2025-09-20 23:18:32Ethan stared at the words, expression unreadable. His thumb hovered over the reply button, then stopped. He slipped the phone back into his pocket. A faint smile curved his lips not of joy, but of something sharper. Something colder.
If this is just the beginning, he thought, then let the games begin. Above him, thunder rumbled in the distance. The storm was coming.
The rain hadn’t started yet, but the clouds above Lugard Ford churned black. Ethan walked alone across the empty courtyard, his shoes splashing through shallow puddles left from the morning drizzle.
A single figure waited by the gates an old man in a black suit, posture straight as a blade. His hair was silver, but his eyes sharp, glowing like steel under the lamplight. “Grandfather,” Ethan said quietly.
The old man’s voice carried authority that no storm could drown. “You endured.” Ethan didn’t answer. He still heard Selena’s laughter echoing in his skull, still felt Damien’s hand gripping her waist like a brand.
The old man studied him for a long moment. “And you did not break. Good. The Hale heir does not cry over betrayal. He learns.”
Ethan’s fist tightened around the ruined ring box. “She didn’t just betray me. She mocked everything I gave… everything I am.”
“No.” His grandfather’s gaze cut through him. “She mocked what you pretended to be. That was the test.” Ethan looked up sharply. “The test…”
The old man nodded. “Tonight, the Rule of Poverty ends. At dawn, you are no longer Ethan Hale the part-time worker. You become Ethan Hale, heir to seventy percent of the world’s wealth. And with that title comes more enemies than you can count.”
Silence stretched between them, heavy with thunder and unspoken warnings. Finally, Ethan exhaled. His voice was steady. “Then let them come.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, but a faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Spoken like a Hale.” A black car rolled silently up the drive, sleek and armored, headlights cutting through the mist. The driver stepped out, bowed, and opened the door.
Ethan hesitated. He looked back at the glowing windows of Lugard Ford. Behind those walls, his classmates still laughed, still replayed his humiliation, still believed him broken. Tomorrow, he thought again, they’ll see who was truly laughing.
He stepped into the car. Inside, the leather seats smelled faintly of cedar. His grandfather sat across from him, hands folded on his cane. “Do you resent her?”
The old man asked suddenly. Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Resent? No.” His eyes darkened. “But I will never forget.”
“And Damien Cross?”
Ethan’s lips curved faintly not in humor, but in the shadow of something colder. “He’ll learn there are leagues beyond his reach.” Thunder cracked above. The car drove into the storm.
By the time they reached the Hale estate, the rain was falling in sheets. The gates rose like iron teeth, taller than the academy’s towers, guarded by men who didn’t flinch under lightning’s glare.
As the car rolled through, Ethan finally spoke, his voice low. “Tomorrow… everything changes.”
His grandfather’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes. But remember, Ethan: wealth is power, and power is war. Those who mocked you tonight are nothing. The true battle begins with those who smile at you tomorrow.”
The words lingered in the air, heavy, prophetic. Ethan leaned back against the seat, eyes closed, Selena’s laughter still burning in his memory, But beneath it, louder, stronger, was his vow. She chose her side. Let her live with it. The storm swallowed the night.
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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
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