2025-09-20 23:36:04Murmurs buzzed like a hive of hornets. A reporter shoved a mic close. “Mr. Hale, do you deny these statements? Is it true you’ve been hiding massive debts from your own family?”
Another shouted, “Did your girlfriend leave you because she discovered your financial ruin?” Laughter rippled. The cameras leaned closer, hungry for collapse.
Ethan’s gaze swept the room, calm despite the storm. His eyes fell on the papers Victor clutched. Lies. Every number, every slip, fabricated.
He stepped forward, voice steady. “Interesting. If I truly carried these debts, Victor, how did I inherit the throne yesterday? Do you believe the council approves a bankrupt heir?”
A silence cut through the crowd. The reporters glanced at one another. Pens paused mid-scratch. Victor’s smirk faltered, just for a breath. “Those records”
“are fakes,” Ethan finished coldly. His words cracked like thunder. “And whoever manufactured them should pray I never learn their name.”
The murmurs shifted instantly. Suspicion rippled, not toward Ethan, but toward Victor.
A reporter raised his hand, voice sharp. “Mr. Victor, these documents came from you. Are you accusing the council of negligence, or are you spreading falsehoods against the heir?”
Victor stiffened. “I received them anonymously. I only thought it right the public be informed.” The questioner pressed. “Informed of lies?” A camera zoomed in on Victor’s suddenly tight jaw.
Ethan stepped closer, every syllable deliberate. “You wanted to shame me, cousin. But you forgot one thing.” He leaned forward, his voice low yet carrying across the hall.
A Hale does not break under lies. He exposes them. And you’ve just exposed yourself. Gasps burst across the room. Reporters fired questions all at once:
“Mr. Ethan, will you investigate these forgeries?”
“Mr. Victor, are you admitting you spread slander?”
“Is this a family war?”
The hall erupted in chaos. Victor’s face flushed red, but he forced a laugh. “You speak well, cousin. But words are wind. The world will see soon enough what kind of heir you really are.”
Ethan’s gaze didn’t waver. “Then let the world watch. I’ll bury lies with truth. The storm of questions surged again, flashes blinding, microphones shoved forward.
Ethan, do you believe this was an inside job?,“Is your family divided against you?”
He raised a hand. The noise stilled. “My answer is simple,” Ethan said, voice ringing like iron. “I will not bow to slander. I will not yield to envy. And if anyone inside this family or out believes they can strip me of what I’ve earned, they will learn the cost of their mistake.”
The crowd erupted again, this time not just in jeers but in awe. Victor’s eyes burned. His glass of wine shattered in his grip, crimson spilling across the marble like blood.
But in the far corner, unseen by most, a man in a gray suit slipped quietly out the back. His phone glowed faintly in the shadows. Seconds later, Ethan’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out, Unknown Number: “That was only the opening move. By tonight, your empire will bleed.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. He looked up across the hall at Victor’s rage, at the reporters’ frenzy, at the lingering smirks from relatives who hadn’t spoken but had watched too closely.
The wolves weren’t waiting. They were already inside. His hand closed over the phone. His voice, low and cold, carried only to himself.
Then let them come. The Hale estate looked peaceful at dusk. The last streaks of sunlight bled across the sky, fading into a bruised violet. Servants moved quietly through the halls.
The marble floors gleamed. On the surface, nothing seemed wrong. But Ethan’s instincts screamed otherwise.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
CHAPTER 138 — THE GIRL WHO BREATHES BACKWARD
The reflection opened its eyes. At first, it didn’t realize it had eyes. The sensation of sight came too suddenly, like being thrust into existence mid-blink.Light filtered through the observation chamber, fractured by suspended shards of glass that now hung frozen in the air, turning slowly like orbiting moons.It took a breath and the room exhaled. The glass shifted, the fragments reassembling along the edges of its reflection until the space seemed whole again. Almost. The reflection tilted its head, studying its hands.They looked human skin tone precise, even the faint scar across the knuckle of the right index finger identical to Miriam’s. But when it flexed them, the motion rippled up its arms, like movement through liquid.It smiled without meaning to. The smile felt… borrowed. I am she. The thought wasn’t a voice. It was a resonance a hum that vibrated through the air, finding harmony with the pulse of the walls.No… she was I. The reflection frowned. “Was,” it whispered alo
CHAPTER 137 — THE ROOM THAT BREATHES
The silence was too perfect. So perfect it sounded like a trick. Miriam didn’t move at first. She simply stood there, staring at her reflection in the observation glass.The figure on the other side stood the same way same posture, same angle of head but the timing was wrong. Off by a fraction of a second, like a delay in a bad transmission.It breathed slower than she did. Inhale. Pause. Exhale. And in that pause, the room shifted. She felt it under her feet first the subtle swell, as if the floor were rising and falling, inhaling with her.The walls exhaled softly, a whisper of air through hidden seams. The lights above flickered not from electrical fault, but heartbeat rhythm.The room was alive. And it was matching her. She forced herself to speak. “You’re not me.” Her reflection blinked, then smiled a slow, precise imitation. “You said that before,” it replied.The voice didn’t come from the glass. It came from everywhere, echoing from vents, from under the floor, from the ceilin
CHAPTER 136 — THE BREATH BETWEEN WORLDS
When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t sure she had. Light pressed against her lids like fingers trying to peel them open.The air was viscous every inhalation slow and heavy, as though she were breathing through water. Her heartbeat had vanished, replaced by a rhythm that came from outside her body.She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. Or if she’d been unconscious at all. The last thing she remembered was the mirror-mist filling her lungs. The taste of static.Rael’s voice whispering, “Now we exhale.”And then white. Now, she was inside that white. She stood or thought she did. The ground beneath her feet was soft but reflective, like the skin of milk. Every step rippled the world outward, bending the horizon.There was no up, no down just endless pale expanse. When she breathed, the air shimmered with threads of silver that drifted into the distance and vanished.“Rael?” Her voice didn’t echo. It folded inward instead, like it had been swallowed by the air. “Hello?”So
CHAPTER 135 — THE GLASS THAT RUNS
The corridor screamed. It wasn’t sound not exactly but the pressure of every molecule splitting, recombining, and splitting again.Miriam’s ears filled with static; her vision fractured. The silver crack behind her widened, spilling light that moved like fluid fire. Her body reacted before her mind did run. She bolted.The world warped as she moved: floors tilting, walls rippling with reflected versions of herself. Every step multiplied into a thousand echoes, sprinting beside her, ahead of her, behind her.Her own face blurred into a streak of light across the mirrored air.“Stop it!” she shouted, breathless. “Stop!”. The facility answered with silence. Then a deep, resonant heartbeat rolled through the hall.Boom. The walls flexed. Boom. A hairline fracture split across the ceiling, spilling a rain of mirrored dust. Boom. Every reflective surface shimmered and the reflections started running too.Miriam threw herself around a corner, the world stuttering a half second behind. He
CHAPTER 134 — THE MIRROR THAT BREATHES
The silence wasn’t real. It never was. Miriam woke to the sound of glass breathing. It came from the air, the walls, even her skin a soft, rhythmic exhale, as if the world itself were trying to remember lungs.She sat up, every movement heavy, her vision swimming in fractured reflections of herself hundreds of Miriams in floating shards of mirrored light suspended midair like frozen rain.The facility was gone. Or maybe it had never been. Steel walls shimmered with silver veins. Gravity stuttered, pulsing with each sound her heart made.When she tried to stand, her reflection lagged half a second behind, then caught up smearing into alignment like a bad projection. “Julian?”Her voice sounded underwater. No answer. Just the low hum of something vast beneath the floor. She stumbled forward.The shards shifted around her, rearranging into corridors that weren’t supposed to exist. At the edge of one hallway, where the air bent inward like heat, a shadow stood human-shaped, motionless.
CHAPTER 133 — THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
At first, she thinks she’s blind again. Then she realizes she’s looking through glass. The surface is smooth, infinite, and cold against her palms.Light pools somewhere beyond it, distorted, slow-moving like a current under ice. Her reflection no, her replacement stands on the far side, tilting its head in gentle mimicry.Dr. Rael’s lips tremble. “Let me out.”The reflection smiles, serene, almost tender. “I am you.”Rael slams her hand against the barrier. The sound doesn’t echo it ripples. The world outside vibrates as if the glass is liquid, the light folding and reforming with each motion.Her reflection remains unmoved, eyes glowing faintly from within. “You took my place,” Rael says. “You’re not real.”The reflection leans closer, pressing its mirrored forehead to the glass. “You made me real when you touched the fracture. You gave me the part that wanted to live forever.”Rael’s breath catches. “I didn’t.”“You did.”The word reverberates through the entire mirrored plane, a d
You may also like
Sword and Bloodline
Blessedcreation13.5K viewsMakiya
Blentkills48.7K viewsMultiverse Fighting Championship: I'm the President
Namazu12.8K viewsImmortal Universe
Shin Novel 15.6K viewsRoad To True Freedom
SoShamefull00268 viewsProtogene Assimilation
Kuraii6.2K viewsLegend of Oasis : A tale of magic and mystery
Ramutshatsha Arikonisaho21.4K viewsLegacy System: Rise Of The Richest Man
Dark Crafter3.0K views