All Chapters of The Rise of Ethan Ryder: The Despised Husband & CEO: Chapter 71
- Chapter 80
100 chapters
Chapter 48 Extended: The Heir of Shadows
Prologue – Twenty Years Ago, The Night the Pact Was MadeThe torches of Duskspire Keep flickered violently as a storm of unnatural origin tore across the sky. The Hale brothers—Lucian, the elder, regal and fearless, and Ethan, still a boy with curious eyes—stood side by side at the fortress gates.Lucian turned to him.“Stay behind me, Ethan. No matter what you hear. No matter what you see.”“But—” Ethan’s lip trembled.“This is my burden,” Lucian said, gripping the hilt of his ceremonial blade, Oathreaver. “It always has been.”What followed was a blur of screams, fire, and a monstrous being of pure darkness descending from the heavens. And Lucian—beloved heir of the Hale bloodline—vanished in the chaos.The only remains found were a shard of his blade… and the symbol of a broken firstborn pact.Now – Phoenix Citadel, War Council HallEthan stood before his Inner Circle—Kael, Commander Mira Ren, Arion the Archmage, and Lady Nyssa of the Shardblades. Tension rippled through the room l
Chapter 48 Extended: The Memory That Shouldn’t Exist
The corridor was endless. Ethan's boots echoed against a floor that wasn’t there—light shimmered beneath his steps like liquid starlight. Around him, space folded and stretched, a realm stitched together from memories too fractured to survive. It was not a dream. Nor an illusion. This was the Correction Path—the one place no mortal or immortal willingly dared to enter. The air smelled of burnt lilacs and blood. And ahead stood a door. A single, battered oak door, ancient and familiar. Ethan's throat tightened. He knew this door. He hadn’t seen it in decades, yet its grooves haunted every nightmare he never dared to name. This was the door to his mother’s study—the room that had vanished in the fire. The room they said never existed. He raised a hand. The wood pulsed beneath his palm—alive. Waiting. The doorknob turned of its own accord. And the world collapsed into memory. Fifteen Years Ago. Ethan was ten. The scent of vanilla ink filled the air. Candlelight danced across
Chapter 48 Extended: The Blood Code
The scream wasn’t Ethan’s. It was the world’s. As the Correction Child dissolved into fractal light, Ethan stood at the center of a collapsing nexus, his veins pulsing with alien fire. Sigils—ancient and forbidden—burned beneath his skin, crawling like living tattoos across his arms, his chest, his spine. His breath came out ragged. He could feel it now. **All of it.** Every choice rewritten. Every thread tugged from the loom of fate. Every lie Lucian told, and every truth Liora bled for. “System stabilization: 12%,” echoed a mechanical voice within his mind—neither his own nor fully artificial. “Warning: Blood Code synchronization incomplete. Host integrity failing.” He dropped to one knee. The Blood Code. A language of fate etched into lineage. Not just magic. Not just prophecy. This was DNA as destiny—rewritable, volatile, and absolute. And someone had changed his. --- **Twenty-One Years Ago – The Sealed Memory** Liora clutched baby Ethan close, whispering to the blo
Chapter 48 Extended: The God Engine
Silence.Weightless.Colorless.Dead.That was Ethan’s first awareness—an absence of everything. Not even pain remained. He drifted through a void colder than space, deeper than death. No body. No voice. Just consciousness, flickering like a candle surrounded by nothingness.But death… wasn’t the end.Not for him.Not here.Not now.From the infinite dark, something pulsed—mechanical, ancient, alive. Each thrum vibrated with cosmic rhythm, like the beating heart of a machine that powered existence itself.The God Engine.“You should not be here.”The voice was not a voice, but a harmonic resonance. Male and female. Old and young. One and many.Ethan’s essence spiraled, like data in a dying star, pulled into streams of light.“And yet… you were written into the core.”A storm of light surged—and suddenly Ethan was. Body, soul, will—reconstructed. Reforged. He gasped as a silver platform solidified beneath his feet, suspended above a colossal engine made of orbiting rings, ethereal gear
Chapter 48 Extended: The Choice That Ends All Things
The world was no longer a place. It was a choice. A single heartbeat stretched across infinite time. And in that silence stood Ethan and Valeria. Around them, the Alpha Rewrite surged like a storm held in suspension—stars disassembling, timelines unraveling, divine codes flickering like faulty lights. The God Engine was gone. The Throne of Stars shattered. The Cycle cracked at its core. But they remained. Two souls tethered across lifetimes. Two flames that had burned through betrayal, rebirth, and ruin. Valeria turned to him—her hair floating in the zero-gravity pull of collapsing reality, her eyes holding both past and future. She was no longer just the woman Ethan had loved. She was the Alpha Original—the spark from which the first rewrite began. "You gave me back my choice," she whispered. "But what if I don't want to rewrite it? What if I want to end it?" Ethan stepped closer. His voice was low, steady, but raw. "Then we'll end it together." In the Beginning, there wa
Chapter 49: The Phantom Queen Emerges
The skies above New Avalon didn’t merely darken—they recoiled. The sun blinked out like an eye forced shut, and the wind stilled as if too afraid to breathe. It was not weather that heralded the change—it was a reckoning. Ethan Hale, God of War and newly crowned sovereign of the Phoenix Citadel, stood atop his obsidian balcony. Beneath him, the world he’d claimed through blood, betrayal, and sheer force of will unfurled like a kingdom reborn. His fingers traced the edge of a blueprint—territories acquired, strongholds reinforced—but his mind had drifted. Then he felt it. A fracture in the air. A ripple in the silence. “She’s here,” someone whispered behind him. Ethan turned. No one was there. It wasn’t thunder that warned them. It was absence. A smothering silence that swallowed the clamor of the citadel. Spectral horses emerged from nothing, hooves silent against stone. An obsidian carriage shimmered into view, every inch of it radiating dread. From within, a figure st
Chapter 49 Extended: Warbound Shadows
Ethan’s breath steamed in the cold light of the Citadel’s lower sanctum, the air thick with old magic and unearthed truths. Amara stood across from him, her cloak now folded over her arm, revealing battle-worn armor underneath—black leather embossed with the sigil of the Raven Court, a kingdom that no longer existed.“I want full access to your intelligence network,” she said, circling the war table. “Every phantom node, every corrupted registry, every black contract under your name. If we’re going to survive the Circle of Ash, we can’t fight blind.”Ethan’s jaw tightened. “You don't get to waltz back into my life and demand access to the bones of my empire. Not after seven years of silence.”Amara raised a brow. “I didn’t come back to ask nicely.”He stepped forward, meeting her eyes with the full gravity of the God of War behind him. “Then you should remember who you’re speaking to.”Amara didn’t flinch. “You should remember who taught you how to be him.”A sharp pause filled the ch
Chapter 49 Extended: The Memory of Fire
The moment Ethan touched the crystal shard buried in the ruins of the Celestial Bastion, time cracked.Not shattered—cracked. Like glass under pressure.The sky above Bluehaven folded inward. Stars vanished. The sun flickered like a dying candle. Then came the silence—so vast, so deep, it swallowed the breath from his lungs.And then…Fire.He was standing in the same room—but it was no longer a ruin.It was whole.Polished marble gleamed underfoot. Gold-veined pillars shimmered with starlight. The throne—his throne—stood at the center, blazing with an aura that pulsed like a living heartbeat.But Ethan was no longer alone.“Do you remember this place?”He turned.Amara stood beside the throne, dressed in the robes of the Starborn. Her eyes were different—older. Wiser. Haunted. She didn’t look surprised to see him.“You’re not real,” Ethan said, taking a step back.“No,” she replied softly. “I’m a memory. One preserved in the Blood Code. The last lock.”“Last lock?”Amara approached t
Chapter 49 Extended: The Kingmaker’s Choice
The Throne of Stars descended like a burning comet. Its crown of celestial fire lit the shattered sky, throwing shadows across the ruins of Bluehaven. Each shadow twitched, twisted—and then rose. They weren’t illusions. They were echoes. Every decision Ethan Hale had ever made, every life he had touched, every betrayal he had endured… had come to life. And they were not all friends. Ethan stood at the edge of the floating citadel, Amara at his side, the air thick with electricity. His two echoes—the Destroyer and the Survivor—had already summoned their legions. The Destroyer’s army burned with crimson light. Phantoms of every enemy Ethan had slain: Malrik Thorne, the Sovereign of Shadows; Victor Hale, the traitor; even the faceless assassins of the Phantom Syndicate. They marched forward, hungry to kill again. The Survivor’s army wore chains of silver flame. Friends Ethan had lost, allies he had sacrificed, even Jasmine’s ghostly shade in one world where she died too soon. The
Chapter 49 Extended: Alpha Rewrite
The light faded.Silence followed.And then—the sound of creation weeping.Reality rippled like shattered glass.Galaxies folded in on themselves. Stars flickered, reversing their birth cries into implosions.The God Engine screamed—a thousand overlapping voices of forgotten gods and broken men.Ethan stood before it, no longer bound by body or time. His form burned with runes that shifted like living constellations, eyes glowing silver and red—half mortal, half something beyond reason.“You think yourself free,” the Engine thundered, its gears melting under the pressure of collapsing time.“You are a paradox. A corruption. You cannot exist.”Ethan raised his hand. The air vibrated like thunder through glass.“Exactly,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m the only one who can end you.”Amara appeared beside him, fading in and out of existence. Her essence flickered—tethered between a thousand realities where she lived, died, and lived again.“Ethan,” she said, voice trembling. “If you ex