Novels by Karo

Marcel stood in the dim study with the key still clutched in his fist.The System warning sat heavy in his head. Killing everyone else had bought him more power than he expected. But the moment he chose mercy the connection to Cain had slipped. He felt it now, a faint crack in the chain that tied him to the voice. It was like the old man was losing his grip. Marcel stared at the key in his hand. For the first time he wondered if refusing to kill could actually weaken the entity inside him.He turned to the captured man on the floor. “Who sent the men? Who ordered the attack on the house?”The man spat blood and stayed silent. Clutching his chest and refusing to look up at Marcel Marcel stepped closer. “Talk or I start cutting pieces off you. Slowly.”The man laughed weakly. “You think a knife will make me break? You have no idea what we live through"Marcel took out the small black key and held it up. “This is the one that opens the old room beneath the study. If you do not tell me w

Marcel froze in the doorway of his father’s old study. The final words from the recording still hung in the air. “If Aurora is with you, do not trust her.” His eyes snapped toward Aurora. The suspicion hit him hard. Lily took one step away from her without thinking. Elias reached for the weapon tucked under his jacket and stared at her like she was a stranger. Marcel voice came out sharp. “You knew about this. You knew my father left that message.” Aurora shook her head fast. “I did not know anything about a recording. I swear on everything I have.” Lily voice stayed small but steady. “She has been here before. I can feel it.” Elias pointed at Aurora. “She was there the night your father disappeared. I saw her. She was ordered to watch the house. Tell me she is lying.” Aurora looked at Marcel. “I was not part of the attack. I was ordered to watch and report whether your father had found anything about the System.” Marcel voice rose. “You did not warn him. You let him die.” Aur

Marcel stood frozen in the doorway of his father’s old study.Lily moved behind him at once. Her fingers clutched the back of his jacket. Aurora’s hand slipped under her jacket toward the weapon she always carried.Marcel voice came out hard. “Come out. Now.”An older man stepped from the shadows near the desk. His hair was gray at the temples. His face carried lines that had not been there the last time Marcel saw him. Marcel stared. “Elias Kane.”The man nodded once. “It has been a long time.”Marcel took a step forward. “You were supposed to be dead. They told us you died in the same attack that killed my father.”Elias held up both hands. “I survived because your father helped me escape before the men arrived. After that I had to disappear. Powerful people were hunting anyone connected to the Kane name.”Marcel shook his head. “You left us. You left a fourteen year old boy and a little girl with no one. You do not get to walk back in here and talk like you did the right thing.”E

Marcel held the photograph so tightly the edges bent. He looked up at Aurora, doubting the system for the first time "Tell me the truth. All of it. No more careful answers, I want to know and I want to know now."Aurora stood near the window with her arms crossed. "Your father was not just a victim. He was investigating the System long before you ever received it. Viktor worked with him for a time."Marcel voice dropped. "You knew this. You knew and you said nothing, I thought he had been killed by his creditors or something.""I kept quiet because the people who killed him may still be watching you. Telling you earlier would have put a target on your back sooner and plus Cain does want you to know.""Cain.? what has this got to do with him anyway?""You are not just unlucky Marcel" Aurora looked away, she stared out the window for a while "The system created you""I don't understand ""Everything that has happened so far was orchestrated by Cain. To break you". She paused to looked

Marcel gripped the phone so hard the plastic creaked. Worry was eating him alive, couldn't the system give a moment to breathe He had already called Lily back seven times. Each attempt went straight to voicemail. The car swerved through traffic as the driver pushed the speed limit. Marcel voice came out rough. "Faster. She... she is not answering."The driver nodded without looking back. "I am going as fast as I can, sir."Marcel hit redial again. Nothing. The strange System warning still hovered at the edge of his sight. {URGENCY !!} {EMERGENCY MISSION}{CAUTION}{THIS MISSION WAS NOT CREATED BY THE SYSTEM} He rubbed his eyes but the text stayed. "What the hell does this even me?"Did the system not want him to go further, was he not suppose to go find Lily Lily apartment building came into view. Marcel jumped out before the car fully stopped. He ran past the unconscious security guards lying on the ground outside. No blood. No broken windows. Just two grown men slumped like the

Lily pushed the front door open with her shoulder and locked it behind her twice. The therapy session had ended twenty minutes ago but the image of Drake falling with blood at his throat still sat behind her eyes. She dropped her bag on the floor and stood in the quiet hallway rubbing her arms. The house felt larger than it used to. Emptier too. She walked into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. Her hands shook enough that some spilled on the counter. She wiped it with her sleeve and sat down hard on a stool. "You are still my brother," she said out loud to the empty room. "You have to be. The same one who used to read me stories when the power went out. The same one who worked three jobs so I could stay in school." She drank half the glass and set it down. The memory of Marcel moving so fast and the knife sliding across Drake neck would not leave. She had seen the look on his face after. Not regret. Something colder. "What are you becoming?" she whispered. "Because I do

The noise inside Lin Feng's head was deafening. Thousands of voices sobbed, screamed, and chanted his name, their grief heavy enough to force him to his knees. His forehead hit the smooth stone floor, his hands clawing at his ears."Lin Feng!" Meng Yao dropped beside him, her small hands grabbing his elbows. She gasped as a sharp static shock bit her palms. "I hear them too. They are not just echoes. They are... they are people, Lin Feng. Kings, warriors, witnesses from every world that fell before us.""I have to let them out," Lin Feng gritted his teeth, his teeth red with blood from biting his own tongue. He forced his hand toward the bright core of light pulsing before them. "I can tear the barrier right now.""Touch that blindly and you drop ten thousand realms into the void," the silver-haired survivor called out, his dissolving legs reformulating into liquid silver. "The network is the only thing keeping those worlds from drifting into total entropy

The air inside the cosmic altar tasted of dry copper and ash.Lin Feng shifted his weight, keeping his body positioned between Meng Yao and the stranger with the hollow, glowing eyes. "Another parlor trick," Lin Feng said, his fingers tightening on his hilt until his knuckles turned white. "You are just another shadow sent to make me drop my sword."The silver-haired man let out a dry, rattling laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across stone. "Do you still think this is about fear, Lin Feng? Ask the girl. Ask her about the night under the weeping pines in the northern pass, when she swore her oath and you swore you would never let the realm down. The gods do not know what you whispered to her in the dark. But I do."Meng Yao took a sharp breath, her fingers digging into Lin Feng's tunic. "How do you know that?""Because I said those exact words ten thousand years ago," the man said, taking a slow step forward. "I wore a crown. I bled for my people. I thought my death would bu

The sky did not break; it melted.The cosmic altar descended through the atmosphere like a mountain of dark glass, casting a shadow that swallowed the entire capital. Down in the ruined courtyard, the air grew so heavy that breathing felt like swallowing sand. The violet barrier above them twisted into jagged shapes, groaning under the pressure.Lin Feng shifted Meng Yao’s weight in his arms, his knees cracking as the floor shook beneath them. Her skin was freezing, but the purple vein on her neck beat against his chest like a second heart."Lin Feng, we have to move!" Xiao Chen yelled, dragging himself over the scattered stone debris. Soot covered his teeth, making his panicked face look like a skull. "That is not a siege weapon. It is a dimensional gateway! It is bridging the upper realm directly into our sky!""I am not running," Lin Feng said. His boots sank an inch into the shattered tiles. "She cannot walk, Chen. If I move her, the seal breaks.""If you stay here, you both get f

Blood dries fast on marble, but the stain on Lin Feng's hands refused to wash away. He stood beside the narrow wooden bed in the imperial infirmary, watching the quiet rise and fall of Meng Yao’s chest. The air smelled of burnt sage and dried linen. Beneath her pale skin, the violet mark pulsed with a sickening, rhythmic glow. It matched his own pulse. Every beat of his heart dragged her deeper into the web. "You look like a ghost standing over a corpse," Zhang Wei said, his broad shoulders leaning against the stone doorframe. His leather tunic was torn, showing the black mark spreading beneath his old chest scar. He pulled a wooden stool across the floor with a loud scrape and sat down. "She nearly drove her blade through my throat, Wei," Lin Feng said, his voice low and dry. "The thing moved her like a puppet." "Because you let it get close," Zhang Wei grunted, picking at a callus on his thumb. "You stand in front of every blow because you think your life is worthless. You think

"That’s impossible," Lin Feng said, his voice barely a breath against the heavy air. "They haven't touched the altar. They haven't touched the core."Xiao Chen didn't look up from his papers. His hands shook so violently he dropped his charcoal stick twice before grabbing it off the blood-slicked stone. "It isn't about physical contact, Lin Feng. It’s an emotional frequency lock. The cosmic signature doesn't just read your energy; it maps the people holding your soul together."Zhang Wei pulled back his leather breastplate with a sudden, violent jerk. Beneath the jagged scar on his chest, a thin black line was blooming like spilled ink beneath the skin. "It stings," the general muttered, his thumb tracing the discoloration. "Feels like cold salt in an open wound."Meng Yao held up her left hand. Through the pale blue frost marks covering her fingers, a fine violet thread thrummed with a rhythmic, sickly light. "It’s matching your pulse, Lin Feng," she whispered."They need the bond,"

The red plasma beam hit the marble terrace, vaporizing three thousand years of imperial history in a single, deafening flash.Lin Feng didn't retreat. He met the shockwave mid-air, his god-realm core surging with a blinding white light that flattened the incoming wave of metallic vanguard creatures. With a flick of his wrist, he shattered a dozen three-legged monstrosities, their armored hulls splitting like dry kindle under the pressure of his pure Qi."Is that all your gods have?" Lin Feng roared, his voice shaking the mountain pass as he tore through another line of invaders."Lin Feng, look at the dust!" Zhang Wei screamed from thirty paces back, his broadsword covered in black fluid as he kicked a broken torso off his shield.The destroyed creatures didn't bleed or rot. Their shattered metal frames dissolved into swarms of oily, black particles that rose into the violet air, flowing backward into the belly of the main warship. Within seconds, identical soldiers marched out of the