My new life has just begun — though to call it a "life" is generous. If this isn't the most disgusting existence Death has ever thrust me into, then it's surely the creepiest.
I woke with blood on my hands. Not figurative blood, not a metaphor — actual blood, warm and sticky, clinging to my skin. I had no memory of how it got there, no recollection of what I had done before waking in this body. All I knew was that my pulse was pounding and the air around me felt… wrong.
The room into which I had awoken was a grotesque work of art in itself — if art could reek of malice. The walls were drenched in what looked like a fresh coat of red paint, but it wasn't paint. The shade was too dark, too irregular, and the smell… gods, the smell was metallic and sickening.
Horrifying images were painted and etched into the walls — twisted portraits of screaming faces, bodies dismembered in impossible ways, eyes staring out in eternal horror. The atmosphere clung to me like a damp shroud, thick with the scent of rot and dried iron. This was the home of an immoral, ruthless creature.
I forced myself to move, my bare feet whispering against the floorboards as I crossed the room. I needed to know who I was this time. On a long table to my left, several chainsaws lay neatly arranged in a row. Their blades were flecked with dried crimson. The far wall was decorated with an assortment of knives and guns, each positioned with obsessive precision, as if the arrangement itself was a form of worship.
In the far left corner of the room sat a small metal bucket. Something about it felt… significant. As I approached, the stench intensified, curling into my nostrils and making my stomach twist. The liquid inside shimmered thickly. It wasn't water. It wasn't paint.
Blood.
I didn't want to jump to the darkest conclusion immediately — I've learned that pessimism can be a dangerous spiral — but the truth was unavoidable. This was human blood. The bucket was full of it, still faintly warm, as if it had been collected not long ago.
And then it happened.
From the surface of the blood, the orb emerged. The same cursed orb that appears after every reincarnation, its glow cold and unfeeling. I hate it, but I depend on it — because it's the only thing that tells me who I've become and what tools I've inherited in this endless game Death forces me to play.
The orb pulsed once, twice, and then the memories came.
His name is Elon Benson.
Thirty-four years old. Born into an ordinary family in a quiet town. But unlike his parents or neighbors, Elon possessed what he called "a special gift" — a natural talent for art. From childhood, he could paint and draw with remarkable skill, rendering life with detail that made people pause.
But the world did not pause for him.
No matter how many pieces he created, no matter how many exhibitions he applied for, no one recognized his work. His paintings were often dismissed as strange, unsettling, or too morbid — though he had never intended them to be. Even his own parents avoided looking at his canvases for too long.
Every rejection cut him deeper. He poured his heart into every stroke, only to have his art shoved aside at every event he hoped would launch his career. The sting of being invisible hardened into resentment.
Then, one night, something changed.
He stumbled across a scene that burned itself into his mind forever. A man had fallen from the top of a high-rise, landing on the hood of a parked car. Elon, stunned, walked toward the wreckage to see if the man was still breathing, intending to call for help.
But what he saw wasn't desperation — it was hunger. The man's eyes, wide with terror and the will to survive, seemed to claw at life itself. That raw, unfiltered desperation lit a fire in Elon's mind. He painted the scene that same night.
The painting sold overseas for an absurd sum, hailed by critics as a haunting masterpiece that "captured human depravity in its purest form." Elon never revealed his identity. The anonymity only made his work more desirable.
From that point on, his art changed — and so did he.
He began seeking subjects in their most vulnerable, desperate moments. He discovered that pain and fear brought out a depth in the human form that no still-life or landscape ever could. Soon, witnessing wasn't enough.
Elon began to create the moments himself.
He lured, trapped, and killed his victims, dismembering them with precision. While they died, he painted them. And when the life had fully drained from their eyes, he used their blood to finish the work.
The bids for his pieces started at a hundred and twenty million and sometimes climbed into the billions. He became a phantom in the art world — untouchable, untraceable, celebrated, and feared by those who whispered the truth behind his creations.
He had killed over fifteen people, immortalizing each of them in his art.
The orb's light dimmed and faded, leaving me with the weight of Elon Benson's memories and skills.
I collapsed to the floor, nausea rising in my throat. My breath came shallow and fast. My hands — his hands — felt heavier now, like they carried the weight of every life he had taken. I stumbled to the restroom and clung to the sink, staring at my reflection.
"How could Death do this to me?" I whispered. "How could she reincarnate me into a psychopath with no humanity left?"
And then, like a blade through the fog, I saw her face.
Rihanat.
Her memory crashed over me, pulling me back into the last life I had lived before this nightmare. The way she had died, the way CEO Governs Simons had spoken of her body — "like a marionette" — still tore through me like shrapnel. My jaw tightened. My grip on the sink turned my knuckles white.
"I'll use this demon to kill a demon," I said to the mirror.
If Death wanted me to suffer by wearing the skin of a murderer, then I would make her regret it. I would take Elon Benson's horrific talents and turn them against someone far worse.
And that someone was Governs Simons.
A man who hid his monstrosity behind a polished smile. To the public, he was the "people's man," a rising star in business, celebrated as the "Rising New Nobility of the 21st Century." But beneath the headlines and charity galas, he was a sadist. He killed for pleasure, manipulating his image to remain untouchable.
His crimes were covered by loyal subordinates and vulnerable scapegoats. If his father — the Chairman of the Simons Group — ever learned of his atrocities, Simons knew he could lose everything.
In my last life, he had been careful. Too careful. When Rihanat and I were murdered, he made his own attorney take the fall.
The attorney had been offered a deal too tempting to refuse: take the blame, serve time, and in return, Simons would not only protect him but make him the CEO of one of their subsidiary companies after his release. He promised to pay for every day served in prison — in cash.
To seal the cover-up, the attorney disposed of the security chip that had recorded the murder, tossing it into a drainage canal. And then he turned himself in, wearing the crime like a tailored suit.
I had seen Simons' face in court. He had smiled. Smiled, while Rihanat's body lay in the morgue. No remorse. Not even a shadow of it.
Now, in this life, I returned to the scene where we had died. The air was still heavy there, as if the moment was trapped in time. I could almost hear her voice. The memory clawed at my chest until I could hardly breathe.
Simons' head office was my next stop. The Simons Group towered over the city, an ugly monument to wealth and corruption. I requested a meeting, but the receptionist told me he was "out on personal business."
"When will he return?" I asked.
"His personal schedules are confidential," she replied without looking up.
What a privilege — to hide behind walls and schedules, to exist untouchable while your sins walk free.
But his time was running out.
I walked out of the building, my reflection flashing briefly in the glass doors. Elon Benson's face looked back at me — calm, cold, and capable of horrors. For the first time since waking here, I didn't look away.
The clock had started ticking. And I intended to make every second count.