Shen Qingci had died once.
She died on her wedding day, at her sister’s hands, with her fiancé’s back turned toward her.
As she lay dying, someone laughed in her ear and said:
“Dear sister, from beginning to end, you were nothing but a disposable character in a book.”
Then she heard a voice from the void:
“Correcting the plot. Preparing to reset.”
When she woke again, sunlight fell across her floral bedsheets, and her phone showed the date: the day before her wedding.
She thought she had been reborn.
But a mysterious text message told her:
“I’m not helping you. I’m looking for answers, too.”
The voice that called itself “the Ruler” told her:
“You are all my chess pieces.”
