Fire spread through the wedding hall while Mo Xuetong waited for death.
The people standing in front of her should have been her family. Instead, they calmly watched as everything she had left was taken away. Her elder sister wore the smile of a victor, the husband she had trusted never looked away, and even the child she desperately wanted to protect was used against her. By the time the flames closed in, hatred had become stronger than fear. If Heaven truly gave second chances, she would never let those people reach the ending they wanted.
When she opened her eyes again, the smell of smoke had disappeared.
She was thirteen years old, lying in bed after falling into a lake only days earlier. Her mother had just died, her father had not remarried, and the household had not yet fallen into complete chaos. The same servants still walked through the courtyard, the same relatives still offered comforting words, and the same faces that once destroyed her life had not yet shown what they were capable of.
Remembering the future made even ordinary conversations difficult.
A greeting carried hidden meaning, a kind gesture invited suspicion, and every accident reminded her of another trap she had overlooked before. Looking back, too many misfortunes had happened at exactly the right time for someone else’s benefit. It stopped feeling like bad luck a long time ago.
She decided not to expose anyone.
People who believed she was still the quiet, sickly young miss lowered their guard without realizing it. Mo Xuetong simply watched, listened, and waited. It did not take long before the maid connected to her fall into the lake made a mistake, giving her the opening she had been hoping for. That small victory changed very little on the surface, but it proved one thing beyond doubt, her memories had not lied.
Knowing she could not face everything alone, she secretly reached out to her late mother’s family before circumstances drifted beyond saving. It was a cautious move, though not everyone welcomed unexpected interference, especially when old interests and family prestige were involved.
Around the same time, an encounter with an unusually charming young nobleman left her more unsettled than relieved. He appeared amused by almost everything, spoke as though nothing surprised him, yet somehow knew far more than he should. Mo Xuetong could not decide whether meeting him would become her greatest stroke of luck or another mistake waiting to happen.
She had returned to change her own ending, but every step backward uncovered something she had never seen in her previous life. The people who betrayed her were only part of the story, and the deeper she searched, the more it seemed that someone had been arranging the board years before she ever became a piece on it.
