When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Claire's eyelids. They were swollen like walnuts and shadowed with dark circles she couldn't hide.

"Maeve! You're finally awake! You have no idea how terrified I was when Kamila called me. I've already lost Mom! I can't lose you too!"

She threw herself into my arms and sobbed like a child.

The doctor, who'd just walked in, couldn't help but say, "You two seem really close. Ms. Dawson, when you were sent to the ICU last night, your sister waited outside the entire night."

Hearing this, Claire pulled away from my arms. Her cheeks flushed. She wiped her tears and gave a sheepish smile.

I noticed that her arms were perfectly fine, while my right one was in a cast.

My heart sank. So, it wasn't some kind of mutual damage. Only her injuries would transfer to me.

By the door, Claire was already peppering the doctor with questions about how to take care of me.

With how worried she looked, anyone passing by would've assumed she cared for me deeply.

I hesitated for a second, then called her over. "Claire, go home and get some rest. If you get sick too, then I'll really have no one to look after me. The nurses and Kamila can take care of me here. Just listen to me, okay?"

When I saw the protest in her eyes, my voice grew stern.

She finally gave in and told me to call her right away if anything happened.

After Claire left, I asked the doctor to run a full workup on me, especially my heart. But the results weren't what I'd hoped for.

The report said I was perfectly healthy. My heart, in particular, looked flawless on every scan.

I checked the date. I had only three days left before the day I'd fall and break my ribs, according to my past life.

First, I ordered the security team to keep a close watch on Claire. Without my permission, she wasn't allowed to step outside the house.

Then, I took a red-eye flight overseas to consult the most renowned cardiologist I could find, but he still couldn't find a single thing wrong with me.

On the way back, I detoured through Havenria to consult the most renowned occult expert in the city, hoping he could explain what was happening to me.

He insisted there was nothing supernatural attached to me at all and told me to just go home and get some rest. The chest pain was probably just grief from losing my mom. He said that if it got worse, I should see a doctor.

Neither science nor the supernatural could explain what was happening to me. So, I boarded my flight home with worry weighing me down.

The whole way back, I replayed everything from my previous life, trying not to miss a single detail.

Even as I stepped out of the cabin, I was still wondering how that phenomenon, which neither science nor superstition could explain, had happened.

Just then, my phone rang, cutting off my thoughts.

On the other end, a panicked, trembling voice came through. "Maeve, Claire is gone!"

I stopped walking on the jet bridge.

In the next second, my foot missed the edge of the step and I went down hard.

Once again, I ended up bruised from head to toe, with five fractured ribs.

I ended up back in the hospital. And this time, it clearly scared Claire half to death.

She cried so hard, and she was apologizing over and over. "I'm so sorry, Maeve. This is all my fault. If I hadn't insisted on fulfilling Mom's last wish, this never would've happened to you. I'm so sorry..."

In my previous life, right up until the day I died, she never once slipped up about the injury-transfer phenomenon. It always left me wondering whether she truly knew about it.

She was my only living family member. I didn't want to think the worst of her.

But she just wouldn't stop crying. Her voice seemed to drill into my skull. Between that and the ridiculous way I kept getting hurt, my patience snapped.

"Enough! Why did you have to go skydiving? Didn't I tell you to stay home?

"Mom's dead! Are her last words really that important to you? Important enough to make you throw your life away?

"I had bodyguards guarding the house around the clock. How did you even get out?"

It wasn't just bodyguards watching her. From the day I came back, I'd had cameras installed in every corner of the house. And yet, not a single camera caught how she slipped out of that house.

Claire suddenly went quiet, and her sobbing stopped. Tears hung from her lashes as she stared at my bandaged face in stunned silence.

"Maeve, what are you saying? That's our mom! How can you... say something like that?"

The last few words were barely a whisper. It was as if she might break if I pushed any further.

"And how did you even know I went skydiving? Were you spying on me?"

Guilt flickered in my eyes, but I kept my voice firm. "You only need to know that I had your best interests in mind. Now, answer me! How did you get out of the house?"

A flicker of hurt passed over her face. When she spoke again, her voice sounded low and defeated. "I used the dog hole we dug when we were kids. I crawled out through it."

Hearing this, I was stunned.

Our parents had divorced. Claire went with Mom, and I stayed with Dad.

It wasn't until Dad suddenly went bankrupt and Mom fought for custody that I moved in with them, and we started living under the same roof.

Back then, when they first brought me home, I was moody and volatile. I was only willing to play with stray dogs in the yard. But Mom had a strict no-pets rule.

When Claire caught me sneaking food out to a puppy, she didn't tell on me. We dug that hole along the fence. It was one of the few peaceful memories we ever shared.

I'd had the bodyguards watching her so closely because I'd wanted proof she wasn't the one doing this. I wanted to clear her in my own mind.

But now, everything was pointing straight at the answer I least wanted to see.

Lying in my hospital bed, I called out her name. "Claire Dawson."

She straightened up at once. Her spine snapped rigid, and her eyes were wide with alarm.

"If you still think of me as your sister, then from today on, you'll stay home. You won't go anywhere."

"W... Why?" she asked.

I shot her a look, and she immediately shrank back, nodding like a kid who got scolded.

"If Mom shows up in your dreams again, tell me first. I'll handle it."

To keep an eye on her myself, I signed my own discharge papers and went home to recover, ignoring the doctor's objections.

The moment I got back home, I took away her ID card and her passport. I also called the airport and put a travel flag on her name so she couldn't leave the country.

I even called a friend who worked with cruise lines and warned him not to let Claire board a ship. If they saw her, they were to send her straight back.

My friend laughed and said I was the most overprotective sister he'd ever heard of.

He had no idea this was the only way I knew how to stay alive.

Just when I finally managed to fall asleep, I woke up from a cold that felt like it was freezing me from the inside out.

My whole body was shaking, uncontrollably. The tears stinging my eyes froze on my cheeks the instant they fell.

I yanked the blanket tighter around myself and told the bodyguard to turn the heater all the way up.

Even when the room temperature climbed to a stifling 95 degrees Fahrenheit, I was still shivering, while the bodyguard in the same room had gone pale and was sweating through his shirt.

A cold dread curled in my gut.

"Where's Claire?" I asked.

The bodyguard dropped to his knees with a heavy thud. "I'm sorry. She's..."

I closed my eyes. My last bit of strength was swallowed by fury.

"Are you all useless? I'm paying you 18,000 dollars a month, and you still can't keep track of her? If you don't want the job, then get out!"

I reached for the lamp on the side table to throw it at him, but my hands were so numb from the cold that it slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.

"What are you still kneeling there for? Get out and find her! Or do you want me to say please?"

The stunned bodyguard seemed to finally snap out of it and bolted from the room.

I pulled out my phone with stiff fingers. The tracker app I'd installed on Claire showed her little dot already sitting at the southernmost point of the map.

I dialed her number, and the call connected at once.

On the other end, all I could hear was the roar of a brutal wind.

In that same instant, it felt like that wind was cutting straight through my bones.

"Claire, stop right there! Come back! Go find shelter now! Don't stay outside!"

Her voice wavered through the line, shredded by the freezing wind. "I can't, Maeve! Mom said this is her last wish! Once I finish this for her, she can finally move on!"

The wind rushed into my mouth. It was so cold that I could barely force the words out. "You... You knew..."

The line cut off with a dead beep before I could finish.

I stumbled and crawled to the drawer where I kept her passport and ID. My numb, shaking hands knocked everything onto the floor. Papers were scattered everywhere.

The passport and ID she'd handed to me that day were fakes.

So, she'd known all along that every harm would end up being doled out on me. She'd prepared for it, right down to forged documents.

And right up until now, she'd played dumb as if none of it had anything to do with her.

She really was trying to kill me. But I didn't understand.

We were both healthy. There was no dispute over what we'd inherited. Why would she want to kill the only blood relative she had left?

I collapsed on the floor and let out a hoarse, broken scream.

That was when a single sheet of paper slipped into my line of sight.

The moment I saw it, every scattered detail I'd ignored before clicked together.

In that instant, I finally understood why Mom only appeared in Claire's dreams, why every injury that was meant for her ended up on me, and why she had been so determined to kill me.

Every last piece of the truth finally fell into place.