Chapter: Shelter for a TraitorSORA’S POVThe kettle clicks off by itself. The sound feels too loud in the small kitchen, like a signal flare. I leave it for a second anyway, watching the steam curl toward the ceiling where the light bulb hums faintly, overworked and underpaid.He sits at the table with his hands flat on the wood, fingers spread as if to prove they’re empty. He’s younger than I expected. People who help design harm usually are. His coat is still on. He hasn’t decided yet whether he’s staying.“You can take it off,” I say. “Or don’t. It’s your nervous system.”He gives a thin, apologetic smile and keeps the coat. “I won’t be long.”“No one ever is,” I say, pouring water into two chipped mugs. “Drink. Your hands are shaking.”“They weren’t before.”“They always were,” I say, sliding the mug toward him. “You just stopped pretending.”He wraps his fingers around the ceramic, as if it might float away—the teabag string trembles. I sit opposite him, the table between us scarred with old knife marks from
Last Updated: 2025-12-19
Chapter: The Other AuthorityZARA’S POVThe studio lights are warmer than they need to be. They always are. Warmth reads as trust on camera. I learned that years ago, back when diplomacy still pretended it was about tone instead of leverage.My inbox refreshes itself without my asking. One subject line sits at the top, unblinking.DRAFT … IPA CHARTER (CONFIDENTIAL)I don’t open it at first. I let the producers murmur behind the glass. I let the feeds stack on the side wall…maps, headlines, faces waiting to be framed. I breathe in recycled air and count to five, then tap.The document unfolds like a hymn written by lawyers. Careful. Gentle. Words like safeguard, continuity, harm reduction. I scroll. My jaw tightens.“Read this,” I say.Mara, my producer, rolls her chair closer. “You’re live in twelve.”“I know. Read it anyway.”She scans, lips moving silently. Halfway down, she stops. “That clause…”“Preauthorization,” I say. “Buried under emergency language.”“That lets them act without consent,” she says.“Only
Last Updated: 2025-12-18
Chapter: Fracture LinesMITCHELL’S POVThe chamber hums before anyone speaks. Translation devices whisper to one another like insects arguing over a lamp. Polished wood reflects faces upward, turning expressions into ghosts beneath chins. I sit still and let the room settle on me the way weather settles on a coastline…slow, inevitable, already carrying damage.“Custodial authority,” says the delegate from the North Bloc, tapping the word on her tablet as if it might bruise. “We need clarity. Who holds it? For how long?”“Open registry,” counters a man with a flag pin I don’t recognise. “Anything less is concealment by another name.”A third voice cuts in, sharp as a paper edge. “Emergency stewardship. You’re ignoring emergencies.”I note who leans forward when certain words land, who looks away, who smiles too late. Faces tell the truth long before mouths decide to help.“We can define terms all morning,” I say, keeping my voice level. “Definitions won’t hold if they’re built to win instead of to work.”A ri
Last Updated: 2025-12-17
Chapter: The Voice That StayedEZREN’S POVDawn finds the rooftop before the city remembers how loud it wants to be—metal gutters bead with cold. My breath fogs and thins. Somewhere below, a delivery truck growls awake and then quiets, as if embarrassed.I replay the transmission again.“Stay.”It’s a thin sound. No reverb, no ornament. I run it through three decoders in sequence, then in parallel, then stripped down to bare waveform. Each time it comes back the same: no routing header, no subcarrier tags, no watermark that would make Devon’s teeth grind. It’s as undecorated as a pebble.I whisper it out loud, testing it against my own mouth. “Stay.”The word doesn’t change. It doesn’t bloom. It doesn’t lean.“That’s not fair,” I tell the air. “You don’t get to be simple.”I lean against the railing and tap it with my knuckle. The sound rings, fades. I tap again, listening for patterns the way you do when you’re pretending not to hope. The city answers with its usual mess…water hammer in a pipe, a distant laugh, th
Last Updated: 2025-12-16
Chapter: Keep PeopleEZREN’S POVThe rooftop is quiet in the way only cities manage… never silent, just breathing. Vent fans hum. Somewhere a train sighs and goes on. The lights below don’t flicker as much as they pulse, a thousand little lives insisting on being seen.I sit on the concrete with my back against the low wall and think of the child’s question.If you can keep songs, can you keep people?I fold my hands and stare out. Each light is a story. Not preserved, not indexed. Lived. I try the answer again, the one I didn’t say.“We keep what must be chosen,” I whisper to no one.The wind doesn’t argue.Mitchell’s voice drifts up from memory, sharp and calm. Consent is the shield. Aveline’s quieter counterpoint follows: Verification is a form of respect. Devon’s laugh, brittle and bright: If they’re scared of the mess, they’ll try to vacuum it.I smile despite myself.My comm buzzes softly. Not urgent. Not an alarm. Just a reminder that I am still part of a web. I ignore it for a moment and stand, br
Last Updated: 2025-12-15
Chapter: Will You?AVELINE’S POVThe community hall smells of smoke and citrus oil and something older I can’t name. Wood polished by generations, not committees. I arrive early, but not first. Elders are already there, drifting in through side doors, moving slowly, deliberately, as if time itself has learned to wait for them.They bring food wrapped in cloth. They bring folded story-scarves, stitched with symbols I recognize only partially. They bring nothing digital.I bow my head. Not because it’s protocol, but because it feels correct.“You are the archivist,” one of them says. A woman with white braids bound in red thread. Her eyes are sharp and amused. “You look younger than your arguments.”I smile faintly. “My arguments had better be younger than your stories.”That earns a low chuckle from somewhere near the wall.We sit in a circle. No podium. No screen. My equipment stays closed at my feet for now, a quiet animal waiting its turn.The matriarch arrives last. Everyone stands. She is smaller th
Last Updated: 2025-12-14
From Cursed Scum to Supreme Sovereign
On the night of Kael Draven’s birth, the skies split in two. The moon turned blood-red, the Veil of Aegis—the sacred barrier protecting the kingdom of Eryndor—shattered, and demons poured into the realm, slaughtering thousands. His mother died in childbirth, and the High Hierophant Malrick, leader of the Sanctum of Luminar, declared the newborn child the source of the calamity.
From that moment, Kael was branded the “cursed child,” a walking omen of doom. His noble family disowned him, his name erased from their records, while his younger brother Aelric was exalted as the chosen heir. Kael grew up in chains, spat upon by peasants and nobles alike, humiliated in public festivals, and treated as less than a dog. His only friend was Fang, a scarred stray dog who shared his pain.
Yet fate had other plans. During the grand trial, where Kael was condemned to die by being devoured by a monstrous beast in the royal arena, the curse mark on his body ignited. A fading celestial spirit, Elyndra, bonded with him, and his soul unlocked the Eclipse Codex, a divine system hidden within the mark. What the world called a curse revealed itself as a path to power.
Despised by all, betrayed by blood, and hunted by the temple, Kael will rise from scorned trash to savior of Eryndor. The curse they fear is the only hope of salvation against Umbraxis, the Eternal Hunger—the primordial evil sealed at Kael’s birth, now stirring once again.
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Chapter: The Beast Unleashed“Fang,” Kael whispered, his voice drowned by the restless murmur rolling through the crowd. He knelt beside the pup’s broken body, black fire flickering around his trembling hands as they brushed matted fur.A faint sound answered him—a whimper, so fragile it might have been imagined. One amber eye cracked open, dull with pain yet fixed on Kael with stubborn will.Relief cut through Kael like cool water on fevered skin. “Alive,” he breathed. “Stay with me. Please.”Fang’s tail shifted once before stilling again. Barely breathing, but breathing.In the corner of Kael’s sight, symbols flickered—shards of meaning forming words etched into the air:[PAIN ENDURED → STRENGTH +1]Simple, yet undeniable. Somewhere deep inside, Kael understood… every lash, every bruise, every year lived beneath contempt had not broken him. They had tempered him for this moment.The beast roared.It lunged with raw violence, abandoning caution. Eight feet of corruption and muscle hurled forward, jaws gaping wid
Last Updated: 2025-09-11
Chapter: The Golden Brother The laughter crashed over Kael like a storm tide, thousands of voices breaking against him in cruel unison. What poured from the stands was no longer human mirth, but something monstrous… an echoing chorus that fed on pain and called it joy.“Did you see it fly?” wheezed an old merchant, bent double, tears streaming down his lined face. “Like a sack of grain tossed by a storm!”“The mutt thought it could matter!” shouted a woman from the upper tiers. “Look at it now!”Kael crawled across the stones, every inch marked with blood and dust. The faint shimmer of black fire licked at his wounds as he pulled himself closer to Fang’s still form. Broken ribs flared with every breath, yet he pressed forward.“Fang,” he whispered, fingers trembling as they stretched toward the hound’s motionless flank. “Stay with me… please.”From above came the voice that stilled the crowd in an instant—sharp, proud, merciless.“Pathetic.”Aelric Draven rose from the ivory throne, his golden hair a crown in th
Last Updated: 2025-09-11
Chapter: The Arena Trial BeginsBlack fire crawled across Kael’s chest like lightning trapped in flesh, the Eclipse Mark searing brighter with every heartbeat. The air warped around him, hot and shimmering, and the shadows it cast stretched unnaturally long, writhing against the arena walls as though they wanted to climb into the stands.Pain tore through him in waves. Not just the kind claws and teeth had left, but something older, stranger… like his very nerves were being rewritten, bones melted down and hammered into new shapes. His back arched against the stone floor. His own body felt alien, reshaped from within by fire that wasn’t fire.And then, when the agony reached its peak, he pushed himself upright.Blood ran in slow streams from the gashes across his chest, soaking the dirt beneath him, but the Mark pulsed with an otherworldly rhythm, steady as a drumbeat, steady as life itself. The fire didn’t die down. It clung to him, refusing to release its hold.Gasps shuddered through the crowd. Whole rows of nob
Last Updated: 2025-09-11
Chapter: Whispers of the CurseThe beast’s fangs hovered inches from Kael’s throat, ivory daggers catching the torchlight as if eager for his blood. The creature did not lunge… it savored, lowering its jaws with cruel patience, breath hot and fetid with the stink of graves.Pinned beneath its weight, Kael could not move. His chest barely rose. Every attempt at breath stuttered shallowly, and his limbs might as well have been carved from stone. Only his eyes worked, forced to stare upward at the slow approach of death.Is this it? The thought crawled up through the haze of panic. Is this how a dog dies? Spat on, forgotten. Ripped apart for their joy.The crowd answered him with thunder.“Kill it!”“End the blight on House Draven!”“Let the cursed blood soak the stones!”A thousand throats screaming, a thousand hands pounding. The square itself seemed to shake with it. Kael had lived nineteen years beneath those voices… mockery, jeers, eager laughter at his suffering. He knew each cadence like a cruel lullaby.Perhap
Last Updated: 2025-09-11
Chapter: Stones and SpiteFang’s howl cut off, leaving silence so heavy it felt carved from stone. The arena held its breath. Even the monster… fangs dripping, claw hovering above Kael’s throat… had gone still, as if that small pup’s cry had clawed open some memory in its twisted brain.But nothing in Kael’s life stayed still for long. The silence cracked, and memory came rushing in, black and bitter as floodwater.***Two weeks after he’d found Fang, Kael carried the half-healed pup through Eryndor’s market. Fang’s legs still buckled too easily, so Kael held him close, his warmth pressed against Kael’s ribs. The heartbeat there was fast, fragile, alive.“There he is—the cursed wretch!” a voice cut through the din of barter. “And he’s got that diseased mutt with him!”Kael flinched. Before he could turn, small hands grabbed his sleeves, his hair, and tugged at his clothes. A pack of children, teeth bared in cruel grins. Korrath, Torin’s younger brother, stood at their head. Twelve years old, voice breaking, ra
Last Updated: 2025-09-11
Chapter: Fang, the Stray PupThe corrupted beast hit the ground like a falling boulder, the shock rattling loose dust from the temple walls. Once it had been a man… bones and breath, dreams maybe… but now the flesh had been twisted into something monstrous. Eight feet of muscle knotted wrong, jaw stretched wide enough to bite through stone. Yellowed fangs jutted crooked from blackened gums, and its eyes burned red. Not mindless. Worse. It remembered.It paced the ring, slow and deliberate, the way a wolf toys with a rabbit that’s already bleeding out. Each step clicked claw against stone. Foam slid from its mouth and hissed where it spattered the sacred floor.Kael staggered back, the chains at his wrists dragging like anchors. His ribs screamed with every breath, the bruises from the morning’s beating swelling hotter than fire. The Eclipse Mark seared under his shirt, but whatever power it promised stayed sealed, locked as uselessly as his shackles.“Come on!” a man from the stands shouted. “End it already!”“D
Last Updated: 2025-09-11
