~Laurent When I opened my eyes, I thought I was home. The ceiling above me was cracked, water-stained in the same corner it always was. The air smelled faintly of dust and wet earth. I smiled. I must have made it out alive. I killed Calen and Denzel carried me out and back home. Then I heard it—the hum. Low, steady, like the world was breathing through my skull. I sat up. Then I noticed that the room stretched strangely. The walls bowed inward, and the light from the window looked wrong—too still, like someone had painted it there and forgotten to finish. Outside, smoke curled into a black sky. My stomach turned. I stepped toward the window. The horizon was on fire. Whole streets burned in silence, buildings melting into rivers of light. No sound. No screams. Just flame. Then I saw them. Bodies. Rows of them, spilling down the streets like fallen dominoes. Their eyes were open. Empty. I knew this place. The academy. Or what was left of it. My chest tightened. “No…” I stu

~Laurent The city was quieter up close. Not silent—just… stripped. Every step I took echoed through hollow streets that used to hum with mana carts and laughter. Now only the wind spoke, whispering through broken glass and bent metal. The air carried that faint sweetness of decay, the kind that clung to your tongue long after you breathed it in. I kept my aura low. My shadows folded tight beneath my skin, no leaks, no flickers. Monsters hunted by scent, by sound, by vibration. I’d learned that fast. The first one I saw was feeding. A shape hunched over what used to be a soldier, its spine bending wrong under grey skin. Its claws moved delicately, pulling meat like a craftsman peeling fruit. When its head snapped up, its eyes were too many. I stopped breathing. Waited. Counted the seconds between its movements. It hissed once, sniffed, then returned to its meal. I moved. Slow. One foot after another. Every step mapped in my head before I took it. There was no point in fighting

~Laurent Denzel woke me before dawn. The shelter was still half-asleep—low murmurs, the crackle of lanterns, the occasional sound of someone coughing in their sleep. He stood over me with his arms crossed, his cloak already on. The shadows under his eyes were darker than usual. “It’s time,” he said quietly. I sat up, rubbing the stiffness from my neck. “Time for?” “Time to find what the people here will survive on. We’re the strongest here and most suited to go out,” He started. “We’re almost out of food. If we wait another day, people start starving.” I reached for my boots. “Alright then. Let’s go.” The air in the tunnels was cold and heavy, the kind that stuck to your throat. I could already smell the faint hint of oil and iron from above—the city waiting. We slipped through the exit shaft, the metal gate closing softly behind us. The streets were half-lit by the broken moon, the buildings rising like black teeth around us. Ash drifted through the air, glowing faintly in th

~Monster Monarch I sit and the hall remembers me. My chair is a thing of ruin made beautiful—twisted iron, bone-blackened wood, leather pulled from hides that still twitch in memory. The light comes in uneven breaths through shattered windows; smoke curls like question marks. Below us the city is a wound. From this height the scars make a pattern I enjoy: lines of broken life, clusters of light where survivors still hide. I take them in and catalog them because even hunger needs rhythm. They file in and speak in the language of conquest—short, blunt, efficient. My lieutenants keep to the shadowed edges, their scales scraping softly against stone. They carry reports in their mouths like trophies. “The west viaduct cleared, Majesty. Three thousand carcasses—more where we stopped. The Celestial tower fell this morning; a cluster of S-rank tried to hold the spire and shattered into ash.” One rasped, claws drumming the arm of my throne. Another snapped teeth, “We took Sector Six a

~Laurent The moment the words left his mouth, the world changed. “Now, Laurent. Kill them all.” The shadows obeyed before I could think. They rose around me like smoke made solid—thick, writhing, alive. My body wasn’t mine anymore. My hands moved on their own. My heart didn’t beat so much as pulse in rhythm with something older, darker. Then the air split. Five shapes stepped out of me. Their eyes glowed the same blood-red as mine, their shadows stretching long and sharp across the walls. Each one shimmered faintly, the edges of their bodies bleeding into smoke. Blood Clones. They didn’t wait for orders. The first one vanished with Shadow Step, reappearing in the middle of a swarm. Claws erupted from its hands—Claw Manifestation—and the air filled with tearing sounds followed by the bodies of a few monsters crashing onto the floor. The second clone followed, blade drawn. Eclipsera hummed with dark energy as it cut through monsters like mist. His movement was too fast so befo