Novels by Unattra3tive

The rain came that morning like judgment slow, heavy, and endless. It ran off the rooftops and into the cracked streets, washing away the blood from last night’s raid but not the stain it left behind. Jayden stood by the window of the safehouse, watching the gray pour as if it could tell him what he didn’t want to say aloud.He’d lost more than a warehouse. The raid had gutted one of his major cash lines shipments disguised as scrap metal, washed through shell accounts and back into the slums as payroll, protection money, and bribes. Without it, whole corners were unpaid, suppliers were nervous, and whispers started before dawn.“Two nights,” Malikah said behind him. “That’s how long before half the boys start asking who feeds them next.”Jayden didn’t turn. “They won’t ask if they’re reminded who owns the streets.”Malikah crossed her arms. “And you’ll remind them with what? We’re bleeding money, and the cops are hitting fronts faster than we can cover. Fear works, Jay, but hunger sp

The absence of Amara hung like smoke over Jayden’s empire, curling into every corner, every whisper. The men on the corners didn’t say it aloud, but he could see it in their eyes: they wondered if she’d abandoned him. The women who passed food and rumor through the alleys clutched their baskets tighter, watching him with a wariness that hadn’t been there before.The execution of the elder had been meant to cement control, to remind the Council and Razor alike that betrayal came with a cost no one could stomach. Instead, the blood on the street spread a message he hadn’t intended. People didn’t see justice; they saw cruelty. The elder hadn’t just been a traitor. He had been a face, a voice that had fed children, patched roads, bribed police to look away when fire threatened homes. Killing him in the open sent ripples Jayden hadn’t calculated.The city press seized it like sharks.“Warlord Tightens Grip on Slums Innocents Pay the Price.”“Street Justice or Tyranny? The New Face of Fear.

The broadcast still played on repeat in the minds of everyone in the room. Jayden’s crew dispersed in tense silence, each hiding their thoughts behind stone faces. But the seed of doubt had been planted, and doubt was a poison that spread quicker than fear.Jayden remained at the table long after the others left. The broken glass at his feet glimmered in the low light like jagged teeth, but he didn’t move to sweep it. His hands rested flat on the wood, veins pulsing, his mind gnawing at the one image he couldn’t drive away Amara’s face, unveiled beneath the hot press lights, standing beside Idris.She hadn’t looked defeated. She hadn’t looked broken. She had looked calm, deliberate. That was what unsettled him most. If she had been tortured into it, forced by some trick, her eyes would have screamed it. But she had met that camera like she wanted him to see her. Like she had chosen it.By midnight, word reached him that she had slipped back into the slums.Jayden didn’t send Stone or

The smoke of the execution still clung to the streets, rising like a curse from the square where the elder’s blood had soaked into the dirt. Jayden had walked away without looking back, though his shadow seemed heavier that night. The Council had fractured; whispers of betrayal had cut deep, and the lesson he had carved into the stones was unmistakable. But even as he tried to hold the city’s underworld by its throat, another kind of pressure was tightening around him. The kind that couldn’t be silenced with a knife in an alley or a torch set to a rival’s den.The police.Not the corrupt ones who had always taken envelopes and closed their eyes. Not the usual half-drunk detectives that looked the other way so long as their bellies stayed full. This one was different. Inspector Idris. Word traveled fast in the underworld, and it carried his name like a cold wind. A man who did not take money. A man who didn’t drink on the job. A man who had refused the envelopes slipped his way more ti

The square hadn’t emptied after the boy’s trembling accusation. His words lingered like smoke, poisoning the air long after Jayden dismissed the crowd. Malikah stormed off without asking permission, her fury a wall of fire that even the Burned Boy didn’t dare chase. But Jayden’s mind wasn’t on her not yet. Elder Kola’s name was the one that echoed most.Kola the Thin. Nervous, twitchy, always sweating like he lived in constant fear of shadows. He had once vouched for Jayden to the Council when no one else believed in him, had even slipped him food and coin when his pockets were empty. That loyalty had once seemed unshakable. Now it looked like the mask of a man hedging bets.Jayden couldn’t let the doubt fester. If the slums thought he was too weak to confront betrayal, the Council would eat him alive. Razor would walk through the gaps.So he devised the parley.Word went out through back channels: Jayden wanted to talk. Not with the whole Council, not with Big Sef or Mama Nuru, just

The tape still sat on the table the next morning, its silence louder than any gunshot. Jayden hadn’t slept. His mind replayed the voice over and over until it seemed burned into his skull. Someone from his own circle had promised Razor an opening, and now every face he saw carried suspicion.By the time the crew assembled in the den, his eyes were bloodshot, but his stance was iron. He paced the room like a caged animal, the Burned Boy perched near the door with restless energy, Malikah leaning in a corner, Amara sitting silent with her arms crossed.Jayden held up the cassette. “Last night this came to me. A gift. A curse. It’s proof that one of us fed Razor.” His voice was gravel, sharp with fatigue and fury. “This isn’t whispers in the market or Council lies. This is truth recorded.”A murmur rippled through the crew. Eyes darted, shoulders tensed. Fear mixed with anger.“I’ll play it,” Jayden said. “And when you hear it, you’ll know why I can’t sleep.”He slid the tape in, pressed

The battle beneath the broken sky had ended in silence. Silence so vast it seemed the world itself had forgotten how to breathe. Yet silence, like ash, never lasts forever. Wind comes, memory stirs, and stories take root in the bones of a kingdom.Years LaterThe war was gone, but its shadow had never truly lifted. Decades rolled by, and in that time the people who had lived through the night of oaths grew old, bent, and gray. Their children, and their children’s children, asked what it was like to see the sky torn open, to hear fire clash with eternal dark. Few could give answers without tears.The kingdoms rebuilt, stone upon stone, village upon village. Cities that once burned with Rider flame now gleamed with new banners not of kings or warlords, but of unity. In the heart of the capital, no throne was raised. Instead, a monument stood: a jagged shard of blackened stone, scorched at its core, the very rock where Kael’s sword had struck the Rider’s essence.On its face, carved deep

Silence.Not peace, not rest silence like the pause between heartbeats, waiting to see if the next will come.Kael stood amidst the wreckage. His sword was gone, shattered when the Rider fell. His armor hung in tatters, his blood soaking the earth. He felt… hollow.He staggered forward, calling names. “Roran… Nira… Isolde…”The banner was gone. Roran lay still beside where it once stood, his hand clenched tight around its last fragment. His lips curved in a faint smile, as though even in death, he had fulfilled his vow.Kael’s chest ached. He placed his forehead to Roran’s hand. “You were the banner, old friend. We all just followed.”But the ashes swallowed the words.Isolde stood apart, flame still flickering around her. It no longer roared it wept, hissing softly. She stared into her hands, her expression unreadable.“Kael.” Her voice cracked, rough as broken glass. “It was never my fire. I see it now. The Rider’s flame, bound to me all along. I was his weapon… and I still am.”Kae

The battlefield trembled, not with the march of armies, but with the weight of promises long broken.The Shadow Rider’s form towered in the distance, not flesh, not bone, but a swirling mass of blackened flame and fractured oaths. Thousands of voices poured from him vows never kept, betrayals never forgiven, whispers of men and women who had promised and failed.Kael felt the air tighten in his lungs. Every word spoken by the Rider pressed into his chest like chains.“Do you know what I am?” the Rider’s voice roared, echoing across the torn plain. “I am the promise your kings broke when they betrayed their people. I am the oath of friendship crushed beneath blades. I am the vow of love, abandoned in the night. Every word spoken, every bond shattered, every lie sealed me into being.”Nira’s blade shook in her hand. “Then we face not one enemy… but the weight of all history.”The Rider laughed. It was not mirth. It was a scream of millions.“And who are you to stand against eternity’s d

The abyss stank of burnt ash and blood. Isolde’s body lay limp in Kael’s arms, her chest barely rising. Nira stood before them, sword drawn, her gaze locked on the Shadow Rider as his cracked helm bled smoke.The oathbound survivors gathered ragged, bloodied, faces pale but unbroken. Dozens where there had once been hundreds. Yet their eyes burned with the same fire: the Oath of Ashes.The Rider spread his arms, shadows billowing like wings.“See how your vows betray you. You bind yourselves to death, and I am death. You are already mine.”Nira raised her voice, steady though her throat ached. No… you’re wrong.Nira raised her voice, steady though her throat ached. “No… you’re wrong.”Roran coughed blood, forcing himself upright with his shattered banner. “Speak it, Nira. Remind us.”She stepped forward, sword raised high, and shouted, each word a strike:“The Oath was never about survival. It was never about victory. It was about defiance.”The survivors echoed, their voices ragged b

The light from Kael’s sacrifice lingered only a heartbeat before it was swallowed again. The abyss cracked, splintering into jagged shards of reality, and in the center stood the Shadow Rider wounded, yes, but not destroyed.Isolde rose from the ruin, her palms ablaze, fury in her eyes. “You’ll not take another from me.”The Rider’s helm tilted toward her. Smoke curled from the wound Kael had dealt him, but his voice was steady, dark as ever.“I already have. I always have.”The ground shifted, forming a ring of shadowed flame around them. Nira shouted, “Isolde, don’t he’s drawing you in!”But Isolde stepped forward, fire searing hotter, her eyes fixed on the Rider. “I was forged for this. If I burn, I burn.”Their clash began like a star collapsing.Isolde’s fire raged living flame that roared and danced with a will of its own, lashing at the Rider. Every strike was a storm, every breath a furnace. The Rider countered with void, a darkness that devoured heat, smothering fire with sil

The march of the living and the dead thundered like a storm. The echoes of oathbound past walked beside Kael and the others, their phantom weapons shimmering faintly against the darkness.But the Shadow Rider was no longer waiting.The air itself buckled. The ground beneath their feet softened into ash. The sky cracked apart like brittle glass.Isolde shouted, “Hold together!” Her flames rose high, a beacon against the encroaching black.Yet the light bent and twisted.Shadows reached up like talons, clutching at their ankles. The world tipped sideways. A howl like a thousand broken promises filled the void.And then the battlefield shattered.The Oathbound were dragged into another realm entirely an endless abyss of black mist and fractured light.Kael staggered to his knees. His sword clattered to the ground, its steel glowing faintly as if resisting the darkness.Nira planted her spear and hissed, “Where is this?”The Rider’s voice rolled over them, heavy and cruel.“Welcome home,