My Replacement Inherited My Eternal Agony

I am an eternal. I was born with a curse of gold.

Every person who has ever tried to kill me for my fortune has only succeeded in making me richer. My net worth is measured in billions, a staggering, icy mountain of numbers that means absolutely nothing to me. Because the truth is, Im exhausted.

I have been murdered in a thousand different ways across centuries. I have no desire to keep going; the light at the end of the tunnel has always been a mirage. To break the cycle of immortality, the rule is simple but impossible: I must find someone who loves me and does not care for my money.

After lifetimes of searching, I thought I had finally found him.

He didnt want my money. That much was true. But as it turns out, he didnt love me either. Instead, he held a scalpel, and he used it to open me up.

...

I was lying on a cold, stainless steel surgical table.

Above me, the reflective surface of the surgical lamp acted like a morbid mirror, showing me the gore of my own opened chest. Another death to add to the tally. New cause of death: +1.

But this time, the pain was different. It wasn't just physical; it was a piercing, psychological agony that reached deep into my marrow. The sensation of my flesh being peeled back was so intense I couldn't even find my voice to scream.

I gritted my teeth, forcing the words out as I looked at Nathan.

"Is it money?" I wheezed. "You know I have more than I could ever spend. Just give me a number. Ill give you everything. Just stop."

Nathan shook his head. His hand trembled as he reached out to stroke my hair. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. His tears fell fast, splashing onto my cheek, but they felt utterly devoid of warmth.

"I dont want your money, Maren," he whispered. "Its you I love. The wealth... it was just a nice bonus. But its you. Its always been you."

I let out a wet, ragged laugh. My limbs were twitching uncontrollably from the shock. He hadn't used a single drop of anesthesia before he slid the blade into me. He had told me he was going to harvest my organs, one by one. He was going to drain every drop of my blood.

And he called this love?

I couldn't wrap my head around it. If he wanted me dead, why couldn't he just make it quick?

"Nathan, please. If you dont want the money, tell me what you want. Ill give it to you. Anything. Just... give me a clean kill. Don't torture me under the guise of 'loving' me."

Nathan remained unreachable, his expression a mask of tragic devotion. He just kept insisting he loved me. I didn't understand where that love was supposed to beuntil five minutes later, when the doors to the OR swung open.

Another gurney was pushed in. On it lay a young woman. She was beautiful, with skin like porcelain and a face that looked peaceful in her medically induced sleep. They parked her right next to me.

I watched, fading, as my blood was siphoned out of my veins and tubed directly into her body. Then, a team of specialized, silent surgeons began to work on her. She looked gravely ill. As they opened her up, I saw the state of her internal organswithered, failing. One by one, they began to remove her dying parts and replace them with the healthy ones they were taking from me.

The realization hit me like a physical blow. This was his plan.

I froze, a single tear escaping the corner of my eye. "Who is she?" I choked out.

Nathan didn't answer immediately. He was looking at the woman with a gaze so tender it made my stomach turn.

"Nathan! Answer me!"

He snapped out of it, reaching down to take my hand. He told me the truth then, his voice steady and clinical.

"Her name is Valerie. We were high school sweethearts. We spent three years sitting at the same desk, planning our lives, promising to get married the second we graduated college."

He paused, his eyes clouding over. "But life is cruel. Right after graduation, she was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. Within five years, her organs began to atrophy. Theyre failing, Maren. All of them. There is no cure in the world."

He looked at me with a terrifying kind of clarity. "I couldn't just stand by and watch her vanish. I couldn't lose the person who defines my entire youth. So, I found another way."

I stared at him, my mind reeling. "A disease with no cure... and you think swapping my organs into her will work? If it were that simple, wouldn't a doctor have suggested it years ago? Why wait until now?"

Nathan understood the logic. He turned his head, his gaze dropping onto me with a cold, detached intensity. After a long silence, he sighed.

"Maren, I know your secret."

He leaned in closer. "I know youre an eternal."

His words sent a chill through me that outstripped the cold of the OR. It explained everything. He didn't love my money, but he didn't love me either. I had thought this life would finally be the one to break the curse, but I had failed again.

Nathans coldness was breathtaking. Even as he watched me being dismantled, he stood there calmly, stroking my palm with his thumb as if we were having a quiet night in. My entire body revolted against his touch, the pain pulling me toward the brink of a blackout.

But Nathan wasn't finished. He kept talking, narrating the epic tragedy of his life with Valerie.

"I took her everywhere. I saw every specialist, every healer. There was no hope. Valerie suffered so much; she cried in my arms more times than I can count. Only I truly understand her pain."

"I promised her Id save her. I swore Id find a way. I cant live in a world without her, Maren. Shes the sun. Without her, my world goes dark."

"When I found out what you were, I had this... premonition. A feeling that you were the answer. You were the one who could change our destiny."

So that was why there was no anesthesia. That was why he had played the part of the perfect partner for three years. Every "I love you," every shared meal, every quiet momentit was all a long con to gain my trust so he could harvest me like a crop.

How could he?

I let out a raw, animalistic scream. For the first time in centuries, I lost my composure. I lashed out, cursing him with every breath I had left. I was used to deathit was the white noise of my existencebut I couldn't swallow this.

I would have preferred it if he had just been a common thief.

The double weight of the betrayal and the physical agony pushed me into a state of delirium. My body began to seize, my limbs twisting in a gruesome, unnatural way, but Nathan held me down with a firm, steady grip.

He kept talking, trying to soothe me with words that were nothing short of monstrous.

"Just hold on, Maren. Just a little longer. I know youve done this a thousand times. Youve seen every kind of pain there is. This is just one more. You can handle it."

"Youve been looking for a way out of your immortality, right? Well, Im helping you. You help me save Valerie, and I help you end this ridiculous cycle. Its a win-win."

"You save her, and Ill help you finish this. Ill keep loving you, in a way. Ill remember you forever. Youll live on through Valerie. Isn't that a beautiful way to continue?"

I looked at him through a red haze. The pain was so sharp I bit through my tongue, spraying a mouthful of blood across my lips.

Nathan, seemingly afraid I would kill myself before the harvest was complete, didn't hesitate to shove his own hand into my mouth for me to bite on.

"Its okay, Maren. Shh. Im right here. Just stay with me. The doctors said the organs take better if the donor isn't sedated. It ensures the 'vitality' transfers. Its going to be over soon."

For a split second, the way he held methe tenderness in his voicefelt like I was on a delivery bed, and we were about to welcome a child into the world. But it was a hallucination. A sick, twisted lie.

I let out a jagged, hollow laugh, the last of my faith in humanity curdling into ash. I bit down on his hand as hard as I could and spat blood into his face.

"If you know what I am," I hissed, "then you should know what happens when someone takes the flesh and blood of an eternal. Im warning you, Nathan. Stop this now. You cannot handle the consequences."

Then, the darkness finally took me.

I dont know how long I was under. When I woke up, I was submerged.

I have died and returned countless times. Usually, twenty-four hours after the lights go out, I claw my way back. Ive woken up in morgue lockers, in shallow graves, in the damp filth of sewers. As long as the world keeps spinning, even if I were burned to a stray atom, I would reform.

This time, I was in a large glass vat filled with formaldehyde. My hollowed-out body was soaking in it like a bath, my cells slowly knitting themselves back together. I couldn't move yet, but I could hear.

Nathans voice drifted over, cold and clinical. He was standing nearby. He leaned over the vat to look at me.

In the reflection of his pupils, I saw what I had become. It was horrific. My five-foot-seven frame had shriveled, curled into a ball of raw muscle and bone. I didn't even look human anymore.

Every usable organ was gone. They all belonged to Valerie now.

Nathan sounded satisfied. There was a lilt in his voice I had never heard before. "She shouldn't be able to come back from this, right? Not in this state. Theres nothing left but a skeleton and a head. Theres no fuel for a resurrection."

The surgeon, a man who clearly lacked a soul, nodded. "I doubt it. Shes not even viable for scientific study at this point. So, the remains..."

Nathan didn't hesitate. "To be safe, cremate whats left. Scatter the ashes to the four winds. I want to make sure she stays gone. Thats the only way Valerie can safely inherit the estate."

The doctor was apparently a jack-of-all-tradesorgan harvester and body disposer. They chatted about my disposal as if they were discussing what to do with a stray dog.

Once my fate was settled, they moved on to Valeries recovery. Nathans tone turned ecstatic.

"The eternals organs are incredible," he whispered. "I thought shed have a long, painful rejection period. But she was sitting up the next morning."

"More than that," the doctor added. "The integration is seamless. Her healing rate is off the charts. Shes... vibrant. Its astounding."

"Weve already talked," Nathan said, his voice bright. "In three days, we move to the next step."

The next step? He hadn't mentioned a next step.

I wanted to hear more, but Nathans phone buzzed. It was Valerie. Her voice came through the speakersoft, sweet, and full of life. She wanted a strawberry cake. She was hungry, her appetite was back, and she sounded perfectly healthy.

Nathan sounded like a man possessed by joy. "You little glutton," he teased. "You just get your life back and all you want is cake?"

Valerie giggled. "There are other things I want, but since you aren't here, Im trying not to think about them..."

Nathan smiled, the kind of smile he used to give me. "Im coming over now. Why don't you start thinking about exactly what you want? Hmm?"

Listening to them, my heartor the space where my heart used to beturned to ice.

My body began to regenerate faster. Something was punching through my raw chest, cell by cell, knitting together a new heart.

I felt a ghost of a smile pull at my lips. I could feel the rhythmic thrum of a pulse. The heart that had loved Nathan had been cut out and thrown into another woman. It took the love and the heartbreak with it.

This new heart? It didn't feel anything for him. No pain. No love. Only a cold, calculating desire to see the results of his "miracle."

I waited in that vat for hours, watching my body fill out. Thirty minutes before the doctor was scheduled to come and take me to the crematorium, I shattered the glass and stepped out.

When the doctor found the empty vat, he looked like hed seen a ghost. He scrambled for his phone, his voice shaking as he called Nathan.