Death Progress Bar - Chapter 3 - “Darling”

He took her as payment.He never expected to fall for her fire.When Mira Valente’s brother vanishes with cartel money, the mafia comes knocking—and she’s the price.Cold, ruthless, and untouchably powerful, Jace Romano doesn’t need a wife. But Mira? She’s defiant, sharp-tongued, and everything he wasn’t prepared for.Forced into a marriage she never wanted, Mira enters a world ruled by silence, blood, and shadows. Jace may own her freedom, but not her soul. She refuses to break, even as the lines between hate and desire begin to blur.But when secrets surface, betrayals cut deep, and war brews on all sides, Mira and Jace must choose: destroy each other—or fight to survive something neither of them ever saw coming.A slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers mafia romance filled with power, passion, and the kind of love that could ruin them both… or make them unstoppable.

Imagine being forced to live, after death, as incorporeal bodies trapped in a vast space of nothingness for thousands of years, with nothing to do but exchanging past memories with other cohabitants (read: weirdos). Everybody wanted out, but there was no way to leave the Void…

Until one day, a young man was finally summoned, as a powerful but reluctant mentor, by a bubbly and motivated but completely naive young girl. Baiyi, finally out of the Void, was the only one who could save all of the other 32 souls from their prison and his summoner might just be The Key to their freedom.

However, Baiyi had to use the techniques and abilities the other souls had taught him throughout the years, and together with his own extensive knowledge of anime and game tropes from his shady and dangerous past as an otaku, to face the biggest challenge of them all: training the clumsy young girl he was forced to partner up with… into a competent sorcerer!

This is a story of heroic adventures, cunning strategies and romantic tales. How will our MC thrive in a world completely strange to him? Where will his ambitions and abilities take him in the palace?

- Description from Novelupdates

On the haunted mountain in the kingdom, they say there lived a witch.

She was born a princess. But even before her birth, the priest declared her to be cursed and demanded her death. They poisoned the mother to kill the baby before she gave birth, but the baby was born out of the dead mother—a cursed child.

Again and again, they tried to kill the baby but she miraculously survived every single attempt. Giving up, they abandoned her on the haunted mountain to die but she still survived on that barren land— A witch

‘Why won’t she die?’

Years later, the people finally had enough of the witch and decided to burn the mountain. But someone arrived to her rescue and took her with him from that burning place, because dying was not her destiny even then.

Draven Amaris.

The Black Dragon, who ruled over supernatural beings, the Devil who no one wished to cross a path with. He hated humans but this certain human girl would pull him towards her whenever she was in danger.

‘Is she really a human?’

The devil named this mysteriously tenacious girl “Ember”, a piece of glowing coal in a dying fire.

This is a tale of the man who brings death and the girl who denies it.