The Price He Pays for My Seven Deaths
I watched him inject a needle into my vein, murmuring, "She'll never know I'm taking a little blood." Then he drove a bone marrow aspirator into my hip. "Just a sample for Willow. To give her a new life. It's fine."
I struggled against the restraints, a silent scream in my throat. He held me down and plunged a scalpel into my chest, methodically removing my heart.
He caressed my agonized face, whispering gently, "Sera, don't hate me. You can be reborn. But Willow only has one life. Your heart for hers is a worthy trade."
I died and reborn in that room. Six times. A cycle of torment.
Until the day he looked at my unblemished skin and said, "Willow loves beauty. I can't let her live with scars. This is our fault. We owe her this. I promise, this is the last time."
I curled on the cold floor and laughed a hollow, chilling laugh.
He didn't know. Every piece of me he harvested, he traded with a piece of his own soul.
1
The surgical light was a blinding sun. Under its glare, Damian’s long, elegant fingers gripped the scalpel, slicing through the layers of skin and muscle over my chest.
White-hot pain exploded through my body, a nova of agony that threatened to swallow me whole.
Damian’s eyes were fixed on my heart with a covetous gleam, yet his voice was a lover’s murmur. “Don’t be afraid, Sera. Just close your eyes and sleep. When you wake up, it will all be over.”
“Willow’s heart is failing,” he continued, his voice laced with a tragic urgency. “She can’t wait any longer.”
Tears I couldn’t control slipped from the corners of my eyes. For the sake of Willow, he was going to kill me. Again.
I stared down at the gaping wound, at the flesh peeled back without a single drop of blood, and my whole body trembled. “Damian, you’ve already taken every organ I can spare and given it to her. My heart is all I have left. Without it, I’ll be nothing more than a living corpse. I’m begging you, don’t do this to me. Don’t be so cruel.”
A gentle, almost beautiful smile touched his lips. “Sera, I know Willow is your adopted sister, but she grew up with you. Don’t be so selfish.”
“You have the gift of rebirth,” he reasoned, his voice calm and hypnotic. “These things… they mean nothing to you. But to Willow? They mean life itself.”
I bit my lip so hard I thought it would break, but the pain was nothing compared to the chasm opening in my chest. I couldn’t understand. I would never understand how the man who once treated me like spun glass, who swore he’d never let me feel a moment of pain, could now carve me up piece by piece, over and over again.
The truth, of course, was simple.
He just didn’t love me that much.
My vision swam with unshed tears as I made one last plea. “But I’m made of flesh and blood, Damian. I can still feel pain!”
To ensure the "transplant material" was perfect, he never used anesthetic. Every time I died, the agony was absolute. A bone-deep torment that repeated itself every few days.
There is no hell, but I was living in it.
Damian looked down, and for a moment, his eyes were chips of ice. “Sera, it’s just a little pain. It will be over in a moment. But if Willow dies, she’s gone from this world forever.”
His face clouded over, lost in a memory. He leaned against the wall, his voice rising to a tortured cry. “Willow loved me, but I chose you. If we hadn’t gotten together, she never would have been so heartbroken, never would have gone out drinking that night. That fire… it never would have happened.”
“When they pulled her out, her organs were failing. We did this to her, Sera! We’re the ones who destroyed her!”
The absurdity of it almost made me laugh. He was one of a dozen men who orbited Willow, yet he’d cast himself as the tragic hero of her unrequited love story.
The fire? Willow had been partying with a group of shady guys, came home high as a kite, and set the fire herself. She had minor burns, nothing close to organ failure.
These were basic facts, things even I knew. There was no way Damian, a world-class surgeon, didn't know the truth.
He simply chose not to. Because in his heart, Willow mattered more.
So he sacrificed me on the altar of his belated, manufactured love.
He came back to my side, his expression shifting back to its usual placid warmth. He even leaned down and pressed a kiss to my sweat-drenched forehead. “I’m sorry I yelled, Sera.”
“Be a good girl now. Close your eyes. It will be quick.”
My eyes widened in terror as he reached into the cavity of my chest. His hands closed around my heart, and with a sickening, final twist, he pulled.
My body felt like it was being torn in two. I convulsed on the table, a scream ripping through the sterile air as sweat and tears streamed down my face.
The familiar suffocation returned, an invisible hand closing around my throat, squeezing the life from me. My vision blurred. My lungs burned for air.
Through the haze, I saw Damian place my heart into a sterile container, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. He left nothing but a black, gaping hole where my life used to be.
My sight faded to black. Just before the end, I thought I heard him on the phone.
“Willow, don’t you worry. I’m going to give you the most perfect gift.”
I tried to speak, to scream, to curse his name, but no sound came. Darkness consumed me.
And then, a cold, mechanical voice, the System that had long been dormant inside me, finally spoke.
“You bound yourself to me to save his life once. Was it worth it?”
2
I don’t know how much time passed. When I opened my eyes again, Damian was standing over me, meticulously stitching the wound on my chest closed.
His technique was flawless, the sutures perfect.
The pain was gone, replaced by a hollow numbness where my heart should have been. He gently wiped the few stray smudges from my skin and lifted me into his arms.
“It’s over, Sera. It’s all over. Let’s go home.”
His voice was soft, reassuring. “Willow is being discharged today. She’ll be so happy to see you.”
My eyes were swollen and raw. A stiff, dead smile spread across my face.
Home? I didn’t have a home. The beautiful house that once held the warmth of our life together was now his and Willow’s love nest.
I tried to twist away, but he held me firmly in the passenger seat of the car. “Behave,” he commanded softly.
I was too weak to fight. I let him drive me back to that place.
As we walked in, Willow emerged, her face partially hidden by a silk scarf. “Sister,” she said, her voice frail. “I’ve missed you so much.”
I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. I just stared at my own feet.
Damian’s finger jabbed into my freshly stitched wound. “Seraphina.”
Pain flared, and I crumpled to the floor.
Instantly, he was all concern, scooping me up, his hands checking me over with frantic care. “Sera, are you hurt? Did you fall?”
That single, hypocritical question made all the humiliation, all the agony, curdle into a toxic knot in my gut. I was broken.
Damian sighed and turned to Willow, stroking her cheek. “Willow, why don’t you go rest. I need to prepare your gift.”
Willow cast a timid, fearful glance at me before turning and disappearing down the hall.
Damian carried me to a room I’d never seen before, a room locked from the outside. The air was thick with the suffocating smell of bitter herbs.
He lifted the heavy lid off a massive wooden tub. “In you go, Sera,” he whispered in my ear.
I looked down into the tub, and a bloodcurdling scream tore from my throat.
It was filled with a writhing, slithering mass of venomous creatures.
Snakes, spiders, centipedes… a tangled knot of fangs and pincers, all biting and crawling over each other.
I shook so violently I thought my bones would shatter, my face as white as a sheet.
The dim light cast his face in haunting shadows. He stepped closer. “Sera, don’t be afraid.”
His voice was a soothing balm over a festering wound. “This is a special treatment. An ancient, forbidden ritual. It’s the only way to heal your scars.”
“Once you endure this,” he promised, “your skin will be reborn. Perfect.”
A wave of nausea and cold dread washed over me. I stumbled back. “So… you’re waiting for my skin to become perfect… so you can graft it onto Willow?”
Damian nodded, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world.
I fought back the terror, the rage, and my voice came out as a bitter sneer. “Why go to all this trouble? If it’s such a great method, why not let Willow try it herself?”
He shook his head, his expression earnest and pleading. “Don’t say such things, Sera.”
“It’s a tub full of poison. How could Willow possibly endure such agony?” He took my hand and placed it over his own heart. “But you’re different. My Sera is strong. You’ve survived losing your heart, your kidneys. What’s a little more pain?”
His lips were at my ear, his whisper a hypnotic poison. “Please, Sera. I’m begging you.”
“I swear to you, this is the last time. I just want to give Willow the most perfect twentieth birthday gift.”
I stood frozen, the empty space in my chest throbbing with a phantom pain, as if poison thorns were growing from the inside out. My lips trembled, but no more tears would come.
“Damian, Willow is flesh and blood, but so am I!” My voice was a raw, broken thing. “I don’t die, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain!”
“You’ve given her everything that was mine. Now you want to peel off my very skin? How can you be so monstrously cruel?”
A crushing weight settled on my chest, and I collapsed. “Willow’s accident has nothing to do with me. I won’t give her anything else.”
I looked at him, my eyes bloodshot, a final plea in my voice. “This isn’t for me, Damian. It’s for you.”
“If I die at your hands a seventh time, the System will initiate a settlement. A final accounting. You will pay a price you cannot even imagine.”
3
Damian stared at me, his expression unreadable. Then, a faint, condescending smile touched his lips.
“Oh, Sera. You’re not behaving. To think you’d invent such a ridiculous story just to avoid helping Willow.”
“If you insist on being difficult,” he sighed, “then I’m afraid I’ll have to punish you.”
He pressed a button on the wall, and a moment later, a servant led a dog into the room.
My breath caught in my throat. “Goldie!”
The old golden retriever caught my scent, his tail thumping wildly as he tried to run to me, but Damian held him fast.
Damian stroked the dog’s head, his voice soft with regret. “If it wasn’t for Willow, I would never dream of hurting him. Goldie has been with you since you were a child. He’s family.”
“But if you refuse…”
His gentle eyes suddenly hardened into flint. In one swift, brutal motion, he brought a knife down. One of Goldie’s ears fell to the floor.
The dog let out a piercing shriek of pain and confusion, blood matting his golden fur. He had never imagined his master, his loyal companion, could do such a thing.
“NO!”
My scream merged with Goldie’s agonized cries. “Damian, what have you become?! Have you forgotten? During the earthquake, when you were buried in the rubble, it was Goldie who dug you out! He shredded his paws to save you! How can you treat him like this? You’re a monster!”
A flicker of something—pity, perhaps—crossed his face, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “If you weren’t being so stubborn, Goldie would be living out his days in peace. The one causing his pain right now… isn’t that you?”
His shameless logic stole the air from my lungs. “Don’t you understand? I’m trying to save you!”
“If you force me to die a seventh time, you will regret it for all eternity!”
He just shook his head, idly flipping the bloody knife in his hand. “All I want is to grant Willow one wish. I will regret nothing, no matter the cost.”
And with that, he plunged the knife into Goldie’s eye.
Another horrifying scream echoed in the small room. A thick, red tear trickled down the dog’s face.
I stood paralyzed, hate growing inside me like a cancer, a black and living thing.
“Still not convinced?” Damian sighed, and drove the knife into Goldie’s other eye.
“Stop! Please, stop!” I sobbed, crawling to Goldie’s side.
Damian’s voice was flat, clinical. “Don’t forget, I’m the best surgeon in the world. I know ten thousand ways to keep him alive in excruciating pain.”
I pulled the trembling, bleeding dog into my arms, holding him tight.
“Fine,” I whispered, my voice dead. “I’ll do it.”
Then, I closed my eyes and stepped into the tub.
Damian let out a breath of relief and sealed the lid shut. “I’m sorry you had to go through this, Sera.”
In the suffocating darkness, the creatures sensed my warmth. They swarmed over me, their fangs and stingers sinking into my flesh.
This was a new kind of pain. Worse than being flayed, worse than being dismembered. It was a searing, soul-shredding agony. My head felt like it was splitting open as their venom flooded my system, a million needles driving straight into my marrow.
Outside, the blind dog could only hear my muffled screams. He hurled himself against the wooden tub, biting and clawing at it, trying desperately to save me.
It was useless.
As the pain reached an unbearable crescendo, I closed my eyes for the last time.
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