Chapter 1

I was the only one in the world with the power to defy death, an innate conduit to life itself.

Before a man's body could fully stiffen, I could conceive his child. And as that precious life faded within me, the man would be brought back from the grave.

In my last life, I used this very power to save my fiancé, Tristan Thorne, after a car accident left his organs failing.

He awoke, overwhelmed with gratitude, vowing to marry no one but me.

But on the very day I was about to give birth, he personally tied me to an operating table.

Our child was forcibly cut from my womb. He branded our baby a "demonic spawn" and threw them into a shark tank, where they were ripped apart and devoured.

I screamed, demanding to know why he betrayed me.

His expression was chilling:

"Now that Brooke is carrying my child, what use are you and this… *thing*?"

"If you hadn't faked being an innate conduit and meddled in our lives back then, Brooke and I would have been married ages ago!" He had someone yank out my oxygen tube, letting me suffocate to death.

My family, too, was thrown into prison by him, where they died consumed by hatred.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day Tristan was on death's door, the day his mother begged me to save him.

I heard Mrs. Thorne weeping, asking if the Life-Exchange Ritual truly could bring Tristan back. I bowed slightly, declining:

"There's no such thing as an innate conduit in this world, Mrs. Thorne. That's just an old folk tale."