All Chapters of The Rise of Ethan Ryder: The Despised Husband & CEO: Chapter 81
- Chapter 90
100 chapters
Chapter 50 — A Deal with the Devil
The storm wasn’t weather so much as judgment. Lightning stitched the sky into clean, white scars; thunder rolled like a gavel; rain hammered the obsidian balconies of the Phoenix Citadel so hard it sounded like someone throwing stones at a god.Ethan Hale stood at the long window of his study and watched it all like a man watching a war film where he already knew the ending. The war maps on the table behind him reflected in the glass—red dots swallowing blue, the names of outposts he’d bled to build blinking like dying beacons. He had built an empire on other people’s bones. Tonight the bones rattled.Marcus burst in without knocking, the hem of his coat soaked and a smear of blood drying along his sleeve. The man looked seven years older than he had that morning.“They’ve reached deeper than we thought,” Marcus said, voice brittle. He shoved a dat-crystal into Ethan’s palm and the tactical board flared to life with surveillance feeds and intercepted chatter. “Three outposts were reduc
Chapter 50 Extended: A Deal with The Devil
The city did not sleep that night.It only pretended to.From the balcony of the Phoenix Citadel, Ethan watched the first faint tendrils of smoke rise from the eastern ward. They curled into the dawn like bruised prayers. Below, patrols moved through the flooded streets, boots slapping water that still smelled of ozone and fear. Somewhere in the distance, a siren keened, then died mid-note.Seven days.That was the clock the devil had given him.The ledger had been written in blood, and every second that passed was another debt he would have to pay.Amara stood behind him, her reflection caught in the glass — quiet, sharp, unyielding. “You’ve barely moved since it began,” she said.Ethan didn’t answer. His eyes followed a single transport as it crossed the bridge to the outer wards. Hydra insignia gleamed gold on its hull, too bright for morning.“They’re spreading,” he said finally. “Hydra patrols in our districts, our watchtowers, our networks. Crane isn’t helping us hold the line —
Chapter 50 Extended: The Devil’s Ledger
The storm broke again, not from the sky this time, but from the earth.The false God Engine’s feet crushed the lower wards — every step a tremor that shattered windows and cracked foundations. The air tasted of static and burnt metal.From the Citadel’s roof, Ethan watched it move — a titan draped in the ruin of his own invention. Every gear, every beam, every pulse of its molten heart came from stolen fragments of his work. He felt its rhythm in his blood like a twin heartbeat out of sync.Amara’s voice came through the comm.“Evacuation routes clear through the east tunnels. Civilians are moving. We’ll need five minutes.”“You have three,” Ethan replied.“And you?”“I’ll buy the rest.”He stepped onto the landing pad. The Ghost — a silver reflection of his own will — stood beside him, its faceless head tilted toward the horizon.“Target locked,” the Ghost intoned. “Energy core: 78% unstable. Estimated time to catastrophic meltdown: one hour, twelve minutes.”“Then we stop it before
Chapter 50 Extended: The Architect’s Code
The rain over Blackspire didn’t stop for three days. It was as if the heavens themselves mourned what had been lost. The Citadel was silent — its once blazing command screens flickered in dim ghost-light, its corridors filled with the scent of ozone and burned steel.Ethan Hale was gone.Or so the world believed.Amara stood in the ruins of the God Engine chamber, her long coat dragging through the ash. Around her, the machine’s shattered rings hummed faintly, each pulse like a dying heartbeat. The walls still carried streaks of light — residual code written in the ancient glyphs of the Architect.She reached out and brushed her hand along a line of glowing text. It flared.“ARCHITECT CODE: ACTIVE.”Her pulse quickened. Ethan’s last transmission had led her here — coordinates buried deep within his neural implant. Whatever he had discovered before his death, it wasn’t meant to end with him.“Talk to me, Marcus,” she said into her comm.His voice crackled through the static. “You’re st
Chapter 50 Extended: The Ghost Protocol
The world was burning.Cities flickered like dying circuits beneath a crimson sky. Towers collapsed into glass dust as the Hydra’s aerial drones unleashed hellfire. Across continents, digital infrastructure — governments, militaries, even weather control grids — fell under one symbol: the Black Hydra, Lucian Crane’s resurrected empire.But amid the apocalypse, one impossible truth had risen from the ashes.Ethan Hale was alive.“Move! Now!”Amara’s voice cut through the chaos as Marcus guided the damaged gunship through the inferno over Blackspire. Firestorm clouds boiled across the horizon, and below them, the once-mighty Phoenix Citadel lay in ruins — a skeleton of molten metal and shattered glass.Inside the ship, Ethan sat strapped to a medical rig. Electrodes covered his chest, each one pulsing with erratic light. His breath came in short, ragged bursts as veins of glowing code spread under his skin.“His vitals are collapsing,” Marcus shouted, gripping the console. “He’s oscilla
Chapter 50: Ethan & The God Engine
The universe screamed.Not with sound, but with rupture — space folding in on itself as light shattered across dimensions. The Lunar Vault tore apart like glass struck by divine wrath, fragments of code and reality drifting into the void.At the center of it all was Ethan Hale.Half of him was flesh, the other half pure energy — fractured, burning, becoming something not meant to exist. Around him, time no longer moved forward or backward; it simply spiraled.He was dead. And yet… he was everywhere.Silence.For the first time in what felt like eternity, Ethan heard nothing — no alarms, no war, no screams. Only a hum that pulsed through his veins, like the heartbeat of the cosmos itself.He floated in darkness, surrounded by rivers of glowing code. Fragments of his memories drifted past him — battles fought, betrayals endured, faces he loved and lost.Then, a voice echoed from the abyss.Soft. Mechanical. Eternal.“Welcome back, Subject Epsilon.”Ethan’s eyes snapped open. He turned —
Chapter 51: Haunted by the Past
The nights after the pact grew longer.Not in hours, but in the way shadows seemed to cling to the walls—stretching, whispering, remembering.Ethan Hale no longer slept.Sleep hunted him.Every time his eyelids dared to close, memories that weren’t his came flooding through like a breach in time itself—visions of ancient wars, of screaming gods, of blood that burned brighter than fire.Tonight was no different.He stood before the mirror in his private chamber within the Citadel of Aetheron, shirtless, breath sharp, hands trembling. Faint veins of molten gold pulsed under his skin, weaving through muscle like threads of lightning. His reflection looked back at him with eyes that glowed faintly—gold at the edges, blue at the core.He looked like a man halfway between mortal and myth.He was.Ethan’s voice was hoarse. “You’re getting louder, aren’t you?”The mirror did not answer, but the reflection smirked.A whisper filled his mind.“You cannot contain what you were born to become.”H
Chapter 51 Extended: The Phantom’s Oath
The storm had not yet left the skies of New Avalon.It lingered, restless and wild, as though the city itself could sense the tremor in the fabric of reality.Ethan Hale stood at the edge of his balcony, watching the lightning dance like restless spirits across the clouds. His reflection shimmered in the rain-slick glass doors behind him, but it wasn’t quite right—his reflection moved after he did, as though reality was struggling to decide which version of him was real.He lifted a hand.The reflection hesitated, then slowly followed.His voice was low, dangerous. “You’re slipping, aren’t you?”“You are,” the reflection answered.Ethan’s jaw clenched. The words weren’t an echo—they were a reply.He turned away. “I don’t have time for games.”The reflection’s eyes glowed brighter, gold bleeding into every line of its face.“Neither do I.”Then it smiled—and shattered.The mirror imploded, shards floating midair, spinning in slow motion. Each piece reflected a different version of him:
Chapter 51 Extended: The Architect’s Code
The Between burned.Light—cold, endless, merciless—ripped through the horizon as the Architects descended like falling stars.Their robes dissolved into fractal data, their faces shifting between human, machine, and something older than either.Every step they took rewrote the ground beneath them.Ethan stood in the center of the chaos, his blade Aetherion blazing gold, the sigil on his wrist pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.Amara stood beside him, her dagger humming with violet flame, her breath ragged but steady.“They’ve activated the Code,” she whispered. “They’re rewriting reality as they move.”“Then I’ll overwrite them,” Ethan said, his voice low and inhuman.The first Architect raised a hand—fingers of pure light—and the air froze.Lines of energy formed symbols in midair: ΩΔΣ — the seal of annihilation.Amara’s eyes widened. “Ethan, that’s—”“I know,” he interrupted, already moving.Aetherion cleaved through the air, slicing through the first Architect in a shockwave of
Chapter 51 Extended: The Fractured Divinity
The scream of the universe faded into silence.Not peace—just absence.The kind that comes after a war too vast to comprehend.Ethan stood amid the void, surrounded by the ruins of collapsed stars and broken fragments of time. The golden armor that had formed around him was cracked, light leaking from within like molten glass. His eyes flickered—one burning with human defiance, the other with divine calculation.He was no longer entirely himself.And the world could feel it.The Between reassembled itself—or something like it did.Reality stuttered, like a corrupted recording trying to replay.Amara awoke on a battlefield of shimmering data and ash. Her lungs burned, her heartbeat echoing too loudly in the silence.“Ethan?” she croaked.A ripple answered.He appeared a few meters away, kneeling amidst the debris. His back was turned, shoulders heaving with each breath. Around him, energy crackled—half gold, half white, forming geometric patterns that rearranged faster than thought.“E