My body felt as if someone had taken me apart and snapped me back together wrong, bone by bone, joint by joint. I coughed and spat blood as consciousness dragged me up from the dark.

A white ceiling came into view. The sharp smell of antiseptic flooded my senses. I was in a hospital ward.

Voices echoed from the hallway. Amber's voice cut through them all, loud and theatrical. "It hurts so bad, Rayden! Did I break a rib or something? How else could it hurt this much?"

Rayden groaned. "The doctor said nothing's wrong, didn't he? But my head hurts like hell too."

Amber clung to his arm, her tone turning syrupy. "I wanted to stay hospitalized so I could film a ward vlog for my fans, but that annoying doctor said there were no beds and refused."

The curtain was yanked aside.

Rayden strode in and rapped his knuckles against the metal railing of my bed. "Since you're awake, stop playing dead. Get up and give the bed to Amber. Didn't you hear her?"

He did not care that I was injured. He seized my arm and dragged me off the mattress.

Pain detonated through me, and black crept in at the edges of my vision.

He flung me into the hallway as if I weighed nothing. I hit the floor hard. He stood over me, looked down, and said coldly, "Don't forget. You still owe Amber a life."

"I don't," I said.

Amber was my cousin. Years ago, a house fire tore through our home. Her father ran back inside to save people and was crushed by a falling beam. He died in the flames.

From that day on, my brothers decided I owed her a life. They said that if not for me, Amber would still have a father.

However, I had escaped the fire on my own. The people my uncle had saved were my brothers, not me.

None of that ever mattered. Whenever the subject came up, they repeated the same verdict. I owed her, and I always would.

Thus, I became her shield. Year after year. I lived like something half-dead. They claimed the moral high ground and accepted gratitude for it.

Blood surged up again. I coughed, and red splattered across the floor.

Inside the ward, Amber shrieked, "Oh my god, what's happening? I can't breathe."

She gasped and cried out, "Is this hospital haunted? Where is Viola? Nelson, hurry and drag her back in. If there's a ghost, let it take her life instead."

Nelson grabbed me under the arms and hauled me back onto the bed.

Right on cue, the nurse arrived for rounds. She checked my vitals, frowned, and pushed a painkiller into my IV.

Darkness swallowed me almost at once. The last thing I heard was Amber's relieved sigh. "I knew it. As soon as she came back, I felt better. She's really tough, huh?"

-

I stayed hospitalized for a full month before they finally discharged me.

My fourth brother, Stefan, came to pick me up. His expression was cold. He was famous worldwide as a piano prodigy, always touring and rarely home.

"Today is the anniversary of Amber's father's death," he said. "Justin told me to bring you along. We're going to pay our respects together."

He turned and walked ahead without waiting, moving so fast he seemed determined to lose me.

I dragged my bad leg after him, my luggage biting into my hand.

All four brothers lived shining lives.

Justin ran an information technology company. Nelson was a star lawyer. Rayden raced professionally. Their futures burned bright and unquestioned.

Once, mine almost had too.

I had been trained in dance since I was four. I woke at 5:00 a.m. every morning, collecting bruises, blisters, and blood. Earning an offer from an internationally renowned dance company was my lifelong dream.

That was the year Amber went insane over extreme sports. She was a complete beginner with no training, and she ignored every warning.

She jumped from two miles up. She slammed into a tree, and a branch pierced straight through her thigh.

Every bit of that damage transferred to me. My leg was destroyed, and my dance career ended before it began.

I lowered my head and climbed into Stefan's car. Only after the door shut did I realize Amber was sitting right beside me.

Justin took the driver's seat. Stefan circled around, clearly unwilling to sit next to me, and squeezed in on Amber's other side instead.

He chatted animatedly for the entire drive, smiling as if nothing in the world could touch him.

"Strangest thing," he said with a laugh. "A few days ago, my hand suddenly hurt so badly I couldn't even play piano. My manager panicked and said these hands are worth millions. We ran through a bunch of top hospitals."

He raised his hand and flexed his fingers. "Then it just healed on its own."

I watched his hand in silence.

'So this was 30%. Then what will 65% feel like?' The thought had barely formed when a massive truck veered straight toward us.

Justin slammed on the brakes.

The tires screamed, and I shifted sideways on instinct.

At the exact moment of impact, Stefan grabbed me and yanked me forward, forcing my body between him, Amber, and the oncoming force.

It was the kind of pain that split me open from the inside, as if someone had taken an axe to my body and kept swinging.

[Second pain threshold detected above 90. Pain transfer increased to 65% for bound targets.]

I lay curled on a stretcher, barely aware of where my limbs were or how they were positioned.

Voices collided beside me. My brothers argued with the doctors.

"This young woman is critical," a doctor snapped. "You don't have a single visible injury. You can wait for the next ambulance."

"She's about to die," a nurse added.

"But we're in pain too," one of my brothers insisted. "What if it's internal bleeding? I can barely stand."

The doctors stopped listening and wheeled me straight into the ambulance.

Anesthetic flooded my veins, and the world dissolved.

-

After two hours of surgery, I surfaced slowly, as though hauling myself up from the bottom of deep water.

Outside the ward, familiar voices drifted in. My brothers and Amber sounded confused and uneasy.

"The doctor said there's nothing wrong with us," someone said with a frown. "But just now, it felt like I was being tortured to death."

"I've never felt pain like that in my life."

"Wait," another voice cut in, sharp with panic. "Why does it feel like it's starting again?"

The anesthesia was wearing off. Pain bloomed once more.

In the hallway, their voices shattered into screams.

I lowered my gaze and pressed a fingernail gently into the edge of my bandaged wound. Pain shot through me.

It hurt, but I smiled. If they hurt with me, then it was no longer unbearable.

-

During the two months I stayed in the hospital, everything remained unusually quiet. The intermittent pain kept them subdued.

Even Amber put her extreme challenges on hold for a while. On her livestreams, she cried prettily and told her fans she had survived a car accident. Her "poor cousin" had panicked and dragged her forward to shield her.

"She's too timid," Amber said softly to the camera. "But it's fine. I wasn't seriously hurt. I just had to stay in the hospital for two months."

I was the one used as a shield. She was the one painted as the victim. Her fans attacked me without mercy.

Amber brushed it aside on camera, smiling with practiced generosity. "Let's not talk about her. She is my cousin, after all. And I'm alive, so that's what matters."

Then she leaned closer to the lens, her eyes bright with excitement. "I've decided. Next time, I'm doing a 2,000 feet rope-free bungee jump. Look forward to it, my lovelies."

-

On the day of my discharge, Amber came bouncing over and slung an arm around my shoulders.

"Viola, I've decided to do the rope-free jump today," she said brightly. "2,000 feet. Just whoosh, straight down. Aren't you excited?"

My gaze swept over her glowing face, then over my brothers, all smiles and praise.

I still spoke.

"Rope-free bungee jumping is extremely dangerous," I said quietly. "At 2,000 feet, even a tiny accident would…"

Rayden cut me off with a laugh, "Do you think everyone is as useless as you?"

He turned to Amber with pride. "She's done countless extreme challenges. She knows exactly what she's doing."

Nelson took Amber's bag from her hands, considerate as always. "Amber never goes in unprepared. 2,000 feet is nothing for her."

Stefan flexed the hand he once called priceless and scoffed. "You really are the most annoying one."

Justin, the calmest of them all, gave me a cold look. "Stop trying to scare Amber. No one is going to die."

I lowered my head and addressed the Shared-Sense System in silence. 'If the pain reaches 90% again and I die, the damage will still transfer, right?'

[Yes. Upon the host's death, one bound target will be randomly selected as the substitute.]

Not far away, Amber started her livestream. She handed her bag to Justin, smug and radiant.

Comments flooded the screen.

[Your brothers spoil you so much. Being their little sister must be pure happiness.]

Amber beamed. "Of course. My brothers are amazing to me."

She walked to the edge of the platform and avoided the staff-designated safe zone on purpose. She chose a spot so dangerous that my stomach tightened.

"Brothers," she called, arms spread wide. "Wait for my success!"

She jumped without hesitation or fear. Her body plunged in a graceful arc and missed the safety net by inches.

A dull, horrifying impact followed as flesh struck rock.

At the same instant, my vision went black. Crushing pain detonated in my chest. My body failed me and collapsed backward.

[Third pain threshold detected above 90. Pain transfer increased to 100%.]

[Host detected at the brink of death. Selecting one bound target as a substitute.]

Screams ripped through the air.

A mangled, blood-soaked body slammed into view.

Someone shrieked, "Someone's dead!"