2026-04-01 14:54:57The rooftop wind bit into my open wounds, but the cold was nothing compared to the coldness in Xena's eyes. I slumped against the concrete, my lungs rattling with every breath.
"Sign the property transfer agreement," Arsh said, his voice rumbled with a mocking pity. "Do it now, and I'll make sure your death is quick. Think of it as a final mercy for a decade of service you did for my baby, Xena." I looked past him, my vision blurring as a thick glob of blood slid down my chin. "Ten years, Xena," I wheezed, my voice cracking. "Did they mean... nothing to you?" Before she could speak, Arsh backhanded me. The crack of skin on skin echoed off the stairwell door. "Shut the hell up!" Arsh roared, his face reddening. "Every time you try to guilt her with your 'ten years,' my blood boils. I should choke the life out of you right here with my bare hands." Xena didn't even flinch. She just stood there, draped in the blue gown I had bought her for her last birthday, looking at me like I was a stain on her shoe. "Arsh, don't waste time," she said coldly. "He has nowhere to go. Look around. Your men already surrounded the building. No matter what happens, this is his last day." She let out a small, satisfied laugh that cut deeper than any blade. Arsh grinned, his anger shifting into a sick, twisted playfulness. "Baby, he's dying anyway. Should we give him a show? Something for him to remember in the afterlife?" Xena smirked, her fingers trailing down Arsh's neck. She pulled him into a deep, wet kiss right in front of me. As his hands began to wander over her body, something inside me snapped. I let out a guttural cry and tried to lung forward, to tear them apart, to do anything. The guards holding my arms didn't even break a sweat. One of them buried a boot into my stomach so hard I felt my internal organs shift. I wanted to double over, to howl, but they held me upright, forcing me to watch. Xena was lost in the moment, her eyes closed as Arsh disheveled her clothes. She didn't hear my muffled groans of pain. This was the woman I had doted on, the woman I had planned to marry, the woman I had protected from the world. "Oh baby," Arsh muttered, glancing under the hem of her dress. "You wore my favorite thong?" Xena smiled, a predatory, beautiful curve of her lips. "Do you like it?" "Xena!" I screamed. My voice was weak, but the desperation was absolute. "Please... don't make me hate you." Tears tracked through the soot and blood on my cheeks. It was physical agony watching her belong to the man who was murdering me. Xena finally looked at me, her expression shifting to a cruel smirk. "You know what, Zilu? Since you're dying, I'll tell you a secret. I only approached you because you were a rich brat. We wanted your wealth. You just wanted a toy to play with, right?" "I never..." I gasped, coughing up more copper-tasting warmth. "I loved you for real. But today I realized, I just gave it to the wrong person." "I don't believe you!" she shrieked. She snatched a heavy wooden club from one of the guards and swung it with everything she had. CRACK. The sound of my shoulder blade shattering was sickening. My left arm went instantly numb, hanging like dead weight. "You wanted my wealth?" I whispered, my breath hitching. "I would have given you the world if you had just asked, Xena." Another kick launched into my shin, snapping the bone. I fell to my knees, kept upright only by the strong grip of the guards. "Hahaha!" Xena laughed, her face flushed with adrenaline. "Babe, let's finish what we started." Arsh picked her up by the waist. Her legs wrapped around him tightly. He buried his face in her neck, biting and kissing as her moans pierced the quiet air. I closed my eyes, my heart shattering into more pieces than my bones. "Make him watch," Xena ordered breathlessly. A guard grabbed my hair and squeezed my cheeks, forcing my eyes open. I had no energy left to fight. My vision was failing, the world turning into a gray, hazy smear. Shhhhhh.... A sharp, high-pitched vibration hummed in my ears. I looked around frantically, but the rooftop was the same. Shhhhhh.... "Jump," a woman's voice whispered. It wasn't Xena. It was cold, ethereal, and right next to my ear. "Who's talking?" I tried to scream, but my throat was too filled with blood to make a sound. "No one can hear me but you," the voice said. "It's no use screaming. They'll just think you've finally gone insane." I stumbled mentally. "Who are you?" "It doesn't matter," the voice replied. The sound shifted, moving like a thin wind to my other ear. "Isn't it better to end the pain now? Why stay and watch your girlfriend's shameless infidelity? End it." "I... I can't move. My leg is broken." The woman laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "They're going to kill you anyway." Suddenly, a surge of foreign energy flooded my muscles. My body moved without my consent. I broke free from the guards' grip with a strength I didn't possess at that moment. I sprinted toward the ledge, my broken leg screaming in protest, and hurled myself into the abyss. "Noooooo!" I tried to grab the air, my hands clawing at nothing. In the flickering moments of the fall, I saw her. A woman in a white, blood-stained gown standing on the edge of the roof, laughing as I plummeted. Was she a ghost? A demon? The wind rushed past me. The ground raced up to meet me. Then, everything stopped suddenly. Tut... tut... tut... [Boy? Do you want to enter our system?] I opened my eyes. I wasn't hitting the pavement. I was floating in a void of pure blackness, suspended in thin air. "You have one minute to decide," a new, Robotic voice echoed. "Enter the system, or embrace the death" "System?" I stammered. "Is this like a chinese drama? Some kind of joke?" "Here's the details," the voice said. "If you enter, you will gain the power to transform. You will become the King of the Mosquito Realm—an Aedes Aegypti. You will survive this fall." "A mosquito?" I yelled, my voice echoing in the darkness. "Of all things, why a mosquito? Shouldn't a system give me god-like powers or infinite money?" "It seems the host is ungrateful," the voice droned. "Goodbye." "Wait!" I shouted. "What do you want in exchange?" [Human blood. From every human, a drop. You will harvest for the system.] "Yuck... but male mosquitoes don't drink blood. They eat nectar." "You are special," the voice replied. "The system will grant you a specialized proboscis. Even as a male, you will drink blood and offer it to the system. You will carry the ultimate strain of Dengue. You will have total control over who lives, who suffers, and who dies. You can have your revenge. What do you say?" I thought of Xena's laughter. I thought of Arsh's hands on her. I thought of the bone-cracking pain on that rooftop they inflicted on me. "Deal," I said. "But on one condition. My body is a wreck. If I survive, I need to be whole again. Can you fix me?" "Agreed. To seal the deal, use your blood. Scan the screen." A glowing blue interface appeared in front of me. I was already soaked in my own life force. I smeared a bloody hand across the digital surface. A massive surge of black energy erupted, and a deep, robotic roar filled the void. [HOST ACCEPTED. SYSTEM INITIALIZING.] [WELCOME, KING OF THE SWARM. LET US TAKEOVER THE WORLD. HAHAHAHA!] The laughter was the last thing I heard before the darkness claimed me. ---
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A Promise to the Dead
I pressed my back against the damp plaster, clutching the two-foot chef's knife. My human heart was a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ribs, hammering out a rhythm of pure terror."If you die here, your existence will be erased in all timelines."The System's words looped in my mind like a funeral dirge. I've faced a twenty-seven-story drop. I've lived as a parasite in the dirt. But this? A world where the dead refuse to stay down? This was a different kind of nightmare. I was a man who used to close his eyes during horror movies, and now, I was the lead actor in one. Should I say holy zombie!"Better than dying in Xena's hands," I whispered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat. "At least these monsters don't pretend to love you before they bite off your flesh."Snap out of it, Zilu, I scolded myself. I had twenty-four hours to survive. Energy was my most precious currency. I needed to find a hole, crawl into it, and wait for the clock to run out. I began to move, d
The Red Zone Hunt
"Yes, of course. Show me," I muttered, my wings twitching with a mix of dread and desperation. I had paid the tax in blood and years of my life. I wanted the prize.[Look at your shadow, Host. Enjoy.]The red glow from the ritual hadn't fully faded when I looked down at the surface of the rainwater puddle. My heart...or the frantic little pump in my chest nearly seized."Holy... what kind of monster is that?" I screamed.On the surface of the water, I was still a mosquito. But the shadow I cast on the stone beneath the water? It was the towering, jagged silhouette of a man. A man with elongated, claw-like fingers and eyes that burned like embers in the dark. It looked like a demon made of cheap ink.[That is your new form, Host. You can haunt the waking world now. Consider it a gift.]"A gift? This is a nightmare!" I buzzed, my voice spiraling into a panic. "Imagine a mosquito flying into a room, but the shadow on the wall is a six-foot-tall reaper. That's not a gift, that's
The Altar of Ascension
The night air was heavy, thick with the scent of damp earth and the electric hum of an approaching storm. I was hovering aimlessly over a stagnant pond, my wings beating in a restless rhythm. To anyone else, I am just a nuisance in the dark (that's actually true though). Anyway, I was an anxious mosquito counting the seconds until midnight.In the hollow space where my stomach used to be, I felt the weight of the prize: the Crimson Tax. The blood of that monster Roy was still warm within me, a pulsing, rare energy that felt like liquid fire. It was Rh-Null. The Red Blood. The kind of rare essence that was supposed to bridge the gap between my bug life and my human soul."System," I buzzed, my tone sounded sharp and impatient. "Midnight is breathing down my neck. Where are you?"Silence.Usually, that cold, robotic voice used to snapped back before I could even finish a thought. But now? No answer came. Just the distant croak of a bullfrog and the rustle of leaves. A cold knot
Blight of the Damned
The transfusion room was a sterile, white-tiled purgatory that smelled of rubbing alcohol. Nurses moved with a frantic urgency, their rubber-soled shoes chirping against the floor like panicked birds. In the center of it all stood Roy or rather, the hollowed-out shell that used to be Roy.I watched from the back of a plastic chair, my compound eyes tracking the jerky, robotic movements of his limbs. Inside that body, the real Roy was howling. I could feel the vibrations of his terror through the System's link; he was a passenger in his own skin, screaming at a wall of silence."Get out! Get out of my body, you freak!" his mind shrieked.I chuckled, the sound came out a low, dry vibration in my thorax. No one gonna noticed me... A mosquito! Hahaha..."Lay down here, Mr. Roy," a senior nurse urged, her voice tight with the stress of the ticking clock. "We need to tap the vein now. Every second we lose is a second your wife doesn't have."Roy stood stiffly, his muscles twitching
A puppet
"Baby, if you don't give your blood, won't she be angry at you?"The woman's voice was like honey dripping over broken glass. She lounged on the hospital sofa, twirling a lock of hair around her finger as she looked at Roy. Her eyes were bright with the predatory gleam of someone watching an obstacle being removed.Roy let out a jagged, ugly laugh. "Angry at me,pfft? Teresha is obsessed with me. Even if she wakes up... which she won't. She'll probably thank me for not ruining my health with a needle. She's a pain, honestly. Always has been.""Baby, look at Dr. Andre," she whispered with a sharp smirk, pointing toward the door. "He's still standing there. Hoping you would donate your blood."Roy turned his gaze toward the doctor. The air in the room seemed to thicken with the stench of his arrogance."Dr. Andre, I believe you value your career, don't you?" Roy's voice was a low, vibrating threat.The doctor's face went from pale to a deep, insulted red. "What exactly are you i
Blood of a Betrayer
The first rays of the morning sun didn't feel like a blessing. it felt more like they a blowtorch.I tried to yawn, but the motion was just a sickening vibration of my chitinous jaw. Last night was a fever dream. A blurred montage of shadows, the metallic tang of human life on my tongue, and the terrifying rush of playing god. I still couldn't wrap my head around it. I was a man who used to order expensive steaks and vintage wine... And now, I was a parasite lurking in the weeds.As the sun climbed higher, my skin began to sizzle. To a human, it was a pleasant morning. To me, the light was a searing radiation that threatened to cook me from the inside out. I scrambled into the damp, dark safety of a hollowed-out log, my tiny heart hammering against my ribs."What now?" I croaked into the silence blaming my bad luck.I was bored, terrified, and fueled by a singular, jagged purpose: I had to make Xena bleed. I had to see the light leave her eyes just like it almost left mine. Bu
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