School

Ethan Moore spent ten years being the perfect husband. He worked sixteen hour shifts so his wife Claire could carry designer bags. He paid off his mother in law's credit card debt four times. He covered his brother in law's DUI lawyers, his daughter's private school tuition, and every vacation, every spa trip, every brunch bill that his family racked up without ever once saying thank you. And when he lay dying in a hospital bed with three cracked ribs and a punctured lung, not one of them held his hand. "I called the insurance company this morning. The payout is $750,000, but with the accidental clause, it bumps to 1.2 million." His wife crossed her legs and scrolled through her phone without looking at him once. "What about the stock options from his company? Those vest on death, don't they?" His mother in law leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded. And then his daughter, the girl he carried on his shoulders at county fairs, the girl he stayed up with during thunderstorms, looked up from her phone and said the words that stopped his heart. "You know he's not even my real dad, right? I just want to know if I still get stuff. I really need a new phone." He woke up three years in the past with every memory of his deathbed burned into his brain and a system that returned every dollar he spent tenfold. The man who once apologized to a waiter for sending back cold soup now buys $400,000 suits without blinking. The man who skipped his own father's funeral because his wife said they couldn't afford the flight now carries $20 million in his back pocket. The pushover is dead. And the people who killed him don't even know he's coming.

Seventeen year old Kelvin Katz has never known what it feels like to belong. After the death of his biological father, his mother remarries, hoping to give her family a fresh start. Instead, Kelvin grows up under the constant emotional abuse of his stepfather, who treats him like an unwanted burden while showering love on his two younger half-siblings. Determined to protect his mother from more conflict, Kelvin endures the pain in silence, never realizing that he has been hiding something far more dangerous than his broken heart. When a terrifying supernatural power suddenly awakens inside him, Kelvin's ordinary life comes to an abrupt end. Secret government agents arrive within hours and take him to Antherion Tower, a mysterious fortress where teenagers with extraordinary abilities are confined. Believing the Tower is nothing more than a prison disguised as a school, Kelvin struggles to survive its brutal training, strict rules, dangerous rankings, and powerful students who constantly fight for dominance. Inside the Tower, he forms an unbreakable friendship with the fearless Raze Calder, the brilliant strategist Mara Sinclair, and several other gifted students who all share one dream—to escape and reclaim their freedom. As their bond grows stronger, so does Kelvin's determination to break out of the Tower, no matter the cost. But freedom comes with a devastating price. Beyond the Tower's walls waits The Dominion, a ruthless organization that hunts gifted individuals and transforms them into weapons capable of destroying nations. Kelvin uncovers the truth that changes everything: Antherion Tower was never built to imprison supernatural children—it was built to protect them from the horrors waiting outside. Now, with war approaching and loyalties tested, Kelvin must choose between escaping the place he hates or fighting to defend the only sanctuary standing between humanity and a terrifying new age of chaos.

Silence. Like a nice bucket of shhhhhhhhh. Everyone shut the effing fudge UP! That's all I've ever wanted. *Sigh.* But silence comes in different flavors. There's mint - the peaceful kind that wraps around you like a blanket. The kind I chase at 2 AM. I've cried once. Just once. With a bucket beside me, watching heroes with super suits and impossible strength tear each other apart. Somehow that feels less broken than my reality. Then there's the suffocating silence at school. Not an ice cream flavor. This one tastes like metal and shame. High school is my personal hell. Empty wallet, empty lunch tray, empty seat beside me like I'm radioactive. Empty soul on Wednesdays because middles are always the worst. *The usual.* But Emily made the silence bearable. Mint-flavored again. Until she broke something between us. *Snap.* One moment she's whispering secrets with me, the next she's weaponizing them. She scattered my private thoughts, added her own twisted lies. The betrayal burns hotter than the stares drilling into my back. I went from invisible to spectacle. Being a ghost feels like luxury when you're dodging spit balls and "accidental" lunch trays. But somewhere between my third panic attack and contemplating switching schools... *Something shifted.* Like in those games you play, when your character suddenly glows and the screen flashes: "New Skill Unlocked" And it wasn't just in my head. I tested it. Small things at first – a pencil moving across my desk when I focused hard enough. Then books. Then someone's lunch tray right as they walked past Emily. *tap tap tap* I used to think rock bottom was the end. *Well ladies and gentlemen,* it's just a really messed up spawn point. And now? I don't stumble from cliffs anymore. I swim in gravity, and dive head first.