1 The Sixth Life
Roxana had always dreamed that marriage would make her life perfect and surrounded by happiness.
However, she realized that her dream was just false wishful thinking.
Something that she could never achieve or come into her life.
"Until when do I have to live like this?"
Roxana tried to drag her wounded body to the balcony of her room. Her walking was shaky due to the broken bone in her right leg.
Her face was covered in bruises, while numerous lash marks decorated her hands and feet.
Blood dripped from her undried wounds and stained her white nightgown with reddish patches.
Roxana gritted her teeth repeatedly. She tried to endure the pain in her body, but the pain was too intense that she whimpered every time she moved her body.
When Roxana reached the balcony, she tried to climb the guardrail and stand on it.
"The moonlight looks bright," she whispered to herself.
Roxana's head looked up into the sky, gazing at the night sky adorned with a beautiful full moon. The moonlight washed over her body as if the moon wanted to give her mercy.
However, compassion was unable to touch her heart anymore because her body and soul had been broken by repeatedly living a miserable life.
Roxana had lived five times.
For five lifetimes, she had to face a painful death.
She already had enough, the only thing she wanted was death, but God seemed to have such hatred for her that God wouldn't allow her to die peacefully.
"Madam, what are you doing there?"
Roxana heard the man's voice from behind her. His voice sounded soft and serene, but she knew that man was just pretending to be such a kind person.
Roxana didn't even hear the sound of the door opening, but the man was suddenly standing behind her.
Without looking back, she could already guess the man's identity.
He was Izekiel Larethian, the Grand Wizard of the black tower and her Husband.
He was also the person who brought calamity into her life.
During the five iterations of her life, Roxana had tried hard to prevent her marriage to Izekiel. However, he always became the reason for her death, with or without marrying her.
Izekiel was someone who had a saintly image in society. His speech was gentle, and he always showed compassion toward others.
However, they did not know that all the gentleness and kindness shown by Izekiel was just a falsity.
The man was a demon hiding behind the mask of an angel.
He was even capable of cruelly torturing his wife, then going up to the altar to teach virtue to his followers.
"Do you want to run away?" Izekiel said, "We've only been married for two years, but you're acting like this. Madam, it would bother me if you disobeyed me."
Instead of answering Izekiel's question, Roxana laughed loudly. Her voice sounded shrill as if she was mocking Izekiel for being able to pretend to be a loving husband and caring for his wife.
A few moments later, Roxana stopped laughing. Her smile turned into a straight line, and her gaze was as sharp as an eagle looking to kill its prey.
"I wasn't planning to run away," she claimed.
For two years, Izekiel kept her locked up in a room on the black tower's top floor. The building towered so high that she could see the clouds from the balcony of her room.
Roxana had never stepped out of the room since she married Izekiel.
However, her husband still left her balcony door open as if he wanted to show that although she could view the entire Vithia Kingdom's territory from above, she still couldn't escape.
"Izekiel." Roxana's voice sounded flat as she called out her husband's name.
Roxana turned around, and she looked at the source of her miserable five lifetimes with a blank stare. Whereas she had always cried and been frightened whenever faced with him in the past, now her emotions had died along with her soul.
"In the next life, I will not marry you." Roxana's voice sounded as cold as a frozen lake.
The Grand Wizard hadn't responded yet, but Roxana had already thrown her body backward. Her feet were no longer on the guardrail, and her body was floating in the air.
The wind blew fiercely, crashing into her falling body at high speed. Roxana knew that all the bones in her body would be crushed when she hit the ground.
She knew that no one would save her life.
However, she was not afraid at all.
Death seemed to be another Monday for her.
Her sapphire eyes gazed at the full moon that seemed to get bigger and brighter. "In my sixth life, I will try to die without feeling any pain."
Roxana slowly closed her eyes as the sky seemed to be getting farther away, and the ground was getting closer.
• • •
GASP!
Roxana gasped in shock as soon as she opened her eyes, as if something had just pulled her soul from a distant place and then forced it into a container.
Her breathing was heavy and cold sweat soaked her trembling body. She then sat on the bed and realized she was in her chamber.
Not the room in the black tower, but her bedroom in the Duke of Oberon's manor, her father who had given his daughter to the Grand Wizard.
Roxana got off her bed and ran to the vanity mirror. She held her breath briefly as she ensured she had returned to her 19-year-old body.
There were no bruises on her face, and her body was not covered in lash wounds yet.
Roxana was reborn into the past for the sixth time after experiencing a miserable death.
She felt her legs go limp, and her knees fell to the floor. She tried to catch her breath and looked at her hands, which were trembling violently after experiencing her fifth death.
[If I fail again in this life, then I will end up in the black tower for the sixth time.]
Roxana lowered her head and clutched her chest as fear began to run through her heart and mind.
[What if I die more miserably in this life?]
Slap!
She immediately slapped her cheeks as bad thoughts began to haunt her head.
She had to maintain her composure in order to think of a way to avoid pain in her sixth life.
Roxana had already promised herself that she would not marry Izekiel in her sixth life to no longer soak in misery, and she was determined to fulfill her promise.
She tried to stand slowly. She clenched her hands tightly and tried hard to stop shaking.
For a few moments, she stood still in her dark room. When she turned her gaze to the window, she could see the full moon perched above the sky, and its light was trying to enter her room through the window.
[In this life, I won't try to escape.]
This time, Roxana would stop acting like a hunted animal that wanted to escape from a predator because she would try to become a predator instead.
She would hunt down the people who had made her suffer for five lifetimes. Roxana wanted to shred their flesh, burn their bones, and turn their blood into a pool of blood.
However, to do all that, she needed great power.
The power that could surpass the Grand Wizard.
Roxana might not have that much power, but she knew of an entity that could surpass the power of the Grand Wizard.
The Demon.
In this life, Roxana was determined to summon the entity from hell and make a contract with it.
In the previous five lives, Roxana's information regarding summoning the Demon was very limited; she thought that summoning the Demon required a lot of magic energy.
However, she was wrong. All people could summon the Demon only by sacrificing the summoner's blood.
The stronger the misery and grudge that struggled in the summoner's heart, the stronger the demon that would come.
Roxana then slashed her wrist with a fruit knife. She winced as the stinging sensation ran through her skin.
She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes briefly before finally pressing the wound on her wrist to let the blood flow fast.
The blood from her wrist then dripped onto the floor surface. Roxana watched as the red liquid fell drop by drop until it finally became a pool of blood that littered the white marble floor.
Her fingers then moved, drawing a pentagram symbol surrounded by ancient letters.
Those ancient letters had been read by Roxana many times since her third birth, so the shapes of the letters and their layout were deeply imprinted in her memory.
Her lips slowly moved as she knelt before the pentagram made of blood.
She started to chant, "Demons of hell, hear my voice. Darkness has swallowed the light, and anger has taken away my happiness. Through the blood sacrifice of my suffering, I summon you from hell ..."
"... Demon!"
