Chapter: Private MemorialDEVON’S POVThe guard at the gate doesn’t even blink as our credentials flash green. Mitchell’s forged donor IDs are flawless… embossed seals, layered QR verifications, the whole ceremonial theater of privilege. The kind that opens any door if you wear the right clothes and pretend you belong.Inside, the air smells like wealth pretending to be reverence. Polished marble, warm incense, the faint static of hidden speakers. A string quartet hums softly somewhere above us. The lobby gleams with curated restraint… cream walls, gold trim, and a single inscription in serif letters across the archway:“Preserve What Cannot Be Replaced.”Sora mutters under her breath, “Except when it’s stolen.”I keep my voice low. “Remember, we’re donors. Smile like you’ve just bought eternity.”Kira smirks faintly, tugging the silk scarf around her neck. “I’ll try to look expensive and morally conflicted.”We move together through the lobby, every step cushioned by thick carpet. Around us, clients drift lik
Last Updated: 2025-11-03
Chapter: RemarkAVELINE’S POV The lab hums with a tired rhythm… the soft whine of processors, the low pulse of filtration vents, the faint buzz of the light strips flickering like anxious eyelids. I lean over the microscope, eyes dry, breath fogging the lens. The drone’s core rests beneath the glass, a dull metal pearl cracked along one seam. Etched into its inner casing… human handwriting, not machine code… are names. Kira. Amara. Sora. My own. I stare at the tiny curves, the way each letter is cut with the kind of pressure that comes from muscle and thought, not automation. The scratches shimmer faintly where my light catches the grooves. Whoever wrote this didn’t rush. They wanted these names to be read. I whisper to myself, “You carved our ghosts before we even died.” Beside me, the spectrograph pings, a small chime like glass breaking. Chemical analysis complete. The alloy on the etching tool… rare, proprietary. My stomach knots as the readout scrolls: Compound A-17… restricted to Triarch L
Last Updated: 2025-10-30
Chapter: Sanctuary ThreatKIRA’S POV The sanctuary hums like a sleeping animal… steady, rhythmic, unknowing. I walk through its hallways barefoot, the way I always do when I need to think. The soft lights follow me, sensors registering warmth and motion. Behind the doors, volunteers rest in narrow bunks, machines whispering low songs of life-support and data sync. It should feel peaceful. It used to. But tonight, peace tastes like bile. On my handheld screen, the contractor’s video loops for the fifth time… a map, grainy and flickering, with our sanctuary marked in pulsing red. The voice that accompanies it is calm, male, detached. “We can reach any node. Even yours.” Then silence. Then static. I pause the clip, the frozen map hovering mid-blink. The bile rises again, higher. They didn’t say why or when. Just that they could. A demonstration of reach. A threat meant to rattle us from the inside. For a second, I want to barricade the entire building… seal the exits, double the guard rotations, turn the sa
Last Updated: 2025-10-29
Chapter: Breakable Bones FallSORA’S POV The air inside the shelter is thick with soup steam and rain. A generator hums in the corner, the sound barely masking the tremor of whispers. Children huddle around the stove, clutching tin cups. I move through the crowd slowly, nodding to a nurse I know, and she nods back, eyes heavy. The room smells of stew, disinfectant, and exhaustion… the scents of survival. A woman catches my sleeve. Her fingers are trembling but firm, her nails broken. “You’re Sora,” she says, like a name half-remembered from a broadcast. “You… you help people.” I lower myself to her eye level. “Sometimes,” I say. “Tell me.” She glances at the floor. “My son. He took a job. They said it was a placement from the Choice Station. He was happy… said he’d work fixing solar panels near the border. That was three weeks ago. Then no word. They told me not to ask questions.” My gut tightens. “Who told you that?” “Men in gray vests. With the Station symbol on the van. But… it looked wrong. I know those s
Last Updated: 2025-10-28
Chapter: Framed FallZARA’S POV The lights are too bright. They always are. I’ve spent half my career under them… on podiums, in press rooms, in halls lined with flags… but lately they feel less like illumination and more like interrogation. The microphones glint in front of me like a field of eyes, each waiting to blink at the first misstep. Behind me, Mitchell stands steady, unreadable. To my right, Callum Traye sits in a chair he never wanted, pale and trembling, his hands folded so tightly his knuckles are white. The room hums with tension: reporters, aides, a dozen camera drones hovering above like quiet predators. “Ready?” I whisper to Mitchell. She nods once. “Keep it factual. No adjectives.” “Understood.” When I turn back to the microphones, the noise stills… the low murmur of journalists recalibrating lenses and instincts. “Thank you for coming,” I begin, voice firm. “The Coalition has uncovered an internal breach that led to the unauthorized dissemination of Echo data. The individual resp
Last Updated: 2025-10-27
Chapter: Inside JobMITCHELL’S POVThe room feels smaller than it should, a steel box with low light, air thick with recycled heat, and the faint hum of the servers behind the wall. The rain hasn’t stopped since dawn, and its muffled percussion against the glass gives the illusion of calm. But the faces around the table tell another story.Mitchell leans forward, hands folded, elbows on the table’s edge. The holo-map above the surface flickers softly, a projection of access logs, timestamps, and authorization trails. Each data point glows like a wound.“Alright,” she says, her voice even. “Devon’s trace confirmed it. The Shepherd’s using a sanitized version of Echo, our version. It didn’t come from a hack. It came from inside.”The silence is absolute.Ezren sits back in his chair, jaw set. “Inside? As in…”“As in,” Mitchell interrupts, “someone with coalition clearance.” She lets the weight of the words settle. “We’re not dealing with an external breach. Someone authorized an export of classified emotio
Last Updated: 2025-10-25
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
