2024-12-27 14:38:15The tension in the room was palpable as Kael and Evangeline stepped through the doors of her family home.
Standing in the middle of the living room was Mike Smith, a man with a confident smirk and an air of entitlement. He turned the moment he heard the footsteps, his expression darkening when he saw Kael. “What the hell is he doing here?” Mike sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. “Don’t tell me the rumors are true.” Evangeline’s mother, Margaret, folded her arms and sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately, they are. Can you believe it? My daughter, married to him of all people.” She gestured toward Kael as if he were a stain on the rug. Kael remained calm, his face betraying no emotion. Mike’s gaze darted between Evangeline and Kael. “This has to be a joke, Evangeline. You married this guy? Did your father hold you at gunpoint?” Evangeline shot her father a venomous glare. “Might as well have. Isn’t that right, Father?” “Evangeline—” her father began, but she cut him off. “No, don’t even start. You forced me into this,” she snapped. “And now I have to live with him.” She waved a hand dismissively at Kael. Mike stepped closer to Kael, his tone turning mocking. “You must be thrilled, huh? Marrying a woman who clearly can’t stand the sight of you. A real fairytale romance.” Kael’s silence only seemed to irritate him further. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? Or are you just so used to being worthless that you don’t even bother defending yourself anymore?” Margaret chimed in, her voice sharp. “Mike’s right. Look at him—standing there like a mute. What could he possibly offer my daughter? Absolutely nothing.” Evangeline crossed her arms, her face a mixture of frustration and resentment. “Exactly. This entire situation is ridiculous. I could have had a real future, a real marriage. But no, I get stuck with this.” Kael’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he remained silent. Mike smirked, taking a step back. “You hear that, Kael? Even your wife thinks you’re a waste of space.” “Enough!” Mr. Holsten’s voice boomed, silencing the room. Everyone turned to look at him, startled by his sudden outburst. “This behavior is unacceptable,” he said firmly. “Mike, you are a guest in my home. You will not disrespect Kael under my roof.” Mike blinked in disbelief. “Disrespect? Are you serious? This guy—” “Kael is my son-in-law,” Mr. Holsten interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. “And I will not tolerate anyone treating him otherwise.” Margaret scoffed. “Oh, please, Holsten. You can’t seriously expect us to treat him with respect when he—” “I said enough!” Mr. Holsten barked. “This isn’t up for debate.” Mike looked at Evangeline, his expression incredulous. “You’re really okay with this? Letting your father ruin your life like this?” Evangeline hesitated, her eyes darting toward Kael before quickly looking away. “I didn’t have a choice,” she muttered. Mike shook his head, his smirk returning. “Unbelievable. Well, don’t expect me to sit back and watch this train wreck. I’ll be here when you come to your senses, Evangeline.” With that, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. Margaret muttered something under her breath and followed him, leaving Kael, Evangeline, and her father alone in the now-quiet living room. Mr. Holsten turned to Kael, his expression apologetic. “I’m sorry about that, Kael. Some people can’t seem to mind their manners.” Kael nodded slightly. “It’s fine, sir. I’m used to it.” Evangeline rolled her eyes. “Of course, you are.” “Evangeline,” her father warned, his tone sharp.
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter seven
Their conversation was interrupted by a loud knock at the door which made Margaret jump. “Who on earth—”Before she could finish, one of the mobsters pushed the door open. Their leader, a tall man with a scar running down his cheek, stepped inside with a smug grin.“Mr. Holsten,” the man drawled, his voice thick with menace. “It’s time to settle your debt.”Mr. Holsten’s face turned red with anger. “What are you talking about, Carlos? The loan isn’t due for another six months!”Carlos shrugged casually. “The boss has decided he wants his money now. You see, patience isn’t really his strong suit.”Margaret gasped. “This is outrageous! You can’t just change the terms like this.”“We can and we have,” Carlos said with a smirk. “Now, pay up.”Evangeline stepped forward, her face a mixture of defiance and disbelief. “This is absurd! You know we don’t have that kind of money lying around.”Carlos glanced at her, his eyes lingering in a way that made her skin crawl. “Ah, Evangeline
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Eight
Margaret paced back and forth in the Ravol family’s grand living room, her face flushed with anger. “This is all your fault, Holsten! You’re the one who insisted on making Kael our son-in-law! Look at what he’s brought us. I wouldn’t have even hired him as a servant, and now he’s nothing but trouble!”Holsten, slumped in a chair, rubbed his temples. “Enough, Margaret. It’s not the time to argue. The biggest gang in the city has been provoked because of him. They won’t just let this go. Retaliation is inevitable.”Evangelene, sitting quietly by the window, wrung her hands nervously. “What do we do now? Who will save us from this mess?”Kael, leaning casually against the doorframe, remained calm. His lips curled into a faint smirk. “I’ve already told you, I can handle it.”Margaret turned on him with a venomous glare. “Handle it? You? Don’t make me laugh. You’ve done nothing but cause problems since the day you stepped into this house. Leave it to someone capable, like Mike.”At that mo
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Nine
Kael stepped out of the taxi, immediately taking in the military vehicles and armed personnel surrounding the mansion. Before he could fully assess the situation, a familiar voice cut through the air."What the hell are you doing here?" Selena's sharp tone matched her frown as she strode toward him.Her eyes tracked the departing taxi, and something shifted in her expression. "A taxi... interesting," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "And here I thought... but no, Marcus's people only travel in those custom Rolls-Royces.""Is there a law against taking taxis now, Selene?" Kael asked mildly."Don't play games with me. Why are you here? Following me again?" She crossed her arms, her military uniform crisp in the afternoon sun. "This isn't some casino where you can hide behind your cards when things get rough. We're about to take down Victor 'Crocodile' Nelson."Kael's eyebrows rose slightly at the name. "Nelson?""Yes, Nelson. The most dangerous criminal in the city." She sneer
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Ten
Kael shook his head, the corners of his lips curling into a slight smirk as he walked to a secluded corner away from Selena’s troops. They were busy trying to break through the defenses of Victor’s manor, but for Kael, it was a trivial matter. “Attack again!”The heavily guarded mansion didn’t even faze him. It was like a playground to him, a place he could come and go without breaking a sweat.He slipped through the shadows with ease, dodging the few guards who were too distracted by their orders to notice his presence. “Try harder!”The soldiers outside were busy trying to breach the gates, leaving the manor’s interior nearly deserted. Kael grinned to himself as he moved through the corridors, his footsteps silent, his body a blur as he navigated the mansion.Eventually, he found his way to the innermost room, a large, lavishly furnished space. At the center of it sat a fat man—Victor Nelson himself. He was lounging in a leather chair, a cigar dangling from his mouth, looking e
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Eleven
Kael's footsteps echoed through the silent room as he walked toward the door. At the threshold, he paused for a final glance.One of his dying victims gasped out, "Who... what are you?"Kael didn't answer, simply letting the heavy door close behind him.Selena paced outside under the dim light of the streetlamps, her boots crunching against the gravel. She muttered under her breath, her hands twitching at her sides. “What’s taking so long? There should’ve been resistance by now. This quiet is unnatural.”One of her soldiers approached, saluting sharply. “Commander, the perimeter is secure. No signs of movement inside.”Selena narrowed her eyes. “No signs? That doesn’t make sense. Victor wouldn’t give up without a fight. Did anyone even hear gunfire?”The soldier hesitated. “No, ma’am. Not a single shot. It’s... eerily quiet.”Her jaw clenched. “Eerily quiet isn’t what I want to hear. Get ready. We’re going in.”“Yes, ma’am.” The soldier stepped back, issuing orders to the rest of the
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Twelve
Selene stood among her troops, surveying the aftermath with a frown still trying to figure things out. The entire operation had concluded with almost no effort on their part—a fact that didn’t sit well with her.“Commander,” her assistant chimed in, practically bouncing with excitement, “you know what this means, don’t you? What if a A war god must have intervened! Someone powerful and deeply in love with you has cleared the path for us!”Selene rolled her eyes, waving a dismissive hand, but her cheeks burned faintly. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said sharply, though her heart fluttered at the thought. A mysterious warrior, so skilled and powerful, secretly enamored with her? The idea was impossible… and yet, strangely satisfying.“Still,” she added, regaining her composure, “I want a full report. Sweep the scene, gather intel, and determine exactly what happened here. No excuses.”Her assistant saluted eagerly, but Selene’s thoughts wandered. For a brief moment, she considered Kael—but
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Thirteen
The heavy silence that followed Marcus’s exit was almost suffocating. Evangeline stared at the door, her mind racing to process what had just happened. Marcus—the infamous mafia boss, a man who commanded fear across Cresmont—had bowed to her. Worse, he had apologized to her as if she held power over him. It didn’t make sense.Margaret was the first to recover. She spun around, her sharp gaze landing squarely on Mike. “Mike! That was incredible!” she exclaimed, rushing to his side.Evangeline blinked, finally snapping out of her stupor. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said, her voice rising. “You convinced Marcus to fix everything!”Mike froze, his mouth opening and closing as if searching for words. “Well, I—” he started, only to be cut off by Margaret’s enthusiastic praise.“You’re a genius!” she declared, clutching his arm. “The way you handled this behind the scenes, without even mentioning it… Mike, you’re exactly the kind of man this family need
The Death Lord Is Back Chapter Fourteen
The aftermath of the Victor Nelson operation left Selene restless. The debriefing room was silent save for the soft buzz of the projector replaying static-laden footage. Selene sat at the head of the table, her sharp eyes fixed on the frozen screen.“No struggle. No prolonged gunfire. No visible entry or exit,” she murmured, her fingers tapping against the cold metal of the table. “And the cameras just… stopped working.” she rolled her eyes an tutted as she mused.Her assistant, seated beside her, shifted nervously. “It’s like… like a ghost went in and wiped them all out,” he ventured, his voice low.“A ghost doesn’t leave a room full of dead bodies,” Selene shot back, but the sharpness in her voice faltered.The assistant leaned forward, his face lighting up with the fervor of a conspiracy theorist. “Or a war god just like I had told you,” he whispered excitedly. “You heard what the troops said—no one saw anything. Someone powerful and unseen did
Latest Chapter
Chapter 166
The walls of the Archive began to twist.Not crumble—twist.Time peeled away in sheets, collapsing inward as the group ran, each step falling on ground that might not exist in the next breath. Fragments of timelines flickered all around them—ghostly versions of themselves trapped in loops, echoes of choices they never made screaming like haunted shadows.Pamela grunted as another burst of gravity cracked the hallway open. “Move, move, move!”Marcus was limping behind her, his arm torn and shoulder blackened with some kind of residue from the Warborn’s psychic bleed. “I’m trying! I only have one functioning leg right now!”Kael stumbled, hand gripping the corridor’s wall as it rippled under his fingers like water. He could feel the Archive rejecting them—like it knew they didn’t belong anymore. His entire body hummed, sparking faint pulses of energy that didn’t feel like his own.Selene’s form hovered beside him—bright, fading, flickering.She wasn’t running.She wasn’t solid.“Kael!”
Chapter 165
The chamber pulsed with dying light.Kael stood in the center, swaying like a man on the edge of drowning. His body crackled with unstable energy—residual sparks from the Warborn still peeling off him like pieces of an old skin. His breaths were sharp, ragged, like each inhale was trying to convince his lungs they still belonged to him.Across from him, she stood.Selene.But not the same.Her form shimmered—less a solid person, more a flame made of memory and presence. Her hair drifted like smoke, her eyes glowing with the same soft defiance he remembered. But her voice, when she spoke, wasn’t just sound—it was feeling.“You pulled me back,” she whispered. “Through pain. Through everything.”Kael stepped forward, his legs heavy. “You… I saw you die.”“I did,” she said. “But not all of me went with it.”Pamela watched from behind him, frozen in awe and disbelief. “How… is this even possible?”Selene turned her gaze to her, smiling faintly. “Because he never let go. Kael refused to for
Chapter 164
The Archive was burning from the inside out.Not with fire—but with collapsing timelines, pulsing memories, fractured light. Every wall breathed with images too fast to process—Kael’s pasts, his futures, twisted and overlapping in a storm of identity.And at the center of it all stood Kael—or what was left of him.One half darkened by the Warborn’s presence. Cold, hollow-eyed. Fingers curled like blades of glass. The other side—his side—trembled, flickering, as though it was being overwritten pixel by pixel.Pamela didn’t wait for permission.She sprinted toward the central console.“Pamela!” Elias barked. “Don’t you dare—”“I’m not losing him again!”The Archive tried to reject her. The control panel was alive, wired to Kael’s neural stream. It surged with volatile energy. She bit back a scream as pain lanced through her arm—veins lit up with neon fire.Still, she didn’t let go.“I can stabilize him,” she gasped. “I have to anchor his memory. Give him a reason to stay who he is.”“Yo
Chapter 163
Kael’s knees hit the floor first.Then his hands.Then his breath—ragged, slipping, strangled in his throat.The Archive trembled around him, colors bending where they shouldn’t exist, time distorting into knots of light. The energy in the room was crushing. It wasn’t pain—it was something worse.Unmaking.Pamela screamed. “Kael!”He could barely lift his head.The Warborn stood over him, not gloating. Not laughing. Just calm. Focused. His hand hovered inches above Kael’s chest. Tendrils of dark light stretched out from his palm—threading into Kael’s ribs like wires.“You feel that?” the Warborn murmured. “The unraveling? That’s your soul, Kael. Peeling apart. Making room for me.”Kael gritted his teeth, hands clawing at the floor, dragging himself back inch by inch.“I… won’t let you.”The Warborn leaned closer. “You already are.”Across the room, Marcus was on the ground, convulsing. His fingers clawed at his head, eyes wide open but seeing too many things at once.“No… I’m not supp
Chapter 162
Kael stared at himself.Not a mirror. Not a reflection. Not some symbolic ghost of who he might have become. No—this was real.He was staring into the eyes of himself—a version untouched by Selene’s compassion, unbroken by Elias’s betrayals, unbent by loss. A version born not from survival, but domination. A creature sharpened by war and polished in darkness.The Warborn Kael smiled. It wasn’t a smirk or a grin—it was something hollow, something stretched across a face that had forgotten how to feel.“I used to think you were the worst of us,” he said quietly, walking in slow, measured steps. “The soft one. The one who got too close to the fire and came back afraid of the heat.”Kael clenched his fists. “I’m not afraid.”“No,” the Warborn said. “But you’ve become… inconvenient.”Pamela stepped in front of Kael before he could respond, her weapon raised.“Back away from him,” she warned. “I don’t care what version of Kael you are. You’re not touching him.”The Warborn tilted his head.
Chapter 161
The walls began to breathe.Not metaphorically—literally. The inner structure of the alien station pulsed like the inside of a lung, as if it were inhaling their presence. Bioluminescent veins of silver and violet light flowed through the walls like liquid circuitry. Every time Kael took a step, the floor rippled gently beneath him, as if the station recognized his weight, his identity… his blood.“Do you feel that?” Pamela whispered.“I feel like we’re inside a heart that’s still beating,” Marcus said, raising his weapon, unsure what to aim at.Kael didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His mind was no longer anchored to the present. Flashes. Echoes. Fragments. Not of this room—but of countless others. Countless lifetimes.The station wasn’t dead. It was dreaming. And those dreams were made of him.Suddenly, columns of light erupted from the walls, forming shapes—human at first, then mutating, then solidifying. Pamela gasped and reached for her gun, but Kael held out his hand.“No,” he said. “T
Chapter 160
“Kael?” Pamela’s voice was shaky. Soft. Too soft for this place.Kael stood there in the dim red light of the stasis chamber, shirtless, barefoot, eyes wide open. But they weren’t the same eyes. Not anymore.They were glowing.Not with light. With memory.With power.His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was learning to breathe again. His fingers twitched. Then his neck turned. Mechanical. Sharp. He looked at Pamela, then Marcus, then Elias… and said nothing.“Kael,” she tried again, stepping closer. “It’s me. It’s Pamela.”He blinked once. “Pamela,” he repeated, flatly. The name came out like data being processed. Not remembered.Her heart broke on the spot.Marcus reached for his weapon on instinct, but Pamela raised a hand. “Don’t,” she whispered. “He’s… he’s confused.”Kael tilted his head, like he was hearing a sound no one else could hear.Then he said, “Define ‘confused.’”Pamela flinched.Marcus stepped forward anyway. “Alright. What do you remember?”Kael’s eyes didn’t blin
Waking the Warbringer
The sirens started first. Low, deep, unnatural. Like the heartbeat of something ancient waking from centuries of silence. Pamela was already at the console, her hands flying across glowing controls she barely understood. “Marcus!” she shouted over the blaring sound. “It’s a timed lock—ten minutes until total purge!” “Total purge?” he echoed, pushing aside a half-melted panel. “What does that mean?” “It means if we don’t get him out of there…” Pamela’s voice caught. “He’s gone. For good. Nothing left.” The containment chamber hummed louder. Kael hung motionless inside—suspended by threads of energy that pulsed with symbols no human language could read. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t moving. But something inside the glass was growing brighter. Then came a sound behind them. Boots. A slow, steady walk. They turned as Elias entered the room, calm as ever, his hands behind his back. “You came,” Pamela said, surprise flashing in her eyes. Elias gave a slow nod. “I said I wou
The Mirror of the Forgotten
The station was no longer still. It pulsed like a living thing, walls breathing, lights flickering like a dying heartbeat. Pamela pressed her palm to the console. It didn’t respond. “Marcus,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong. The layout’s changed.” He looked around. “This corridor wasn’t here before.” The walls had shifted again, swallowing the exit behind them. They were trapped. No alarms. No sirens. Just silence. A silence so heavy it made the air hard to breathe. Then the lights cut out completely. For a moment, they were blind. Then came the voices. Familiar. Terrifying. Echoes. “Pamela…” a voice murmured. Her blood froze. It was Kael. But not the Kael she knew. This voice was broken. Empty. She turned. And there it was. A door. Just standing in the hallway. A frame of rusted metal and shimmering glass. No hinges. No logic. Just… waiting. Marcus stepped forward. “Don’t.” Pamela didn’t listen. She opened the door. And walked into her past. The world aro
