was never a beginning. It was the final second before the countdown hit zero.

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 delivery room lights were harsh and white—like a blade slicing through every illusion of warmth. She held the twins—one swaddled in pink-and-blue striped fabric, the other hastily carried away by a nurse who said, “To neonatology for observation.” No one heard the faint, brittle laugh that rose from her throat. Seventeen years without tears. Seventeen years she’d melted her “Cheer Queen” crown into a dagger, turned cheer chants into incantations, and laced every smile with poison—waiting for this day. Madison Carter ripped off her third audition outfit in the changing room. The varsity uniform was too tight—waistband biting into skin, cuffs frayed, shoulder patches faded to dull gray. Her mother had locked the new uniform in a safe last night: “You don’t deserve that spot, Madison. You don’t even know your father’s name.” Yet when she stormed onto the stage on broken stilettos—her skirt stitched from old team gear, her waist chain strung with pearls pried from her mother’s wedding gown, her hair pulled back crookedly, sweat dripping from her jaw into the glare of the spotlight— The music erupted. She flipped backward, landed hard, knees scraping raw—but lifted her chin, laughing like fire given voice. The judges sat frozen. Then the head judge removed his glasses, voice trembling: “*That’s*… real cheer spirit.” Before the words fully settled— A shattering scream tore through the audience. Victoria Orlando—Liv Orlando’s mother, partner at a top-tier law firm, famed for icy precision—shot upright. Her hands shook so violently she dropped her champagne flute. Golden liquid splashed across her limited-edition Hermès scarf, leaving a jagged, weeping stain. Her eyes locked onto the crimson mole at Madison’s throat—the *exact* match marked on the yellowed prenatal record buried deepest in her safe. And just as every camera in the arena swung wildly toward the ruptured mother-daughter pair— In the labor ward’s surveillance room, the final black screen flickered awake. The footage showed a snow-choked night, seventeen years ago. A nurse pushed an infant cart down the corridor. Inside lay a newborn girl, a silver bell tied to her ankle. The camera drifted slowly downward— Engraved inside the bell, two lines of microscopic script: **“M.D. —— MOTHER’S DEBT.”** **“L.O. —— LIE’S OWN.”** In the bottom-right corner, the timestamp pulsed: **00:00:01** —The countdown had just begun.

The instant I plunged into the pool, Isabella’s scream lodged in her throat—like a violin string abruptly snapped. Three meters underwater, her skirt billowed like black seaweed, tangling around my wrist. I seized her ankle and hauled her upward; my fingertips brushed an old scar along the inside of her calf—the one she’d gotten at seven, when she shoved me into a glass door to snatch the strawberry cake from my hands. Breaking the surface, she choked and coughed, curling into a shrimp-like hunch, her mascara smeared into two bruised streaks beneath her eyes. On the poolside, my mother gripped her champagne flute until it clicked and groaned in her hand. My father stood crookedly, his tie askew, his gaze locked onto the mole behind my left ear—the exact spot marked “distinguishing mole” on his twenty-year-old sperm donation records. “Asher?” My mother’s voice trembled. “You… you were placed in foster care at five…” “By you,” I said, wiping water from my face. My soaked work vest clung tightly to my chest, revealing an old, worm-like scar just below my collarbone. “That day, Isabella wore a new dress—and tossed candy wrappers at me through the car window.” Sirens pierced the party music. Two officers stepped forward, cuffs glinting. Before they could speak, Isabella grabbed my arm: “Wait—he saved me!” Before the words fully left her lips, her phone slipped from her drenched skirt pocket. The screen lit up with an unsent text draft: [Dad, Asher broke in again today—to steal the ring. This time I caught him on camera opening your safe…] I looked down at her. Water dripped from her jawline into the pool, rippling outward in quiet, concentric circles. Turns out the sharpest blade is always hidden inside the sweetest wrapper.

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.