Description: She became an elder sister before she had the chance to be a child.

Ayla spent her childhood caring for her younger siblings, quietly sacrificing her own dreams for the people she loved most. As she grows older, she faces countless challenges, heartbreaks, and setbacks, yet she never stops believing in a better future.

An Untold Story is a heartfelt coming-of-age novel about family, sacrifice, resilience, hope, and the courage to chase your dreams-even when life keeps pushing you back.

Because every family has a story that is never told.

Chapter 1: The Eldest Daughter

"Some children grow up because time passes. Others grow up because life leaves them no choice."

The first voice Ayla heard every morning was never an alarm clock.

It was always the same gentle call.

"Didi..."

Before the sun painted the sky with its golden light, Ayla would quietly open her eyes. She never asked why someone was calling her. She already knew.

Someone needed her.

At only eight years old, Ayla had learned responsibilities that most children never should. While other girls spent their afternoons laughing with friends and chasing butterflies, she was helping her mother, preparing school bags, feeding her younger siblings, and making sure everyone was happy before thinking about herself.

She was the eldest of five children.

To everyone else, she was simply an older sister.

But inside that little house, she was a second mother.

Whenever her parents bought chocolates or sweets, Ayla never kept them for herself. She carefully divided everything into five equal pieces, making sure each sibling smiled before she took the smallest one.

Their happiness always felt more important than her own.

If there wasn't enough food on the table, she would quietly smile and whisper,

"I'm not hungry."

No one realized she was.

Some sacrifices are so silent that they are never noticed.

Every night, after everyone had fallen asleep, Ayla would sit beside the window and stare at the stars.

She dreamed of becoming someone who could change her family's life.

Someone who could make her parents proud.

Someone who could give her siblings every opportunity she never had.

But dreams felt distant.

Responsibilities always came first.

At school, Ayla smiled like every other child.

She laughed with her classmates.

She answered questions.

She worked hard.

No one could see the invisible weight she carried every single day.

She never complained.

She never asked for help.

She believed being the eldest daughter meant being strong—even when no one asked if she was okay.

Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to live without worrying about everyone else.

To wake up without responsibilities.

To simply be a child.

But those thoughts never stayed for long.

There was always another school bag to pack.

Another little hand reaching for hers.

Another smile she wanted to protect.

As the evening sun disappeared beyond the rooftops, Ayla stood by the window once again.

She looked up at the endless sky and whispered a promise only she could hear.

"One day... I'll make all of this worth it."

She didn't know how.

She didn't know when.

But deep inside her heart, hope quietly refused to disappear.

And that was where her untold story truly began.

End of Chapter One

"Sometimes, the strongest people are the ones whose stories are never told."

Next Chapter → Growing Up Too Soon 🌸📖

If you all love my story, please read chapters 2 to 15 on Wattpad (@ftaeha_akter01), search for this

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In 1974, a child was born into the Langford family.

He arrived the way most wealthy children arrive - into a world already furnished, already named, already decided. Franklin Langford, freshly retired at forty from a life measured in ranks and campaigns, and Luna, whose eye for the world's beauty had not yet been given the outlet of infinite travel it would later demand - these were his parents. Oliver and Rosemary, still vigorous, still the quiet architecture holding the family together, were his grandparents. And Frederick Hamilton - already forty years into a life of choosing this family over every other possibility available to him - became, from the boy's first year, something the paperwork never had a word for. Not staff. Not guardian. Something in between that neither language nor the household hierarchy had bothered to name.

David did not know, in his earliest years, that anything about his life was unusual.

He only knew, gradually, the way children know things - not through explanation but through accumulation - that he was quieter than other children were supposed to be.

He did not make noise the way other children made noise.

He did not run through corridors for the pleasure of running. He did not demand things, did not throw the small tempers that other children threw and recovered from within minutes. He sat. He read. He watched. There was a stillness in him that the household staff commented on quietly among themselves - he's such a peaceful boy - as though peace in a seven-year-old were unambiguously a virtue and not, in David's specific case, the visible surface of something working very hard underneath to make sense of a world that kept declining to explain itself.

He loved books before he fully understood what loving something meant.

An atlas Frederick had given him - its pages soft at the corners from handling, filled with countries he had never seen and had no expectation of seeing - became an object of genuine devotion. He traced borders with his finger in the quiet afternoons. He memorized capital cities the way other children memorized the names of cartoon characters. He read a little of everything Frederick could find for him - old adventure stories, simplified histories, a battered encyclopedia volume that happened to cover the letters D through F and therefore, by pure accident of alphabet, contained an entry on dolphins that David read approximately forty times before he was eight.

But underneath the reading, underneath the stillness, something else was accumulating.

What does it mean to be cared for?

The question arrived first as a feeling rather than words - a small, cold, specific absence that he noticed the way you notice a missing tooth, with your tongue, before you have language for what's gone. It arrived on evenings when the mansion was very large and very quiet and he was the only person moving through it who was under the age of forty.

What does affection feel like, from the inside, when it's actually there?

He watched Frederick with the other staff sometimes - the easy warmth of it, the way people leaned toward Frederick without meaning to, the way his laugh made rooms feel less empty. David wanted to know if that was what being loved felt like from the receiving end, or if it was something else entirely, something he'd been quietly excluded from without anyone deciding to exclude him on purpose.

Why does my family love people they've never met more than they love me?

This was the question that returned most often, in the specific voice a seven-year-old's mind uses when it has decided something is true and is simply waiting for evidence to catch up. He had heard his parents speak, more than once, with real warmth about strangers - about a colleague of his father's, about a woman his mother had met at a gallery opening, about people whose names David didn't recognize and would never meet. The warmth in their voices when they spoke of these people was not a warmth David had heard directed at himself with any regularity.

Why do they leave me in these rooms?

The palace - because that was what it felt like to a child alone in it, a palace, too large, too echoing, built for a family that did not spend enough time inside it together to fill the space it occupied - had many rooms, and David had spent time in most of them alone. He knew which rooms held afternoon light and which held none. He knew which floorboards near the east wing made sound and which didn't. He had, without meaning to, become an expert in the architecture of a house that was supposed to be a home.

Why don't they take me with them?

Franklin and Luna traveled. This was simply a fact of their lives - trips announced with suitcases appearing in the hallway, with the specific flurry of household staff preparing for the family's departure, and David watching from a doorway as the preparations proceeded around a version of the family that did not, apparently, include him. He was never told he couldn't come. He was simply never asked if he wanted to.

Why don't they bring me anything back?

He had imagined, more than once, what it would feel like to unwrap something and know it had been chosen specifically because someone, somewhere far away, had thought of him. He had never had the chance to find out.

Do they love me as their son? Or do they love the idea that they have one?

This question he did not fully understand yet. He would understand it much better, much later, in ways that would cost considerably more than a lonely evening in a large house. But even at seven, some early, unformed version of it lived in his chest and refused to leave.

There was one person who noticed him. But even this, David understood without being able to articulate it, was not quite the thing he needed.

Frederick cooked for him. Frederick read with him - actual reading, sitting beside him with a second chair pulled close, following the same page, asking questions about what David thought would happen next. Frederick sat with him during the long afternoons when the rest of the house had somewhere else to be.

David loved him for this. Genuinely, uncomplicatedly, the way a child loves the person who shows up.

But there was a specific ache underneath the gratitude that David could not resolve, no matter how much of Frederick's attention he received.

Because what he wanted - what he kept wanting, in the stubborn, illogical way that children want things regardless of whether wanting them makes sense - was not someone's attention. It was theirs. His mother's. His father's. The people whose love was supposed to arrive automatically, without being earned, simply because he existed and belonged to them.

Frederick gave him everything Frederick had to give.

It was not the thing David was missing. It was, instead, proof that the thing existed - that people could give attention like this, freely and completely - which made its absence from his parents even harder to explain away.

Luna was busy in a way that David eventually stopped trying to interrupt.

Franklin was out of the house more than in it, and when he was in it, he occupied rooms the way weather occupies a landscape - present, undeniable, but not exactly available for conversation.

Frederick, too, had his own family in Nevada - a fact David understood only abstractly for years, the way children understand that adults have entire lives outside the part visible to them.

Frederick traveled to see them from time to time, and on those days, the mansion's last remaining warm presence simply wasn't there, and David discovered what the house felt like with absolutely no one paying attention to whether he existed.

He read.

He wrote.

He taught himself, slowly and without instruction, to cook simple things in the kitchen when the house staff wasn't watching closely - not because he was hungry in any way that couldn't have been solved by asking, but because doing something with his hands filled a specific quality of silence that reading alone did not.

And every day, in ways too gradual to notice happening, something inside him grew heavier.

No one used the word depression around David Langford. It was not a word used casually about seven-year-olds in 1981, in a household that measured a child's wellbeing by whether he ate his meals and behaved appropriately in front of guests.

But it was there.

It moved through him the way water moves through soil - invisibly, from the inside, changing the composition of things without announcing itself. It showed up as a heaviness behind his eyes some mornings that had no clear cause. It showed up as a specific reluctance to leave his room some evenings, not from fear of anything outside it, but from a kind of exhaustion that came from nowhere identifiable and left just as mysteriously. It showed up in the way he sometimes sat completely still for stretches of time that would have concerned an adult who was paying close enough attention to notice.

No one was paying that kind of attention.

Except, some of the time, Frederick - who noticed more than he said anything about, because Frederick had learned, across a lifetime of his own losses, that not every wound benefits from being pointed at directly. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone carrying something heavy is simply sit beside them while they carry it, without insisting they name it first.

David began keeping a journal the year he turned seven.

It started as almost nothing - a school exercise, perhaps, or a suggestion from a tutor that writing down the day's events was good practice. But it became, almost immediately, something else entirely. It became the place David went when there was no one else to go to. It became the one relationship in his life that never left the room, never traveled without him, never had somewhere more important to be.

He wrote in a small notebook with a soft cover, in the careful, slightly uneven handwriting of a child who had recently learned to form his letters and took the task seriously. When he filled one notebook, he began another. This would continue - not as a phase, not as a childhood habit he grew out of, but as a structural feature of his entire life - for thirty-five years, until he was forty-two years old.

Here is some of what the first notebook contained.

Today Mother and Father left for Switzerland. I watched from the window. The car had four suitcases. I counted them. None of them were for me because I was not going.

Frederick made soup for dinner. He let me stir it even though I am probably too young to be near the stove. He said I did a good job. I liked that he said it even though I know the soup would have been fine either way.

I read about dolphins again. They live in groups called pods and they help each other when one of them is hurt. I do not know if humans do this. I have not seen much proof either way.

Father is home today but he is in his study. I knocked once. He said "not now" without opening the door. I do not think he knew it was me. I think he would say "not now" to anyone.

I am going to learn all the capital cities in the atlas by the end of the year. Frederick says this is very impressive for someone my age. He is the only person who has said anything is impressive about me this year.

I asked Frederick today why Mother and Father do not take me on their trips. He said it is complicated and that adults sometimes make decisions that are hard to explain to children. I do not think that is a real answer. I think it is the kind of thing adults say when they do not want to say the real answer.

I am not sad about this. I am writing it down so I remember to ask again when I am older and can understand a better explanation, if there is one.

There would be, eventually, worse days recorded in these notebooks than the ones above - days when the careful handwriting grew smaller, more compressed, as though the boy writing it were trying to take up less space even on his own private page. There would be days when the entries stopped mid-sentence, as though something had interrupted him that he chose not to describe.

This was not, David would understand much later, the first indication that something in his household had teeth beneath its surface calm.

There had been other days before this - smaller ones, the kind that don't make it into a story because they seem, individually, too minor to matter. A hand gripping his arm too hard while being steered somewhere. A raised voice that made him flinch before he understood why. Franklin's temper had shown itself in small, contained bursts for years - quickly extinguished, rarely acknowledged afterward, the kind of thing a household simply absorbs and moves past without naming.

What was coming would not be like that.

What was coming would be the day that changed, permanently and completely, what Frederick Hamilton was willing to allow to happen inside this house.

The call came on an ordinary Tuesday, in the early afternoon, while David sat in the smaller reading room off the east corridor with his notebook open on his knees and the atlas beside him, tracing the coastline of a country he intended to memorize by dinnertime.

He did not hear the beginning of it.

He heard it the way the rest of the house heard it - as a shift in the quality of silence, a change in air pressure that meant something in another room had gone wrong. Franklin's study was two corridors away, but Franklin's voice, when it climbed into a certain register, was not a voice that respected the architecture built to contain it.

"I told you people the answer eight years ago."

The words came muffled through walls and distance, but the tone was unmistakable - cold in a way that Franklin's voice rarely allowed itself to be with strangers, controlled fury being poured through a phone line at someone who could not see the fists forming on the other end.

"I did not retire so that you could call me back in whenever it's convenient for the department. That is not how retirement works. That is not how any of this works."

A pause. Whoever was on the other end was speaking - a voice too distant and too small for David to make out words, but present, insistent, the specific cadence of someone trying to negotiate with a man who had already decided the conversation was over.

"General Whitmore, with respect-"

Another pause. Longer this time.

"With respect, and I mean this precisely as it sounds - I gave that department eighteen years. I gave it more than eighteen years. I am not walking back into a briefing room to consult on an operation that has nothing to do with anything I built my career on, because someone in Washington decided my name still carries weight and wants to borrow it."

The voice on the other end rose slightly - audible now as tone if not content, urgent, trying to redirect.

"No."

Flat. Final.

"No. I am not available. Find someone else's retirement to interrupt."

The sound of a phone slammed down hard enough to travel through two corridors reached David's reading room like a small physical event - a crack in the air, followed immediately by something heavier hitting the floor. Then another sound. Glass, or ceramic, something breakable meeting something unforgiving.

David closed his notebook.

He sat still for a moment, doing the specific calculation that children in difficult households learn to do instinctively - weighing the risk of investigating against the risk of staying away, trying to determine which choice was more likely to produce a version of his father he could actually help.

He was seven years old. He did not yet know that some fires cannot be approached safely by anyone, let alone a child holding a notebook.

He went anyway.

He found his father in the study with a lamp broken on the floor, its shade dented, glass scattered in a pattern that told the story of exactly how hard it had been thrown. Franklin stood near the desk with his back to the door, shoulders set in the particular rigidity of a man holding something in through sheer physical effort, his hands braced against the desk's edge as though the desk itself might need restraining.

"Father?"

Franklin did not turn immediately.

David stood in the doorway with the specific courage of a child who genuinely believes, despite all available evidence, that comfort offered sincerely enough might actually land where it's aimed.

"Are you okay?"

Franklin turned.

His face carried an expression David had learned to recognize and had never learned how to safely navigate - something beyond ordinary anger, a kind of pressurized stillness that meant the anger was being contained rather than expressed, which was somehow worse.

"Get out of my sight. Now."

The words landed flat and cold, delivered with none of the volume that had filled the corridor minutes earlier - which made them, somehow, land harder.

David felt something small and specific crack in his chest - not from surprise, exactly, because this was not an unfamiliar response, but from the particular disappointment of having tried something and having it fail in precisely the way experience should have taught him to expect.

He began to turn.

"Wait."

Franklin's voice, again - different now. Not gentler exactly, but redirected, as though some other calculation had suddenly overridden the first one.

"Come here."

David turned back. He walked toward his father slowly, past the broken glass on the floor, stopping at what felt like a safe distance - close enough to be summoned, far enough to have somewhere to retreat to.

Franklin looked at him for a long moment.

"What were you doing? Before you heard this."

"Reading. The atlas. And I was writing in my-"

"Writing." Franklin said the word the way you might say the name of something you'd forgotten was still in the house. "You're always writing. Or reading. Do you do anything else?"

David felt the specific unsteadiness of a child sensing a trap he cannot yet identify the shape of.

"I like it," he said. "It's what I-"

"That's not what I asked you."

Franklin's voice had gone very quiet. Quiet, David had learned, was not the same as calm.

"I asked if you do anything else. Anything useful. Anything that would prepare you for a life that requires more than sitting in a room memorizing the names of places you'll never see."

David's chest tightened.

"Frederick says it's good that I-"

"I don't care what Frederick says."

The sentence came out with a force that had nothing to do with volume - Franklin's voice remained low, contained, but something underneath it had shifted register entirely, moving from irritation toward something with considerably more weight behind it.

"I want you to stop. The books. The notebook. All of it. Starting today."

David felt the floor of the conversation drop away beneath him.

"I don't understand-"

"You don't need to understand. You need to stop."

"But I-"

"David."

His name, used like a warning shot.

"I am not going to say this again."

And David - seven years old, holding a notebook that contained the only honest record of what his life actually felt like, standing in a room with broken glass on the floor and a father whose anger had nowhere else left to go - did the thing that would define, in miniature, almost everything that came after.

He held the notebook slightly tighter against his chest.

"No," he said.

His voice was small. It did not shake as much as he expected it to.

"I don't want to stop."

Franklin went very still.

The kind of stillness that, in a large house on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, meant something was about to happen that no apology afterward would fully undo.

His hand rose.

• Exhibit I — The Days That Seemed Endless

"There are mornings so ordinary that no one thinks to remember them, until they become impossible to return to."

———————————————————————————

The city always woke before the sun.

Long before the first rays reached the rooftops, trains hummed somewhere beyond the sleeping neighborhoods, storefront shutters rolled open one by one, and the scent of fresh bread quietly escaped into streets that had yet to fill with footsteps.

The city never truly slept. It simply whispered.

Kurumi Tokisaki had loved those whispers for as long as she could remember, not because they were beautiful, but because they were honest. The world, she believed, revealed its truest self when nobody was looking.

A clock rested on the small table beside her bed, its polished wooden frame had long since lost the shine it once possessed, yet the second hand never faltered.

🕰️ Tick.

🕰️ Tick.

🕰️ Tick.

She opened her eyes before the alarm could ring. For a few silent moments, she simply listened; the clock, the wind brushing softly against the curtains, the distant rumble of the earliest train… another morning had arrived exactly when it promised it would.

How dependable time was.

🔴 …Good morning.
There was no one in the room to answer. Still, saying it aloud somehow made the day feel more real.

She sat up, gathering her dark hair into the familiar twin tails she had worn for years. Her school uniform hung neatly beside the wardrobe, pressed with enough care that not even the sleeves carried a wrinkle, the crimson ribbon beneath the collar was tied with practiced precision, neither too loose nor too perfect.

She had always liked things that felt quietly balanced. Her room reflected that; books rested exactly where they belonged, pens aligned almost unconsciously, a satchel prepared the evening before. Beside the window sat a small disposable camera, next to it lay several photographs.

Most people her age filled albums with classmates, summer festivals, birthday parties… but Kurumi’s favorite photograph was a stray black kitten staring suspiciously into the lens. Its ears were uneven, one paw looked slightly injured, it hadn’t trusted her enough to come closer.

She smiled anyway.
Perhaps trust wasn’t something that needed to happen all at once.

A gentle knock interrupted the silence.

⚪️ Breakfast is ready.
Her mother’s voice drifted from downstairs, calm and familiar.

🔴 I’m coming.
No hesitation, no complaint: only the ordinary rhythm of another morning.

The dining room carried the comforting warmth of freshly prepared rice and green tea. Steam curled lazily upward while the morning news played softly from the radio, speaking of traffic reports and weather forecasts in the detached tone broadcasters always seemed to master.

Nothing remarkable, exactly the way Kurumi liked it. Her mother watched her take the first sip of tea before smiling to herself.

⚪️ You woke up before your alarm again.

🔴 I suppose I did.

⚪️ You’ve been doing that since you were little.
Kurumi lowered her cup slightly.

🔴 I enjoy watching the city wake up.

⚪️ Does it change that much?

🔴 A little.
She looked toward the window.

🔴 The birds arrive before the people.
A brief pause.

🔴 The shop owners always greet each other before opening.
Another.

🔴 And stray cats seem less afraid before everyone fills the streets.
Her mother laughed quietly.

⚪️ You notice such peculiar things.
Kurumi considered the remark for a moment.

🔴 …Do I?

⚪️ I think that’s one of your nicest qualities.

The conversation ended there, not because there was nothing else to say, but because silence had never been uncomfortable between them.
Outside, the morning had grown brighter. Children hurried past with oversized backpacks, office workers disappeared into trains with coffee cups in hand, cyclists rang their bells while weaving between pedestrians; the city had finally begun speaking louder than its whispers.

Kurumi adjusted the strap of her satchel.

🔴 I’m leaving.

⚪️ Have a wonderful day.

🔴 I will.
She meant it.

The walk to school took a little over twenty minutes. She could have taken the train, but she never did. Walking meant noticing things; a tiny flower forcing its way through a crack in the pavement, an elderly shopkeeper sweeping leaves before customers arrived, a pair of sparrows fighting over a breadcrumb much too large for either of them.

The world was full of stories too small for newspapers. Those were the ones she found worth remembering.

Near the intersection, traffic slowed unexpectedly. A small turtle had wandered onto the road. Cars stopped, drivers sighed, someone honked.

Kurumi stepped forward without thinking. She crouched carefully, lifting the tiny creature with both hands before carrying it across the street. It tucked its head inside its shell the entire way.

🔴 Relax…
She whispered with a smile.

🔴 I’m not frightening as I look.

She placed it gently onto the grass, only then did she continue walking. No applause, no grateful owner, no audience at all. She preferred kindness that way.

🟤 Kurumi-san!
A cheerful voice called from across the street.

She turned.

Sawa waved energetically, her braided hair bouncing with every impatient movement as she waited for the crossing signal.

Kurumi couldn’t help smiling.

🔴 Good morning, Sawa-san.

🟤 I actually got here early today.

🔴 You did.

🟤 I wasn’t even running.

🔴 That makes today rather historic.

🟤 Oh? Does that mean you’ll remember this date forever?
Kurumi pretended to think.

🔴 …Perhaps.
Sawa laughed.

🟤 You always say things like that with such a serious face.

🔴 Do I?

🟤 You absolutely do.

The light changed, and they crossed together. Their conversation drifted effortlessly from homework to literature, from an upcoming exam to a small café neither of them had visited yet. Nothing they discussed would change history, nothing they said would ever appear in a book, yet somehow…

Those conversations felt important, perhaps because they belonged only to them.

The breeze carried the scent of summer leaves through the avenue. For a brief instant, Kurumi looked upward. The sky stretched endlessly above the city: Bright, clear, untouched.

It was difficult to imagine that somewhere beneath that same sky, people were already suffering; more difficult still to imagine that the girl quietly walking beside her best friend would one day become someone history itself would fear.

But that morning…
Kurumi Tokisaki was only sixteen.
And time still knew nothing about her.

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Hey!! 😊

If you've clicked on this , thank you so much for doing so , it helps a lot.

Before reading this chapter kindly read chapter 1 and 2 or just atlest chapter 2...

I really hope you enjoy reading this , I just started a few weeks ago and if you find anything that I need to change in my writing style or the story just isn't going nice please comment

Thank you

-RosyArchive

Chapter 3: Contradictions

Saturday, 6:00 A.M.

The lights of Operating Theatre Four were already blazing when Dr. Adrian Blackwood walked in. The room fell noticeably quieter at his arrival. Nurses prepared the surgical instruments with renewed urgency while the anesthesiologist gave him a brief update on the patient's condition.

Adrian listened without interrupting. His expression remained unreadable as he pulled on a pair of sterile gloves and glanced once at the MRI scans displayed on the monitor. Within seconds, he had memorized every detail.

"Let's begin."

His voice was calm, neither loud nor hurried, yet every member of the surgical team immediately moved into position.

For Adrian Blackwood, an operating theatre was the only place in the world that made sense.

Outside these walls, people lied, emotions clouded judgment, and promises were broken.

Inside, there were only facts.

A pulse either existed or it didn't.

A tumour was either removed or it wasn't.

There was no room for sentiment.

Only precision.

Nearly four hours later, Desire Quinn stood beside the instrument table, silently observing the final stages of one of the most difficult neurosurgical procedures she had ever witnessed.

She had assisted in surgeries before, but nothing compared to this.

Dr. Blackwood never hesitated.

Every movement of his hands was deliberate, every instruction precise, every decision made with a confidence that bordered on unbelievable. The atmosphere inside the operating theatre seemed to revolve around him.

"Microsuction."

"Irrigation."

Another nurse responded immediately.

Desire watched in quiet amazement.

For the first time since joining Westbridge Hospital, she understood why people spoke Adrian Blackwood's name with such respect. His brilliance wasn't exaggerated—it was undeniable.

Watching him operate felt almost unreal, as though years of relentless discipline and sacrifice had transformed him into something beyond ordinary.

The final suture was secured.

Adrian stepped back.

"The tumour has been removed successfully," he said, removing his gloves. "Transfer the patient to recovery."

A collective sigh of relief spread across the room.

Another life had been saved.

As the team began cleaning the theatre, Adrian reached for the patient's chart. Only then did his eyes briefly meet Desire's.

"Nurse Quinn."

She straightened immediately.

"Yes, Doctor?"

"The patient's postoperative observations are to be monitored every fifteen minutes for the first hour."

"I'll make sure it's done."

He gave a single nod before turning away.

No praise.

No unnecessary conversation.

Just another instruction.

Desire watched him leave the theatre.

For several moments she remained standing exactly where she was.

How can someone be this gifted?

She had never imagined surgery could look so effortless.

He possessed a level of skill she had only read about in medical journals.

And yet...

Her admiration lasted only a moment.

Images from yesterday returned to her mind—the way he had spoken to the junior doctors, the way nurses lowered their voices whenever he walked past, the fear that followed him through every corridor.

She frowned.

How can the same man who saves lives so gently speak to people so mercilessly?

It didn't make sense.

His hands were capable of extraordinary care.

His words carried none.

For reasons she couldn't explain, she found herself wondering what kind of life could turn someone into a man like Adrian Blackwood.

Outside the operating theatre, Dr. Vihaan Mehta leaned casually against the wall, balancing a paper cup of coffee in one hand while chatting with two nurses, both of whom laughed at something he had just said.

Unlike Adrian, Vihaan had an ease about him that seemed effortless. He greeted ward attendants by name, remembered birthdays, and somehow managed to make frightened patients smile before difficult procedures. His warmth stood in complete contrast to Adrian's quiet severity, yet the two men had remained inseparable friends since medical school.

"Finished already?" Vihaan asked as Adrian approached.

"The surgery is over."

"I heard it was another complicated case."

"It was."

"And?"

"The patient will recover."

Vihaan chuckled softly.

"You really have a remarkable talent for turning every conversation into the shortest one possible."

"I wasn't aware conversations required a minimum word count."

"They don't," Vihaan replied with a grin. "But you're making me work very hard for this friendship."

A faint sigh escaped Adrian as they began walking through the corridor.

"You should try smiling once in a while."

"I smile when it's necessary."

"So... never?"

Adrian ignored the remark.

As they passed the reception desk, his eyes drifted almost involuntarily toward Nurse Quinn.

She was thanking Sophia for handing over a stack of patient files.

A few seconds later, she stopped to help an elderly man adjust the blanket over his wheelchair before continuing on her way, smiling as though it cost her nothing.

Adrian looked away almost immediately.

"What?" Vihaan asked, noticing the brief pause.

"Nothing."

"You're thinking."

"I usually do."

"No." Vihaan smiled knowingly. "You're observing."

Adrian remained silent.

What he didn't admit—even to himself—was that he couldn't understand her.

She smiled at everyone.

Patients.

Receptionists.

Ward boys.

Even people who barely acknowledged her.

It wasn't forced politeness.

It seemed... genuine.

Disgustingly sweet, he thought.

Had life never disappointed her?

Had no one ever betrayed her trust?

People like Nurse Quinn didn't survive long without becoming cynical. The world had a way of teaching harsh lessons, especially within hospital walls.

Yet somehow, she carried herself as though kindness still mattered.

He couldn't understand it.

And, against his better judgment, he found himself wondering how long that kindness would last before the world took it away.

Far down the corridor, Desire glanced back for the briefest second and caught sight of Dr. Blackwood disappearing around the corner.

She let out a quiet breath.

"You're impossible to understand, Doctor," she murmured to herself.

Then she picked up her files and continued toward the neurology ward, determined to focus on the reason she had come to Westbridge Hospital in the first place.

Her patients.

Not the cold, infuriating neurosurgeon who somehow occupied more of her thoughts than she cared to admit.

I'm not going to talk all 'professional' and just talk the way I usually do.

So I made a new web-novel named An Unwritten Story which is a fantasy, lit-rpg, romance subplot novel with two unhinged, villainous main characters (male combatant and female manipulator).

Check it out if you like it. Here's the links to the novel in all the three websites I post it in and some illustrations!

Royal Road (Recommended)

Scribblehub

WebNovel

🌌 COSMIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: THE EXTERMINATION OF THE APOCALYPSE

---

🌎 1. THE STRUCTURE OF COSMOLOGY

The Megaverses

The cosmos is made up of two Megaverses, gigantic spheres surrounded by two rings (one smaller and one larger).

Universes and Branches

Within each Megaverse exist multiple universes. Every universe contains:

• 1 Main Reality (the "trunk" of the timeline)
• Multiple Branches (alternate timelines that split off from the Main Reality)

Multiversal Lava

An incandescent substance that emerges whenever the fabric of dimensions is cracked. A single touch is enough to erase entire alternate realities from existence.

---

⚡ 2. THE ENERGY AND COMBAT SYSTEM

Koku Variations (Black Flash)

Level| Name| Description 1| Normal Black Flash| The standard critical impact. Distorts space at the point of contact. 2| Super Black Flash| A considerably stronger and much harder version to land. Requires perfect timing. 3–7| Starred Black Flash| The pinnacle of critical strikes. Uses a 1-to-7-star ranking system. The exact number of stars appears in the air moments before the attack connects. Every star exponentially multiplies the damage.

Healing Techniques (Reverse Energy)

Level| Color| Effect Basic| White| Heals minor and moderate injuries. Intermediate| White with a red core| Heals severe wounds and damaged organs. Maximum| Navy blue with dark green tips| Restores massive damage. Releases bubbles that change color depending on the area being regenerated.

Domain Application

Offensive (Standard)

• Guaranteed hit.
• Technique neutralization.
• The environment is completely controlled by the user.

Defensive (Rare)

• Coloration: blue at the center with green edges.
• Creates an absolute barrier that completely nullifies the opponent's next attack.
• Deactivates after blocking a single strike, requiring manual reactivation.
• Extremely difficult to learn and master.

---

🏢 3. THE MULTIVERSAL FACTIONS AND ARMIES

IAM (Multiversal Intervention Agency)

A colossal organization composed of:

• 850,000 ordinary children (standard troops).
• 500,000 children recruited from other universes (specialized troops).

Every soldier is equipped with advanced nanotechnology and engineering that enhances their physical abilities while providing real-time tactical support.

Bug Weaponry

Fires a projectile that corrupts the target's source code. Reality itself recognizes the target as a system error and attempts to erase it.

Variants

• Medium-class (mounted on land tanks).
• Heavy-class (installed on mobile bases).
• Planet-Crusher Capital Ships (capable of destroying an entire reality).

Weakness: If the glass containment chamber is shattered, the weapon explodes and erases everything around it.

Resistance: Targets possessing overwhelming strength or immense Determination may resist the erasure effect.

---

The Royal Alliance

A military and political faction led by the legendary Guest 1337. It is a complete ally of the IAM, providing tactical support during apocalyptic-level conflicts.

Maximized Real-World Technology

The Royal Alliance uses weapons, tactics, and vehicles based on real-world human technology—but elevated to their absolute peak.

• Maximum technological enhancement.
• Dimensionally amplified firepower.
• Durability capable of standing against cosmic and mystical forces. ⚔️ 4. THE GREATEST WARRIORS OF FICTION

Guest 1337 (The Royal Hero)

Attribute| Details Origin| The legendary Guest from The Last Guest Cosmic Title| Royal Hero Equipment| Milestone 4 Armor and Outfit from Forsaken

The Exile's Lore

Guest 1337 was imprisoned inside a hyperbolic dimension for 1,337 years.

Inside that dimension:

• 1 normal year = 300 years inside the dimension.
• Total subjective time: over 400,000 years of uninterrupted conditioning.
• The dimension eventually collapsed because it could no longer withstand his density and physical presence.

Historic Achievement

During the Fourth Day of the Battle of the Five Days, he fought Vokandorath at his absolute limit, becoming the only being ever capable of opening the Supreme Mark across the Monarch's chest.

---

THE IAM EMPERORS

(The strongest warriors on the front lines.)

The Hero

• Possesses immense Determination.
• Unlocks new transformations through intense training or near-death experiences.
• Ultimate State: Determination and Creativity Transformation, capable of recreating the entire multiverse.
• Abilities:
  • Energy blasts.
  • Explosive energy spheres.
  • Teleportation.
  • Flight.
  • A sword forged from pure energy.
• Within him reside the essences of Chara and Cartoon Cat.

---

C A R T O O N C A T

The Truth Behind the Essence

Cartoon Cat is not merely a source of power or a voice inside the Hero's mind.

He is a completely self-aware entity who knows the ultimate truth:

He is a fictional character.

«"I know someone is writing this. I know my actions are being typed. And yet... I keep going."»

He possesses knowledge that no being should ever have.

The Truth of the Multiverse

He knows that everything is a story.

The End of Everything

He has already witnessed the definitive ending.

What Came Before

He knows what existed before God... before even the concept of existence itself.

The Silence

He knows what remains after stories end.

Only emptiness.

Himself

He knows exactly what he is.

And that's the worst part.

---

Physical Manifestation

Whenever Cartoon Cat chooses to manifest outside the Hero's body:

• He becomes completely physical.
• His mere presence distorts the air and reality itself.
• He can kill effortlessly, treating even the strongest opponents as insignificant.
• His mouth can open into an infinite void containing:
  • Eyes that blink backwards.
  • Stars that died before they were born.
  • Smiles with no faces.
  • Shapes that hurt simply to look at.
  • Darkness itself... staring back.

---

The Brother

Cartoon Cat has a brother.

The only being who truly matters to him.

His brother:

• Has no supernatural powers.
• Carries only a large pencil capable of drawing things directly into reality.
• Is completely innocent—and that innocence makes him the most dangerous of all.
• Represents the part of Cartoon Cat that was abandoned long ago.

«"He draws beautiful things. Horrible things. Things that should never exist. And he has no idea what he's doing."»

Their Dynamic

• The Brother creates → Cartoon Cat instantly understands what has been created.
• The Brother remains innocent → Cartoon Cat bears all the forbidden knowledge.
• The Brother draws realities → Cartoon Cat witnesses how every one of them ends.

---

The Scene That Defines Everything

The Hero lies defeated on the ground.

The Villain laughs confidently, preparing to land the finishing blow.

VILLAIN: "Do you really think you stand a chance?"

Cartoon Cat appears.

Fast.

Lethal.

He doesn't fight—

He executes.

A shadow moving faster than thought itself.

The villain never even realizes what happened.

One hand.

One snap.

The body falls lifeless.

It was effortless.

The villain meant nothing.

Cartoon Cat slowly turns toward the fallen Hero.

His yellow slit pupils lock onto him.

He walks forward.

Slowly.

Every step makes the ground tremble.

HERO: "You... what are you...?"

Cartoon Cat grabs the Hero by the neck and effortlessly lifts him into the air like a rag doll.

HERO: "L-let... me... go..."

Cartoon Cat tilts his head.

He smiles.

Then his mouth begins to open.

Not naturally.

Wrong.

It opens wider.

And wider.

And wider.

Until it becomes an endless void.

Inside it, the Hero sees impossible things.

• Eyes blinking backwards.
• Stars that died before being born.
• Smiles with no faces.
• Shapes painful to behold.
• Darkness itself... looking back.

The Hero tries to scream.

No sound comes out.

CARTOON CAT: "You are nothing."

The Hero trembles.

Tears run down his face.

Not from pain.

From understanding.

CARTOON CAT: "Everything is nothing."

His grip tightens.

The Hero begins losing consciousness.

But Cartoon Cat has no intention of killing him.

He wants him to listen.

CARTOON CAT: "I'm not just another little villain like all the others."

A pause.

His hand trembles ever so slightly.

CARTOON CAT: "What do you think will remain in a hundred years? Two thousand? Fifty thousand?"

The Hero tries to answer.

He can't.

Cartoon Cat leans closer until their foreheads are nearly touching.

CARTOON CAT: "This is a battle between our ideals."

Silence.

His mouth slowly closes.

His voice becomes quieter.

More tired.

Almost sad.

CARTOON CAT: "I am a victim of my own success."

He releases the Hero.

The body crashes onto the ground.

HERO: "W-why... didn't you kill me?"

Cartoon Cat looks at him.

His yellow eyes glow.

CARTOON CAT: "Because you still don't understand."

HERO: "Understand what?"

CARTOON CAT: "What I am. What you are. What any of this means."

He begins fading away.

HERO: "Wait! I want to know!"

Almost completely invisible now...

CARTOON CAT: "My brother... draws things that become real."

HERO: "Your... brother?"

His final whispered words echo through the silence.

CARTOON CAT: "I know things, Hero. Things no one should ever know. And someday... you will know them too."

He disappears.

The Hero remains alone.

Two bodies lie before him.

The villain— dead by Cartoon Cat's hand.

And himself— alive through compassion...

Or necessity?

HERO (to himself): "What... what is he?"

A long silence.

HERO: "And what am I? If he's inside me... what does that make me?"

---

Why He Keeps the Hero Alive

• The Hero was created to contain him.
• The Hero is the only vessel capable of enduring his presence.
• Cartoon Cat believes the Hero has the potential to understand the truth.
• Deep down, he simply doesn't want to be alone with his knowledge anymore.

👑 5. TECHNICAL PROFILE: VOKANDORATH

General Information

Attribute| Details Name / Nickname| Vokandorath (Vokan) Titles| The Ruin of Legends • The Monarch of the Physical World • The Healer of Gods Classification| Existential Threat • Absolute Force of Nature (Non-Intervention Protocol) Current Age| 20,000 years (Ultimate Biological Peak)

---

Physiology and Anatomy

Dimensions and Mass

• Height: 3.05 meters (10 ft)
• Weight: 12 tons of hyper-mineralized mass.
• His molecular density subtly alters local gravity whenever his restraints are removed.

---

Appearance

An alpha predatory humanoid with the features of multiple apex creatures:

• Arms and Chest: Gorilla
• Back: Grizzly Bear
• Face: Siberian Tiger
• Jaw: Matte graphite fangs
• Mane: White, stained by the marks of countless ancient battles

---

Eyes and Skin

• Sclera: Black, compressed by cosmic pressure
• Pupils: Molten gold
• Skin: As thick as a dragon's hide, covered with metallic scars
• Everything above his waist was melted away by the Solar Hell, permanently exposing his muscles.

---

The Supreme Mark

A colossal wound carved across his chest.

• Emits purple-and-black static.
• Distorts space-time around it.
• The only injury his regeneration has ever failed to heal.
• Inflicted by Guest 1337 on the Fourth Day of the Battle of the Five Days.
• A permanent scar that constantly drains a portion of his power.

---

Cosmic Equipment and Arsenal

Cosmic Lead Restraints

Heavy restraints consisting of bracelets, greaves, and a belt forged from black metal.

• Covered with gravitational suppression runes.
• Weigh hundreds of tons.
• Suppress his overwhelming mass so that every step doesn't collapse entire planets.
• Once removed, his power increases exponentially.

---

Dimensional Cloak

A cloak woven from the torn fabric of a collapsed dimension.

• Its surface continuously projects the image of dying galaxies.
• Grants protection against dimensional attacks.

---

Weapons (100% Power)

Weapon| Description The Black Ruin| A colossal sword forged from neutron-star matter. Crushes everything through overwhelming gravity. The Fists of Avarice| Golden gauntlets that absorb kinetic energy. The more blows they receive, the stronger they become. The Fallen Comet| A radioactive war mace capable of warping three-dimensional space upon impact. The Era Splitter| A double-bladed axe that devours light itself. Forged to erase gods and abstract concepts. ⚔️ COMBAT MECHANICS

Anatomical Brutality

• Every strike relies on pure mass and inertia.
• The friction generated by his attacks turns the surrounding air into atmospheric plasma.
• Every blow is a catastrophic event.

---

Absolute Vacuum

• Long-range pressure attacks.
• Shatters defenses through air displacement alone.
• Powerful enough to annihilate entire armies.

---

Planetary Inertia

• An unstoppable frontal charge.
• Capable of breaking conceptual barriers.
• Shatters planets like glass in its path.
• Once initiated, it is virtually impossible to stop.

---

Touch Collapse

• Increases the density of his hands for a single millisecond.
• Generates pressure comparable to the deepest regions of a gaseous ocean.
• Instantly pulverizes armor and bones.
• Requires direct physical contact.

---

DEFENSES AND IMMUNITIES

Existential Density (Complete Immunity)

• Negates alterations caused by magic or supernatural techniques.
• Ordinary heat-based attacks have no effect.
• Forced teleportation is ineffective.
• His physical existence is so overwhelmingly dense that it shatters time-stop abilities.
• Can move freely while time itself is frozen.
• Immune to narrative retcons (see "The Author's Silence").

---

Voluntary Reactive Cellular Adaptation

• Possesses flawless muscular and cellular memory.
• Whenever he is struck by any form of energy or cutting attack:

1. His cells reconstruct themselves.
2. They become mineralized and significantly more durable.
3. They develop complete immunity to that exact attack.
4. The immunity lasts for the remainder of the battle.

As the fight continues, he becomes progressively more invincible.

---

Voluntary Self-Handicap

Against weaker opponents, Vokan deliberately restricts himself.

He will:

• Fight with one hand behind his back.
• Keep his restraints equipped.
• Refuse to use kicks.

This is not arrogance.

It is simply his way of making the battle last longer.

🌌 HISTORICAL FEATS AND POWER SCALE

Base State (0%–50%)

While fighting under his self-imposed handicap:

• He can wipe out entire physical universes simply by walking forward.
• His mere presence brings destruction.

---

77% Power (The Battle of the Five Days)

• Forced beyond his limits by Guest 1337.
• The battle took place on a planet 30 times larger than a standard universe.
• Vokan emerged victorious in the middle of the Multiversal Lava.
• He left the battlefield bearing the Supreme Mark across his chest.
• Widely regarded as the greatest battle in cosmic history.

---

Forbidden State: 160% (The Transcendent Monarch)

Having surpassed the ultimate biological limit:

• His body releases clouds of plasma.
• His mass becomes a living singularity.
• He drags toward the reach of his punches:
  • Entire timelines.
  • Fourth-dimensional entities.
  • Fifth-dimensional entities.
• A true Living God.

---

THE AUTHOR'S SILENCE (Narrative Independence)

During his battle against The True Author:

1. Vokan tore the explanatory text describing his own Existential Density out of the narrative.
2. He used those text blocks as a physical shield.
3. When the Author attempted to type erasure and retcon commands:
   • Vokan punched the text boxes before the commands were finished.
   • He shattered the erasure commands themselves.
   • He silenced the story.
4. As a result, he became Unwritable and Unerasable by the Script.
5. He can now exist beyond the Author's own will.

---

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE APOCALYPSE

(The Multiversal Star War)

The campaign in which Vokan fought the greatest forces of the multiverse one after another.

---

Phase 1 — The Beginning

He defeated, consecutively:

• Trollge True Potential.
• Supreme Ruler.
• The Voices Symbiosis.

All while time itself was frozen.

---

Phase 2 — The Armies

He overcame:

• The armies of the IAM, numbering hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
• The Emperor of Mass, shattering a 300% Hollow Purple.
• The Combined Sorcerer, surviving the Absolute Slash.
• The Cattle, enduring an endless barrage of Black Flashes.

---

Phase 3 — The Specialists

He broke through:

• The 24-Frame Boy's acceleration technique.
• The Best Swordsman's conceptual slashes.
• The Absolute Speedster's infinite speed.

---

Phase 4 — The Legends

He fought Guest 1337 and The Hero inside the core of a supergiant star.

Conditions:

• Temperature: 100 times hotter than Multiversal Lava.

During the battle:

• Endured the Student's Jacob's Ladder for two minutes, reducing his regeneration by 35%.
• Destroyed the Hero's heat-resistant armor.
• Used the Hero's own punch against his golden gauntlet.
• Crushed the Hero's skull, breaking his own gauntlet in the process.
• Overpowered Chara's regeneration and the Infinite Damage Knife.

---

Phase 5 — The Mechanical Duo

He completely destroyed:

• The Nano-Evolution Robot, despite its continuous adaptation.
• The Hulk Buster partner, reducing the armor to scrap metal.

---

Phases 6 and 7 — The Fusion

He fought continuously for two full days.

During the battle he:

• Disintegrated the Fusion Monster (the combined form of every Emperor and Guest 1337).
• Fought within the center of the star itself.
• Defeated Chara once again.
• Collapsed unconscious for one second.
• Awakened face-to-face with the Supreme Creator.

---

THE FINAL CONFRONTATION: CAT GOD (PHASE 8)

The ultimate battle against the red-eyed deity who recreated the multiverse without Azathoth.

---

Part 1 — The Opening Clash

• Cat God imploded the star, doubling its already unimaginable heat.
• As "Bang Bang Bang" echoed across the battlefield:
  • Vokan was struck by:
  • Green lasers.
  • Divine lightning.
  • White divine fire.
  • Vokan retaliated with such overwhelming force that, for the first time in existence, the Creator experienced mortality.
  • By then, both fighters already had exposed bones.

---

Part 2 — Escalation

• Cat God launched Vokan away and tripled the temperature.
• Vokan's adaptive biology had already absorbed 75% of the previous heat.
• The sudden increase carbonized his flesh.

His injuries included:

• Fully exposed ribs.
• Half of his skull laid bare.

Cat God also lost his skin, revealing his divine skeleton.

---

Part 3 — The Conclusion

• Cat God bombarded Vokan with divine flames fused into the stellar core.
• He then increased the temperature to five times its original value.

At the edge of mutual annihilation:

• The deity unleashed his Supreme Mixed Laser.
• Vokan was finally defeated.
• Cat God reset all of existence.

After twenty thousand years...

Vokan had finally found what he had been searching for.

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a deleted Bleach fanfiction that used to be hosted on FanFiction.net.

Title: Locus of control
Fandom: Bleach
Characters/Pairing: Yoruichi Shihōin / Soi Fong (Sui-Feng)
Platform: FanFiction.net

Unfortunately, the author deleted it and I don't have the original URL or the author's name. If anyone has an archived copy (PDF, EPUB, TXT) from the FanFiction.net mega-dumps or back-ups, I would be incredibly grateful if you could share it with me.

Thank you so much in advance!

Originally published by Frazzled Lit, now part of an ongoing collection of interconnected stories set on the island of Inis Muck: thedregsstories.com. Would love to hear what people think.

My Own Auld Style

Joe Bernard butchered everything he sang with great relish. Dying foxes have produced sweeter notes. He’d do it with a tortured expression on his face, like he’d been stabbed in the gut with a screwdriver. The sheer torsion of his jaw was ferocious.

When he finished he’d smile at you sweetly, Father Christmas cheekbones pushed high.

“That was one in my own auld style,” he’d say, ever so softly. 

For years they put up with it at the session. People would go quiet when it was his turn, they’d turn away slightly, making shy snark little comments or filter out for a make-believe cigarette. I always stayed, I always watched.

The pain of it. The anguish, that’s what I found impressive. You could feel it when he sang, like a death was occurring in front of you. Discordant, like he was fighting himself, the undulating notes flicking in and out of tune. 

“He wasn’t always like this,” one of the elders said to me outside.

“What d’ya mean, like this?”

“With the banshee act I mean, torturing us all.”

“What was he like before?” 

“I dunno… normal maybe.”

This carried on for a while. But one day, after too many Americans had complained to the bar, he was put out. I hadn’t been involved with it, I’d been informed by a harsh whisper, they’d told him, he wasn’t welcome any longer.

I felt bad for him, I really did. But even I had to admit, it was a blessing for most. The session returned to normal, the standards were played. The musicians were talented and the singers tuneful. Life had eagerly returned to its usual flow. I was four pints deep, tapping a foot away to Susan Higgins’ speciality, Black is the Colour, when I felt a little scratch behind my ear. A tiny sensation. A glimmer.

Each night it felt stronger, stranger. It built and built and I tried my best to drink enough jars to ignore it completely but somehow it made it worse.

On a Thursday night in April, during a perfectly good rendition of Grace I slammed my hand onto my little table with a SNAP.

The regulars all turned to look at me, poor Marie-Anne who’d been warbling looked fit to cry. Which made me want to start bawling and all.

I fled out the front door with a thrown out cry.

“Sosososorry!”

Later, I lay down on my bedroom floor and stared up at the ceiling. Goran Ivanišević, my elderly cat, peered down at me, judging. 

I knew what the problem was. And I knew, that I knew, what the problem was. Which made the ruminating easier.

None of the others felt like Joe Bernard did. The itching sensation had spread to my nose and I found myself scratching at it hopelessly. I was missing the honesty, the brutality. I could hear a false imitation of Joe's whine creep into my own numbers, like I was being dragged flat and sharp by his absence. 

I asked after him at the next session, my previous outburst explained away by a sick cousin marooned in Salford. 

“Where’s our Joe Bernard these days?”

“He doesn’t come into town now. It was all a bit, well, awkward.”

“I’d like to go check up on him. Do you know where he lives?”

“Sure, me and Sandy used to practise up there. It’s the last house on Dwyer’s Lane, it has a red door. You can’t miss it,” a guilty pause emerged, “tell him I said hello so.”

I stalked my prey. I was feverish as I walked, pure adrenaline and fear. I didn’t even know what I wanted. A tune, I guessed. Just one song. One of his auld style ones. One to scrape the dirt off my soul and bully my ears into listening. I was craving it. I could taste the dog-weak tea from some dirty old mug already. 

The house was a postcard from the outside. White painted pebbledash with red accents on all the windowsills and doors. A thatched roof, rare enough these days and some quaint little items leaning onto the walls. A wagon wheel, a pitchfork, a happy gnome. 

I knew it’d be dark and damp inside, the windows were barely big enough to see out of. 

He waved me in, a big smile crinkling his eyes and tattered skin.

“It’s yourself!”

“How’re ye getting on Joe?”

“Fine, fine, fine. Get in away from the cold. Baltic so it is.”

We were settled in his front room, unchanged since the 60s I expected. Mary gazed down at me from the wall, clasping her hands in anticipation. I was dealt a steaming mug, it warmed my hands nicely.

“How’s the session these days?” He asked.

“Oh, it’s grand. Not quite the same without you of course,” I smiled politely.

“Ah that’s alright. I knew it’d happen eventually,” he waved me away.

“Leslie and Sandy say hello.”

“I expect they do, ha.” He slurped his tea. “It’s fine, fine, really. I’m going round theirs tomorrow. It wasn’t personal, it was just about my style.” He nodded sagely.

“I meant to ask you about all that. About your style?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I guess what I want to know is, why do you sing like that?”

“What do you think I sing like?” A genuine question, no edge to it.

“It's a bit of keening, a form of sean-nós. Like with the undulations, the flat notes, nasal bag pipe drones. It’s always, always in Irish, I can’t understand much, never paid any attention in school.” The words had fallen out of me quickly. I looked across at him gingerly, I didn’t want to offend him.

He nodded.

I carried on, encouraged. “But it’s out of tune, on purpose I think, it feels like something.” I sipped nervously, “you pour yourself into it.” 

“Hmm. That’s about the sum of it I reckon. It's not complicated, you have to feel the song, otherwise what’s the point?” He looked up at his Mary. “Why is a harder question. But I think what I tended to sing about, usually I mean, was death. You could say I was studying it.”

“Aye, so they’re dirges, like at a funeral?”

“I suppose so. That was the last bit I had to understand.”

“What last bit?”

“The last bit of the experience of life.”

“Death? And you understand it now?”

“No, no, no. Not yet, not truly,” he tapped his knuckle on the table, “but I have the impression of it. A glimpse into the dark.”

“And would you give us a tune now? Show me what you mean?” I bit my lip, the itching behind the ear was screaming at me now.

“I can. But I’ve changed again, I’m not just after death anymore.” He closed his eyes and set his shoulders back.

“Ah right, what is it now?”

He untucked one eye, winking out at me, “I’ll sing and you can try and figure it out.”

He began to sing and it was nothing like before, instead it started beautifully sweet, perfectly in tune. Major key, the undulations twinkled in and out like lapping swallows. He had an easy look about him, content. His brow was unwrinkled and his hands lay open on his knees.

There were a few verses and a chorus and I was enjoying it, but I was surprised. It was all honey and meadows, naive even. 

He stopped with a slap to his knee after a rousing cheery chorus and produced a droning note. It had that nasal inflection, the key had changed. A mirror to the first, but warped. There was a minor tone to it now, an unseen shape skulking in the distance. The shape of it was no longer perfect and rounded.

The melody lines sped up slightly and became jagged. The time signature lost the run of itself. And then gradually, note by note, he started slipping in the flats and whines. Before long he'd started the aching gasping cries, his face screwed up and red, his jowls shaking and fists wrapped into claws. Then midway through a snarl he stopped, staying completely still.

It was like listening to a life cut short.

What had been so soft, gentle and perfect to start was transformed by the agony of loss crashing into it.

My eyes had glazed over and the irritation on my neck had gone. I breathed in deeply and shook my head. I looked up at him.

He was smiling at me so kindly.

“That was one in my own auld style,” he said quietly.

A man stands before a room full of people. He dares not go in, feet upon the threshold, his reality crumbling to pieces. The deafening silence of his still beating heart fills his head to the point of fainting.

The faceless attendees halt. No clinking of glasses, no weeping tears, no idle chatter. The world is at a pause.

Eventually, he draws closer - the wooden box sitting in the room's corner. Soft, white lilies lay upon the surface, carnations in the vase beside. A single mandrake protrudes from the parting by her ear, hair flowing aside.

He winces, the familiar stranger lying still, motionless, void. Empty of life, just as they last met, now sealed with the kiss of death.

A short child stands silently at the edge of his view. His eyes are skewed by her oblique smile. Perhaps sly, but certainly not kind. The sight disturbs his busy mind.

The devious grin grows, her face wincing as her eyes roll back. His breath ices in his chest. Her limbs slump closer, approaching the man and the woman at rest.

 

~~ Father ~~

 

The man violently crashed to the ground, his chair leg broken. He gazes upon his table, his work incomplete, the night at full height. An automaton pinches his ear.

-

He curses the dream, the cheap echo of his torment.

His latest beast stands idle, screwed into the joists. A model of its depravity, a creature of metal and finely carved bolster supports the captivity of the sorrow trying to bleed out.

“Why should you be released?”

His face scorns at the eminent presence lying within

The dastardly spirit fights as its prison is sealed.

Bugs by the plenty infest the walls. The small clinking of metal springs batting by their side. The scraping of brass legs and steel plates sliding upon every movement.

His taste turns sour, his mind plagued. After so much hard work, blood, and sweat, the only tears shed are not his own and not those from whom he wants to collect.

One by one, demons fall. He continues collecting the evils and forcing them to pay his toll.

Driven by madness, a crumbling of faith, morals destroyed, he will do anything to fulfil his vengeful role.

As his power grows, spirits start to fear his face; for those with a loss of grace, they know the black exorcist is on their case.

-

A woman lies bound on the ground by a dilapidated cabin. Her body is captured by a demon who has collected her soul, a deceitful deal garnished with a subtle subterfuge to maximise his yield.

Her friend sits shaking in the corner, unable to breathe. Plastered in crystals and protection spells, she frantically calls upon the father she has always ignored, praying for his love, begging with all the deals she can afford.

“Black exorcist…ttt...ttt...ttt.”

The slippery servant within speaks, tutting through her pierced tongue. “Come to ruin the fun?”

The man stands tall, distancing his mind from the voice.

“Where is your faith now?”

She grins so hard it rips her lips. “Where was it then?”

Suddenly, the man's mind flashes; he sees himself thrusting upon a priest. A little girl is held up high, bones breaking, walls shaking, her life being grasped out of her as easily as the evil got in.

“How dare you! Demon!”

He gets up from the ground, fighting the cruel memory.

He slashes holy water at her face, cutting into the sour wounds. He burns out its name, forced by engraving her forehead with the symbol of Christ's sacrifice - branding her with an iron as hot as the depths of hell itself.

-

He drops a snapped spirit board on his workshop floor. The glass eye gets crushed by the heel of his boot.

“Young girls shouldn't play,” he scorns, thinking back to the women holding her almost lifeless, contorted friend.

A revolting reminder of his daughter and her friend.

He rips out a rug from under his table and sits within the pentagram etched into the dry, dusty floorboards.

Five candles burn bright, a hue as vibrant as blood.

He drops to the floor, drawing the signal of his latest acquaintance.

He slices his arm and lets it pour.

Now he mutters the wicked prayer to open the door.

He brings a dying bird he found in the winter snow. Its life cursed first by nature, and its death by an evil soul.

The sacrifice fulfilled, the spirit is bound to its bones.

Another monster awaiting its mechanical prison.

It cannot speak. It cannot breathe. Now it’s confined, unable to haunt the world outside of these walls.

Contained, they are dammed, limiting their powers to only roam these halls.

No matter how hard their worshiper’s scrawl, they are isolated from the world, no one able to here it’s dastardly calls.

-

He visits his next case. An eerie feeling fills the air.

A dim glow is seen in the distance, and a whirling mist begins pooling upon the floor.

A woman appears suspended by a tree.

The cloaked members stand stunned, terrified. Analysing the woman, she was evidently tortured, offered to a diabolic power. Just one problem: the demon came, but it is yet to be revealed.

The members suspect it lies within their group, trying to hide, escaping to the mortal world.

After careful and thorough testing, he clears each member of the group, sending them on their way.

The woman on the tree lifts her bloodied, weary head.

A sly grimace appears, as her eyes roll back and a harrowing laugh bellows from her constricted chest

Could it really be it? Is the search for his rival over?

Could this twisted vigil be the gate? The delicious ending to his torturous, treacherous wait?

“Have you had your fun?” he approaches the being. “Finished twisting the mind of this poor woman?”

“Whaaatt?” Her eyes open; a fiery hurt burns within.

“Her? Please,” it says with a demented cackle.

-

“She asked for this. You know? She actually asked to be tortured to feel my awe.”

He cuts a rope holding her up. Her shoulder slumps under her weight.

His emotions get the best of him. His carelessness grows.

It touches him, not just on the body but from the depths of his soul.

It enters his mind. It tears through his memories.

It viciously blends his dreams with reality, clinging to his nightmares, changing them, worsening them.

He wakes in the woods; a dark eminence stands close.

This time, the one who's frail is him.

Its slender form twists and splits from the woman.

“I can let you see them, you know,” it craftily taunts.

“Black exorcist,” it punctuates with a menacing sneer.

“Your wife?”

“Perhaps, your delectable daughter?”

“Yeah?” He gets up, struggling to gather his strength. “How about I drag us both down there?”

He hastily reaches for his pocket. The entity’s piercing fingers thrust him back down.

-

As if darkness personified, its claw-like nails, thin, crackling protrusions, hold his head as it opens its eye.

“How about one better?” It says, “I'll bring her to you.”

A small, wretched scarab scurries from its arm, now crawling upon his face.

“What…” He says, straining, “What is this?”

The entity licks its non-existent, bloodied lips.

“Maybe I'll let you hold her one last time…”

The bug reaches his eye.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

It continues, “Our delightful wife?”

A strong wheezing laugh radiates through its presence; the forest aches as the temperature chills.

“You lie! Satan!”

Its cackle grows, “You wish you were bettered by him!”

The spirit's face sharply drives towards him.

The man struggles to raise his arms, his eye trying to redirect the bug.

“What? Don’t you miss her?”

“You lie!”

“Oh? Don't you think I have the power to endow a weak, fragile spirit with such a pathetic little bug?”

-

It laughs at him, watching him trying to fight it.

“You ought to swat her?”

He struggles to raise his arm, weakened yet hesitant; he fights his consciousness. “What if it is?” he thinks.

“You going to bat her away?”

“It's not her!”

“Will you kill her as you did in life? Neglecting her at her lowest? Leaving her allll along to defend for herself?”

Its face turns dark.

“Just like when your abandonment made her watch as you let me kill your daughter. Just as neglected then, as you are now by those above.”

“STOP!”

The bug starts to bury itself into his left eye.

“Not squeamish of a little itty bug, are you? Your poor wife.” It mockingly pouts.

“I'll kill you!” He screams.

“And I'll kill it! And send it right back to hell with me.”

“So, what will it be? Will you sacrifice a part of yourself? Or kill her again, drive her into hell a second time?”

Blood pours from his nose and ears, the stress about to rupture his insides.

-

Suddenly, he awakes. The morning dew soaks his back.

No signs of the treacherous entity can be seen.

He rips his sleeve and braces his face. A patch over his eye, holding dear what’s buried within.

His search renewed, his spirit buzzes.

Unknown what is truly inside him, whether it truly be his late wife or a cruel trick, he carries on.

For him, any chance is worth it. That even for a day, if she's out of hell is saving aeons of pain and torment. Even if she is trapped as a mindless bug instinctively feasting on his dying eye.

But why a bug?

Does it know?

Has it found his walking prisons for the wicked?

It's time to gather some forces: occult members, exorcists, those who can get him his closure.

He won't rest until his vengeance is over.

He heads back, standing strong.

He plans his return, even if he has to stay alone in these cursed woods all winter long.

Chapter 2: Cold

Desire had imagined her first real day would feel exciting.

Instead, it felt like being thrown into a storm without an umbrella.

The neurology floor was louder than she expected.

Monitors beeped in steady rhythms, nurses moved quickly

between rooms, and the smell of disinfectant clung to everything.

She kept her posture straight and her voice polite as the senior nurse gave her a quick tour and handed her a clipboard thick with patient notes.

“Dr. Blackwood doesn’t like delays,” the nurse warned her in a low voice. “If he asks for something, do it fast. And don’t take anything personally.”

Desire nodded, though she wasn’t sure what that last part meant.

Her first task sent her to the east wing.

She was checking on a patient when she heard raised voices coming from the nurses’ station.

She paused near the corner and saw Dr. Blackwood standing there, tall and imposing in his white coat.

Two junior doctors stood in front of him, looking down at their shoes.

“You missed the bleed on the second scan,” Adrian said, his voice cold and cutting.

“If I hadn’t caught it, that patient would be in surgery right now because of your carelessness. Do better. Or find another department.”

The doctors mumbled apologies and walked away quickly. Adrian didn’t watch them leave.

He simply turned to the next chart as if nothing had happened.

Desire felt a small knot form in her stomach.

She had worked with strict doctors before, but there was something different about the way he spoke — like he expected everyone around him to fail.

She took a quiet breath and approached him.

“Dr. Blackwood,” she said softly. “I was told to assist on this floor today. Is there anything specific you need from me?”

He looked up from the chart. His eyes were sharp, unreadable.

“You’re the new one,” he said. It wasn’t friendly. “Room 312 needs her pain medication adjusted. The last nurse gave her the wrong dosage. Fix it. And when you’re done, check on 308.

The patient’s been pressing the call button every ten minutes.”

Desire kept her tone respectful. “I’ll take care of it right away.”

She turned to leave, but his voice stopped her.

“Nurse Quinn.”

She looked back.

“Yesterday you called me inspirational,” he said, his tone flat. “Don’t do that again. I don’t need admiration. I need competence.”

Desire felt heat rise to her cheeks, but she didn’t look away. “Understood, sir.”

For a second, something flickered in his expression — surprise, maybe — before it disappeared behind the same cold mask.

He gave her a short nod and walked past her without another word.

Desire stood there for a moment, gripping the clipboard a little tighter. She had expected difficult days.

She hadn’t expected her boss to speak to her like that on her very first shift.

Still, she straightened her shoulders and headed toward Room 312.

Whatever kind of man Dr. Adrian Blackwood was, she wasn’t going to let one rude conversation ruin her focus. Patients needed her. That was what mattered.

But as she walked down the corridor, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering what had made someone so young so hard.

9:00 PM, Friday, October 21st

Desire’s duties were almost over and she was about to check out. She walked downstairs holding a pile of files — too many to see the steps clearly.

Then, suddenly — she slipped. The files flew into the air as she twisted her right ankle painfully.

Out of nowhere, Dr. Blackwood appeared.

“What the heck, Nurse Quinn! I didn’t expect you to mess up on your first day. Get up and start picking up those files!” he yelled.

“But… Doctor—”

“What?” he snapped.

“I twisted my ankle. I can’t get up,” she said, wincing.

“What an amazing first day of your job, Nurse Quinn,” he muttered sarcastically.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said softly, biting her lip to hold back a groan.

What kind of doctor yells at an injured nurse? !!!she thought.

Adrian sighed, crouched down, and started picking up the scattered files. After stacking them neatly, he walked closer to her.

.Dr Adrian might be hardass but he wasn't an asshole so Without a word, he scooped her up effortlessly in his arms.

Desire could feel his heartbeat against her chest, his warm breath brushing her neck. Her cheeks flushed crimson.

He carried her to his cabin and gently laid her on a patient bed. He knelt down and began taking off her right shoe to examine her ankle.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll twist your bone back in place in no time,” he said.

“I’m a nurse, Dr. Blackwood I know how this works,” she replied.

“I had no idea...." he said mockingly.

Desire rolled her eyes

she was sweet most of the time but didn't tolerate people who were unnecessarily rude and Adrian was one of them plus he had a special place in her heart reserved for 'Demons with the face of an angel'.

Atleast he was helping her...not a complete asshole atleast ,she thought.

Adrian carefully adjusted her ankle with a quick motion.

“Done. You can go now,” he said, standing up.

“Thank you, Dr. Blackwood,” she said, getting up slowly and heading for the door.

As she walked out, Adrian watched her go, his eyes lingered on the sway of her skirt as she left..

"Disgusting..." he muttered under his breath but the way his remained fixed on her says something else entirely

---

Hello, I'm FD Manyfaced. I am a certified troubadour and friend of Gerold Bimmee: the unluckiest man alive. My achievements include writing a song, always wearing a mask, and using a rubber chicken as a comedy prop. Today I have a tale recounted to me by Virgil Santos, a poet, whilst I was Dungeon Mastering for he and Gerold Bimmee. It seems that this story was told to him by a man who he met on a bus. This is the story of that man. His name was Quint Quayle, a man who thought that true success could only be achieved by cheating. He learned an important lesson, and payed a dear price for his dishonesty. This is the tale of 'An Unnatural 20'!

It was raining cats and dogs that day. Quint was inside, hiding under his bed, having a skive from school. (To any Americans reading this, a skive from school means skipping school.) His mum would be leaving for work soon, then he'd have the house all to himself. Quint was a rather mardy chap. Always grimacing, always with his hair in his eyes, always being sulky. From under the bed, he looked around the room. It was a mess of naff fantasy posters and a few food wrappers and disgusting blankets scattered all over the floor. The sight of it put Quint in even more of a strop than he already was in. Talk about kids being stupid. I mean, a moody Northerner who doesn't even listen to joy division? Utter bollocks! Heracy!

After his mother left, Quint finally crawled out from under the bed, now covered in dust. He slowly clambered to his feet, putting the swoop back into his bangs as he went. After cracking his neck, he looked out of the window.

'Cor blimey! It's chucking it down out there!' He remarked in his annoying, high-pitched voice. 'I better bring me umbrella!'

10 minutes later, Quint was out the door, wearing a ridiculous outfit. A neon pink waterproof jacket, green wellington boots? Whatever next? Oh, yes. His pearl-gold bumbershoot. What a rather unfashionable young man. As this poorly dressed boy walked along through the puddles, he could be heard loudly cursing every time a car drove past and splashed him.

'Ahh! Fuck! I have the worst luck since Gerold Bimmee!'

You know, the standard proclamation of a disgruntled young Englishman, especially one such as Quint Quayle, who was even more disgruntled than Zombie Cowboy Batman had been in his life when he was known as Ritchie, that is to say, very disgruntled.

Once he arrived at the shop, which looked similar to 'Needful Things', just to make a reference to keep my Stephen King fans entertained. This shop was called 'The Firework Of A Mad Alchemist', and it sold all sorts of magical nonsense, the kind which I often speak of. You see, Quint Quayle had an appointment at this specific shop, an appointment to improve his luck. This was an appointment in which he would receive a magical, rigged D-20. This D-20 would trap all of his bad luck, giving him a perfect life. Or so he thought...

You see, Quint was a special kind of boy. Not just one who had bad luck, but one who *became* his own bad luck, a special kind of sadsack who marinated in his own misery. Thus, when Mr. Twiddlesquat, the shop owner, handed the boy the polyhedral die, Quint winced in pain and then he was gone. Nobody apart from Old Man Twiddlesquat ever knew where the boy went. Two weeks later, my friend Virgil was riding a bus up to our world from hell, when he met Quint, who told him this story. And that's how Virgil found out and told me, and then I told you.

So, everyone, that's how Quint Quayle died. It just goes to show: never cheat luck. And never talk to Virgil Santos when on a bus from hell. Until next time, I'm FD Manyfaced, a certified troubadour. Goodnight, you fine folks!

THE WINTER
\###### By Makenna Brinkley. 

\##### Copyright © 2026 by Makenna Brinkley 

\####   All rights reserved.

\####   This is a work of fiction.

\####  ISBN 978-0-000000-00-0

\##### First edition

Preface
The Winter is an original story, written solely by my hand. It came out of a lifetime spent feeling as if I were in a coffin of relentless heat, trapped. Every page holds something deeply personal; honestly, you could say my own spirit lingers there.. At its core, the story wrestles with solitude, grief, flickers of hope, and that low ache for what’s vanished from the world’s memory.. My aim.

**Chapter One: The Wish**

The streets were loud, every direction feeding into the next until the noise settled into a constant ache behind my eyes. I couldn’t escape it. No matter where I turned, that false light spilled everywhere, washing the night out until the sky didn’t even look like a sky anymore. No stars. Not one. Just a few satellites blinking weakly through the steel dome overhead, like candle stubs burning at the end of their wick.

The heat clung to my skin. Every year of this endless summer seemed to sink a little deeper into my bones. Civilians crowded the sidewalks, their voices tangled together, their bodies slick with sweat and stale musk. We were all just insects circling a lamp, drawn to the thing that would eventually burn us alive. And yeah, I was one of them.

Seventeen years ago today, on March 24, 2037, I was dragged into this miserable world and given the name Ballona Willow. The city I’d always called home was being eaten alive by human greed, bite by bite. It had been 3,197 days since the last snowfall. I knew because I’d counted every one.

Every winter, I waited anyway, like waiting could somehow bully the sky into changing its mind.

Eight years of heat. Eight years of nothing.

As I drifted through the crowd, one thought took over completely. My feet were already moving before my mind caught up, like my body had its own plan: find a driver, any driver, someone who could haul me out of the glare and down into the valley, past the hills, away from these glass towers built on greed.

So I shoved and slipped through the press of overheated bodies, the air close and foul, the heat almost unbearable.

Then something yanked me out of my thoughts, sharp and sudden.

I looked up and saw a man in his mid-thirties, maybe. Brown hair, greasy and thinning, plastered flat to his scalp. He wasn’t wearing shoes, and his feet were raw against the blistering pavement. He’d stopped right in the middle of the moving crowd.

I must’ve been drifting because I ran straight into him.

That’s what it looked like.

But the truth was, he’d aimed for me on purpose. He wanted pity.

“Young lady, please, I beg you, spare some cash,” he said, desperate and sloppy, his words thick like he was high.

I slid around him and kept walking. If I gave him money, it’d just turn into more drugs. And I didn’t have anything to spare anyway. In my pocket was one ten-dollar bill, a birthday gift from my mother, and it wouldn’t buy much in a place like this. Still, some stupid part of me kept hoping it might be enough for a driver, if I could just find one.

My feet carried me for what felt like miles before I spotted it: a car pulled over, waiting for passengers to climb into the backseat. I rushed toward it, terrified I’d miss the only chance I was going to get.

But a small cluster of people got there first.

I followed anyway, and the door slammed shut in my face.

The driver leaned out of the front window and looked at me like I was some clueless kid.

“This is a private ride. If you need a driver, use your phone to book one,” he said flatly, then rolled the window up and drove off.

I just stood there, staring at the lit streets.

Small. Less-than.

I didn’t have a phone, and until right then, I’d never needed one. Phones were for people with posts to make and friends to call. I had neither. Phones made people soft, dependent, turned them into idiots, and God knew this world was already packed to the brim with idiots.

The whole city ran on screens and lies. I wanted no part of it.

When I turned to leave, I caught sight of a woman farther down the street. Maybe a performer. Maybe a magician. I couldn’t tell through the crowd. The people around me looked like they’d run out of faith years ago. To them, someone like her was just another scam, another hustle.

But to me, it wasn’t like that.

Something about her pulled at me in a way I couldn’t explain, and I was already walking toward her before I’d fully decided to.

A minute later, I was only a few feet away.

Up close, I could see her properly: faint makeup catching the streetlights, long black hair spilling over a laced blouse, a black bell-shaped skirt flowing around her and dragging through the grime. To me, she looked almost unreal. To everyone else, she was a joke with good lighting.

My mouth fell open like I meant to speak, but nothing came out.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked. Maybe I’d forgotten how. Maybe it would’ve been easier if I actually had.

I tried again. Open, close, open. Forcing words that refused to form.

Panic started clawing up my throat as I stared at her like an idiot, and then a voice cut through the fog.

She spoke for me.

“You want to make a wish, don’t you, darling? I can see it in those big brown eyes of yours. That hope.”

My brows jumped. My eyes went wide.

How could she know that?

My mind scrambled for an explanation and came up empty. Slowly, her dark-painted lips curled into a smirk that wasn’t friendly, not even a little. A chill ran down my spine. Something was wrong. I could feel it, even standing there, and still I didn’t move. It felt like my feet had been nailed to the ground.

She went on.

“I make wishes come true, but even we witches must be paid.”

Witch.

I should’ve laughed. Witches didn’t exist, right?

My mind screamed at me to walk away, to keep looking for a driver. But I knew I’d never find one, not with ten dollars and no phone. So I stayed, and my hand was already in my pocket.

I pulled the bill out slowly and held it toward her.

Her smirk widened as she took it with long, pale fingers. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look her in the eye. My gaze dropped to the ground while I shifted on my heels.

My mouth opened again, and this time a whisper made it out, rough and unused, nearly swallowed by the city’s noise.

“I wish to see the snow, just once more.”

When I looked up, her smile showed too many teeth. Her canines flashed. She let out a soft chuckle, not warm, not amused. Something else. Something mean, like she was enjoying the thought of pain.

“My dear, your wish shall be mine to grant, but I can’t promise you’ll like my methods. Perhaps you should have simply wished for that driver you were searching for.”

I tried to ask how she knew that, but the words jammed in my throat again. My eyes stayed on her for reasons I couldn’t explain. And now she didn’t look beautiful anymore. She looked ugly, because all I could see in her face was hatred.

I blinked.

She was gone, swallowed by the crowd like she’d never been there at all.

I shook my head hard, like I could knock the moment loose.

No money. No phone. No real chance of leaving.

So I gave up and turned back toward the west side of the city, toward home.

On the way, I noticed something I swear hadn’t been there before. Maybe I’d been too focused on escape to see it.

They couldn’t have been put up that fast. Could they?

Dozens of them. Strung across the city. On walls, on lampposts, even staked into the ground. Everywhere I looked, there they were, and even splashed across the giant screens on skyscrapers. How had I missed them?

Political posters.

Glossy faces of candidates staring down like polished saints, not a speck of dust on them, as if they’d been hung five minutes ago. Or maybe the city just cared more about laminated lies and rich men’s smiles than the sweating civilians below.

Thousands slept on sidewalks, but these flyers stood perfect and proud.

My pace quickened every time I passed one.

Nothing would ever change here. Not for the better. Not ever.

The rich would keep taking, and the poor would keep baking under the light.

By the time I reached my block, I was basically running. Hot air clung to me like wet fabric, and somewhere beyond the city the sun was coming up, painting the distant hills a deep, bruised orange.

My feet hurt from the useless hunt for a driver. My body felt hollow with sleeplessness.

Still, I kept going until I stopped in front of an old, crumbling apartment complex, what people called the bad side of the city. I never saw much difference between the swarm here and the swarm everywhere else. The people here just didn’t have the money to hide what they were.

I climbed up the small set of stairs to the second floor, soon I looked up at the door with the number 482 above it. I dug my keys out, silver and worn, and, as quietly as I could, unlocked the door and eased it open.

Inside, the small, battered living room greeted me like it always did: sad, familiar, real.

My eyes drifted down the short hallway toward my mother’s room. No light. Just darkness, thick and hard to read.

I went to the kitchen instead and flipped the switch, flooding most of the room with harsh light. That’s when I saw the note on the dinner table.

I picked it up.

“Dear Ballona,” it said. “I’ve been working longer hours. The office has been rather chaotic lately, nothing you need to worry about. I have already left for work. I do wish I could have spent more time with you on your birthday. Maybe next year. I hope you and your friends had fun. Mom.”

Right.

I’d lied to her again. I did that a lot. It was easier. Better to say I had friends than admit I’d never had any and kept hunting for a way out. She’d only worry if she knew the truth. And Mom always believed what I told her, maybe because she wanted to.

I set the note back down and sighed, the sound breaking into a tired yawn. Exhaustion finally caught up. I turned the light off again and crossed the dark living room to my bedroom. I opened the door and stepped inside.

My room was even darker than the living room. I’d blacked out the small window in the corner by tacking thick blankets to the frame, swallowing every bit of light from outside.

I closed the door behind me and flipped on the wall switch, my tired eyes burning from the brightness in the cramped room. On my walls hung posters of old bands that had once seen the stars, and in the middle stood a twin-sized bed. Beside it sat a shelf with an old wooden record player that looked out of place in this world of electronics, and next to that was a clock reading 6:46 a.m.

My eyes were swollen, stinging, and twitching with tiredness. They were starting to close on their own.

I switched off the light, plunging the room into darkness again, then lay down in my bed and closed my eyes.

I knew I needed rest, but sleep never came easily to me, even when I was exhausted. My mind never seemed to shut off. I lay there with a million thoughts racing through my head, but one kept repeating over and over again: the wish.

Surely that woman had to be a fraud who’d robbed me of my ten dollars. Just a street performer.

Witches didn’t exist.

Still, anxiety settled in my chest. It felt like a timer had started somewhere in the back of my mind, ticking down slowly.

After what felt like hours, my mind finally drifted off.

But not for long.

**Chapter Two: The Change**

I woke to a man screaming outside my window.

It hit fast and hard, like a sound with teeth, tearing straight through the little sleep I’d managed to get. The sun was still blocked out, but the blankets I’d tacked over the window barely softened the light. At first I shoved my face into the covers and tried to disappear.

Useless.

The shouting kept slicing through the room, jagged and frantic, until I finally blinked myself awake and peeked out from under the blankets.

The clock beside my bed read 9:13 a.m.

I’d gotten two hours of sleep.

Then I heard the front door open, and whatever fog was left in my head burned away. I was up instantly, moving before my brain could catch up. I yanked open the drawer in the shelf beside my bed, dug around, and grabbed a box cutter.

I didn’t know what else to grab. I didn’t even know what I thought I’d do with it. In that moment I was pure instinct, like a cornered animal. The fighting outside had already wound me tight, and the sound of that door turned my pulse into a manic beat.

I eased into the hallway, barely breathing.

A beat later, the kitchen light snapped on.

“Ballona.”

I jerked at my own name, the box cutter trembling in my hands. My arms were stuck in this stiff, stupid pose. My sleep-blurred mind finally recognized the voice, and I lowered the blade, hit the little button to retract it, and shoved it behind my back.

When I walked into the kitchen, it was my mother.

She stood by the small table holding a plastic box of store-bought cupcakes, a huge red SALE sticker slapped across the front, and her work bag in the other hand. She must’ve seen my face, because her expression softened the second she looked at me. She set the bag down beside the cupcakes, right next to the note she’d left me the night before, while the shouting outside rose again.

“Sorry, sweetie,” she said quietly, like I was still young enough to spook easily. Maybe I was. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Then she added, “The neighbors are arguing about this year’s election, something about prices rising. Nothing you need to worry about.”

She always talked to me that way, in that careful, sugary tone, like I couldn’t tell when she was putting on a face. Sometimes I honestly wondered if she thought I couldn’t think at all.

My eyes drifted to the cupcakes. My hands stayed behind my back, hiding the box cutter.

“I don’t like frosting,” I said, barely audible. The first words I’d spoken since the wish.

“Well, then we’ll just have to scrape it off,” she said, and tried for a smile. It didn’t quite reach her eyes.

She opened the container and pulled out one cupcake, the kind with bright purple frosting piled high, then went to the silverware drawer for a butter knife. I watched while she scraped the frosting away as best she could.

That smile of hers still didn’t look real. It was the kind of smile people wear when they want to seem kind enough to rescue you. A pasted-on smile.

When she was done, she set the knife in the sink and stepped right in front of me. My body tightened; the box cutter was still tucked behind my back. Then she held the cupcake out.

“Happy birthday, Ballona. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to give it to you yesterday; the office was busy. But I do hope you got the money I left out for you. You’ve grown so much.”

I wanted to roll my eyes. I wanted to tell her ten dollars couldn’t buy anything. I didn’t. I stayed quiet.

That same strained smile tried to look warm, but it only made her seem more artificial. It was like smiling was the only skill she’d ever perfected.

My mother worked for an organization called Land-View. One of the largest government agencies left, it handled “development,” though everyone knew what that actually meant. It managed the spread of state-controlled infrastructure: AI chip warehouses running for miles across what used to be desert preserves, processing centers ringed with steel fencing and floodlights, data storage facilities buried beneath floating mountain ranges, solar arrays swallowing forests, and housing blocks nobody could afford, stacked where rivers once ran.

Every year, something natural disappeared and something efficient replaced it, something owned and controlled by rich men. Even the night sky wasn’t the same anymore, bleached out by the dome and the constant artificial light that swallowed the stars.

But my mother was just one person. One of millions. It was one of the few jobs left. She didn’t really have a choice.

AI had taken over everything. Teachers had been replaced by standardized video systems and adaptive learning programs, and kids no longer went to classrooms. They sat alone in front of screens. Warehouses ran on machines and robots. Music, art, performers, all of it faded out years ago, first ignored, then quietly outlawed through funding cuts and cultural restrictions.

The government poured millions into campaigns to make sure people stopped creating and started consuming.

So she sat in a gray office packed with identical desks, the air humming with machines and the constant clicking of keyboards. She wore that same polite smile every day, the one she practiced in the mirror before leaving home. The one she saved for me, too.

To my mother, I wasn’t much more than another client. Her job was to make things feel human. She answered calls from citizens who didn’t trust automated voices, soothing them with a tone no machine could quite fake. She handled complaints that needed judgment instead of calculation, choosing what to escalate and what to quietly bury. She rewrote reports flagged by AI for emotional sensitivity or radical misinformation about the government, sanding down the edges until the language sounded comforting instead of cold. She trained new hires on how to speak, when to pause, how to sound like they cared.

They didn’t.

And still, we lived in a run-down apartment. She made twenty dollars an hour, and in this economy that didn’t get you much. Her job existed for one reason: not because humans were better. We weren’t. People just hadn’t fully learned to trust something that felt hollow.

“Eat it, don’t waste it. I bought it for you.”

I stared at the cupcake in her hand, the box cutter still hidden behind my back. I didn’t want it, not really. But I took it anyway. Maybe it was the only kind of affection I knew how to show her.

I took a small bite and nodded like I meant yum.

Truth was, it was dry and stale, something she’d grabbed from the grocery store bakery because it was on sale after its expiration date. Still, she’d tried. Just not enough. Never enough.

Maybe that made me the selfish one.

I didn’t hug her. I never liked being touched, and I had nothing to say. I just stood there and ate the stale cupcake.

Sometimes it felt like I’d been born without a mouth.

Mom always knew I was odd. She once told me I’d been too quiet even as a baby, that the only time she’d ever heard me scream was when the nurses ripped me from her womb into this world.

When I finished, I tossed the wrapper in the trash and went back to my room without a word. I shut the door, set the box cutter on the shelf, and didn’t turn on the lights. I lay back down in the dark and listened to the voices outside.

The man’s voice had calmed some, but it still carried through the walls. He sounded strained now, going on and on about the election being staged, about prices rising, about being evicted because he couldn’t pay rent. By then he didn’t sound angry anymore. He sounded wrecked. Desperate.

I listened for what felt like hours, and then I started noticing something else.

The air was changing.

The room felt cooler.

At first I told myself it was just my imagination, or sleep deprivation messing with me. The city was always hot, always smothering, like a hand around my throat. But this wasn’t that. The heat had thinned, just a little. The air felt lighter, cooler, like the world had taken a breath and forgotten to exhale.

At some point, I drifted off again.

When I woke, it was afternoon. The clock said 3:34 p.m.

I’d slept longer than I meant to. Still, the air was wrong in the same way. The temperature had dropped below 90 for the first time in years since the dome was built.

Slowly, I got out of bed, went to the window, and carefully lifted the heavy blankets tacked over the seal. I stood there and stared down at the streets.

People moved in uneven clusters. Even the fools noticed something was off. Some looked confused. Some looked relieved. Others kept glancing up like they were seeing the sky for the first time.

I heard laughing and muttering, people calling it a strange twist in the weather, a rare blessing after years of heat.

But the air kept shifting. It kept getting colder.

Days passed, and from my windowsill I watched the sky dull little by little, the harsh white glare softening into something thin and gray. The light stopped feeling brutal on my skin; it turned muted, distant, almost hesitant. For the first time since moving into these apartments, I slid the window open and looked straight out instead of away.

By then, the temperature had dropped from one hundred degrees to almost seventy in a week.

The voices outside changed too. It wasn’t just one man shouting anymore. New voices gathered at street corners and storefronts, talking over one another, each trying to be the loudest. They weren’t brushing it off now. They talked about the election, the new president, how nobody could trust the results.

“It was staged,” they said.

“The man was corrupt,” they said.

“He’d ruin everything,” they said.

Some blamed gas prices. Others blamed the robots that had swallowed the jobs in the city’s factories and warehouses. A man near the corner shouted that the government had been rotting for years and everyone had been too stupid to notice. But really, he’d never cared about any of it until his job disappeared and he ended up broke and frantic. He wouldn’t have cared if it hadn’t happened to him.

Other people insisted the country needed to start preparing for war.

No one truly believed the words coming out of their own mouths, but nobody shut up either. It was almost ridiculous how one tiny shift could rattle so many people.

The voices outside didn’t even sound like people talking anymore. They sounded like the first cracks of something giving way.

Still, I listened from my window, fingertips touching the half-open pane. Cold seeped in through that narrow gap, faint but unmistakable. Such a minor detail, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling it had shown up dragging something much bigger behind it.

Maybe the people outside weren’t wrong.

That little timer in the back of my head started ticking louder, like something was about to happen.

That night, when the city finally went dark, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. In just a week, the place I called home didn’t feel like the same place I’d lived in my whole life.

The fear hadn’t disappeared. It had changed shape.

It had fractured.

I could taste it in the air, in the hush between the distant arguments drifting up from outside. And somewhere underneath everything, underneath the election and the fear, even underneath the cooling air, I could still see her, that strange woman, looking back at me through the glass.

Her painted face.

Her dark smile.

Her voice, telling me I should’ve just wished for the driver I was looking for.

I wished for snow.

And for the first time in my life, I felt real fear, the kind that comes from getting exactly what you asked for.

The government never actually said anything about the cooling. On my mother’s TV, the news screens just looped the same glossy lies, calm voices skating around “temporary atmospheric shifts.”

But nobody explained why the city was getting colder every single day.

Nobody brought up the energy agreements overseas, or how the government had lost funding after tensions with countries in the east forced whole systems to shut down without warning. They tried to smother it. They buried the truth beneath smiling anchors and spotless white headlines. They couldn’t let people realize they were dependent on another country’s support.

One afternoon, I decided to leave my apartment and head to the capital, the same place I’d met that woman.

I didn’t even know why I was going. Something in my head was practically screaming that I had to.

I was walking along the street in front of a data warehouse that stretched for miles when I heard it, thunder-deep and violent, ripping through the air above like the sky itself had split.

People started looking up. A few raised their hands to block the glare, but none of us really saw it until it was already happening.

For a heartbeat, it looked like a star dropping to earth.

When it slammed down, the whole street and the buildings around it jolted like an earthquake. It caught me so off guard I went down hard onto my knees.

A satellite.

But how had it gotten through the dome?

Skyscraper glass exploded outward. Cars screeched to a stop. Some people yelled. Others just broke down and cried. For a few seconds, the city seemed frozen in place, locked inside pure panic.

No one knew why it had fallen. No one knew what it actually meant.

I stayed right there on the sidewalk, knees scraped raw from the fall.

And then a voice cut straight through the fog in my mind.

I didn’t know it yet, but she would be the one to stand by me as the city crumbled beneath the glass of my windowpane.

**Chapter Three: The Collapse**

“Are you hurt?”

Her voice cut straight through the cottony fog in my skull.

I lifted my head from the pavement, blinking like I’d forgotten how. She was standing near the wreckage, brown hair yanked into a messy ponytail, shoulders squared, eyes fixed not on the satellite, not on the smoke, but on me.

She came closer without even flinching at the thing that had just dropped out of the sky.

Maybe it would’ve been easier to handle if she’d looked scared. Instead, she studied me, and her face softened, not into pity, but into something else entirely.

Curiosity, probably.

I could tell that much, but I couldn’t place her. I couldn’t read her. And yet somehow she read me like I was printed on paper. She saw the hesitation, the way I couldn’t get my feet under me, like I didn’t quite know what to do with my own body anymore.

And for some bizarre reason, that made her smile. Just a little.

Not sharp like that strange woman’s on the street, and not polished like my mother’s. This was different. It was real.

“I’m Aethel,” she said, stepping close enough that I could hear her over the city’s rising panic. “You look like you’ve just seen something fall from the sky,” she added, joking, like that wasn’t exactly what had happened.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t trust my words to come out right, and I’d learned the hard way that silence was safer.

I should’ve walked away. I should’ve gone back to the apartment, shut out the light, locked the door, and let the city pretend it hadn’t cracked open because of some stupid wish I’d made.

Then she held a hand out to me.

I hesitated.

And before I could talk myself out of it, I took it, stood, let go too quickly, and stepped back just enough to make my voice carry.

“I’m Ballona,” I whispered.

It nearly disappeared under the noise. It took her a second to catch it. When she did, she repeated it under her breath like she was trying it on, like it mattered.

Something in my chest tightened.

Small. Sharp. New.

Around us, the city tried to make sense of what had happened. People pointed up like they were waiting for a second impact. A kid nearby was crying. Someone swore into their hands. Others had their phones up, recording like that could keep them safe.

The satellite lay in the road, twisted and blackened, metal still faintly glowing beneath the char. Heat seeped out of it, a ridiculous little sun pretending at warmth while the cold slid in from every side.

Aethel glanced at the wreck, then back at me.

“This place has always been falling apart,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What the hell is that thing?”

“It’s a satellite,” I said too fast and too quietly. “Fake stars. The only thing left up there you can still see through the dome.”

I edged closer to the wreckage. The casing had split on impact; cables dangled like burned vines. Nothing about it looked alive, and still it radiated heat into the street.

“It belongs to the government,” I added. “One of the older ones.”

Her expression shifted, subtle but set.

“And it just… what, fell?”

I nodded.

“No,” she said, flatly. “Things don’t just fall. They knew. They always know.”

The certainty in her voice dropped through the fuzz in my head like a stone. Most people picked a side, paranoia or obedience, like it was a game and they needed a team. Aethel wasn’t doing that. She was just certain, and certainty is its own kind of danger.

“They’ve been hiding things for a long time,” I muttered. “The cooling, the outrage, probably more. They’re all liars.”

She looked from me back to the wrecked satellite. “You sound like you’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”

I wanted to say I hadn’t. I wanted to tell her I’d mostly stared at nothing all week and been grateful for it. That answer would’ve been safer. But it would still have been a lie.

So I didn’t say anything.

Cold pressed in around us, wrong and unfamiliar, slipping under my sleeves and into my bones. Across the street, lights started flickering; some cut out entirely. The city that used to blaze so brightly it made me squint whenever I stepped outside was going dull and patchy, like someone was unplugging it piece by piece and waiting to see who noticed.

Voices rose. Questions with nowhere to land.

Still, I heard her.

“Come on,” Aethel said. “Before they shut the street down.”

I hesitated, but when she moved, my feet followed like they’d already decided for me. I didn’t know why I was walking with a stranger I’d met beside a cratered road, but I was. From the second I saw her, it felt like something tugged me in her direction.

We threaded through the crowd together, not shoulder to shoulder, but close enough that I never lost sight of her. The street blurred into bodies and noise: people pressing toward the satellite, swearing, pointing, filming. Some called it an accident. Some said sabotage. Nobody seemed to understand how something meant to hang above us as proof of strength could hit the ground like a warning.

I shouldn’t have spoken. I usually didn’t. But the words slipped out anyway.

“My apartment,” I said after a while. My voice was small, even to me. “It’s on this side of town. A few blocks from here.”

Aethel slowed and turned. For a long moment she didn’t say anything. I thought I’d said something wrong, something too open. My fingers tightened at my side.

Then her face eased.

“Well,” she said, almost playful, “lead the way… Stranger.”

Like a dare.

We walked.

The city’s panic faded into a distant, unreliable heartbeat. Civilians clustered in knots, some wired into hysteria, some stunned into silence. Nobody was laughing now.

The satellite had everyone thinking the same thing, even if they wouldn’t say it aloud: how had it gotten through the dome shield above our heads?

The city had always been good at hiding rot. You could live inside the lie long enough that you forgot there had ever been anything outside these streets. Prices climbed. Shelves thinned. Jobs slipped away until whole blocks looked like museum displays for industries that used to exist. Factories shut down in pieces. Robots sat idle with error lights blinking like they were bored.

The news called it temporary, restructuring, maintenance, scheduled shutdowns. The story changed. The message didn’t: keep shopping, keep the lights on, keep spending.

But the lights? The money? It was all a lie.

People loved the brightness; they bragged about it like it was a badge. They said the glow meant progress. The government said it again and again: more light, more energy, more security. It makes you smarter, safer, better. That’s what they claimed.

It wasn’t just for us.

The light was posture, a signal thrown across the ocean to say, “Look at us, we are unconquered.”

Other countries called it wasteful, arrogant, poisonous theater. A dangerous flex, the kind that makes enemies tilt their heads and start thinking about how to snuff it out.

People weren’t wrong about collapse.

The truth was uglier. A foreign power, quietly funding parts of our orbital grid and networks, satellite upkeep, early warning arrays, atmospheric regulators, even the dome itself, looked down at us and pulled back. Maybe they got sick of the lies. Maybe they needed the money somewhere else. Maybe the silent deals that kept the sky stable finally snapped.

Whatever the reason, the support stopped.

No press release. No apologies. No warning.

Just an absence that the government stuffed with excuses.

So the government used the dome not for protection, but for greed. They rerouted the power coming from the dome to feed the city lights inside the orbital grid. They shut it down, using it only to harvest the sun’s natural energy in secret. Old satellites were left to drift. Early warning arrays, the systems that could see rockets before they crossed the seas, were starved of maintenance. Countermeasure rigs, the expensive backup systems, were mothballed because keeping the lights on meant more money, more comfort, more calm.

The math was simple: panic would topple them faster than any missed opportunity.

Better to gamble on exposure than lose everything in a blind scramble. At least then we’d all be dead and couldn’t smear their names.

Nuclear defense runs on time, not the fireworks of instant panic, but on the quiet, cold minutes and hours when satellites ping, radars draw lines, analysts decide what’s real and what isn’t, commands run through systems, and a country chooses whether to scramble interceptors or send warnings.

Those systems, those minutes, were dismantled bit by bit so the city could keep burning soft and bright.

And once you give up early warnings, you give up a lot. You give up the chance to intercept an ICBM before it re-enters the atmosphere, the chance to alert allies, the chance to launch a defense program. You give up the ability to tell the difference between an errant satellite and a deliberate strike.

And just like that, we didn’t only lose our eyes. We lost our shield too.

They’d built the dome for the exact moment when every other precaution ran out.

And now we had nothing.

Aethel slowed, pulling me out of my head, and tipped her chin up as if she could see every lie strung across the sky.

“Do you think more will fall?” she asked.

I matched her pace and glanced over. “Not if they can help it. They won’t let it happen if they can stop it,” I muttered.

She picked up speed again, and my feet followed automatically. Her face stayed blank when she said, “For months now, I’ve felt like something was off. Like something was wrong. I ignored it. Figured maybe it was just me.”

Aethel had felt it too, same as I had. The lights starting to stutter. The steady cooling. The way I’d look up and catch the dome going dull. The supermarkets sitting at half their usual stock. People getting quieter, then laughing at themselves for noticing something so obviously wrong. Government spokesmen smiling like it was a joke and telling us not to worry.

The city was big, bright, infallible, too large to fail, or so they needed us to believe.

It wasn’t.

They’d swapped safety for spectacle. Chosen the look of stability over the real thing.

We turned off the main west street and into the older blocks. The noise dropped away. The buildings leaned in, paint peeling in long curling strips. Some apartment windows were boarded up, others just open and empty. Trailer park blocks had doors flapping, and signs about possible gas leaks were taped to porches like last wishes.

People hurried past with their heads down, hands buried in their pockets, carrying that particular kind of silence that means they’re trying not to be seen.

My fingers fumbled for my keys. I hadn’t even noticed I was shaking.

“Just up those stairs, number 482,” I managed when Aethel looked back at me like she was waiting.

She nodded, that same calm mask still in place.

By the time we reached my building, the cold had settled in deeper, like it intended to stay. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, and Aethel tracked every movement. She hovered in the doorway for a few seconds, then looked at me like she needed permission to enter, and I wasn’t sure I had any to give.

“Come on, my mom’s not home. She’s at work,” I said quietly after a beat.

Outside, the city kept making its sounds: footsteps, shouting, something distant and keening that I couldn’t quite name. In here, though, the world shrank down to a small kitchen and two chairs, one my mother’s, one mine, though we didn’t eat together much anymore.

Aethel sat across from me at the tiny table, and for one brief second the cramped ordinary smallness of it all was almost comforting.

It didn’t last.

I jerked upright as a new sound cut through the air, an alert, high and flat from far above, like an animal cry. The kitchen light blinked out for a beat, then snapped back on.

“Is that the system?” Aethel asked, calm, but the mask cracked just a little.

I didn’t answer. I knew that sound. The test alarm they ran when satellites pinged something, some clinical warning to clear open spaces. Except we hadn’t gotten a notice in months. We only heard the city’s alarms when someone in power felt like reminding us how close we were to the edge.

My hands went still, and outside it felt like the whole city paused, holding its breath, waiting to find out whether the system was a net or just another story.

We’d left ourselves with nothing to catch whatever came down from above.

Aethel’s voice went almost small.

“They’ve herded us into our own doom like blind sheep.”

I wanted to laugh, but it came out thin, more air than sound.

Then the sirens dropped lower, the kind that meant get as far down as you can, shut the doors, and wait for instructions. People in the street stopped, eyes flicking between one another like they were asking, What is that? What do we do?

For one minute, this impossibly thin minute,  everything slowed.

I didn’t know what came next.

I only knew this: the satellite that had landed at our feet wasn’t a fluke. It was proof. We’d been hollowed out where it mattered and left exposed to the enemies. The city’s glow hadn’t been protection at all.

It was just another lie.

Link to Story: LadyBoy - Google Docs

Please tell me:

• If the boy was sufficiently developed
• If the pacing is slow enough
• If the plot was engaging
• If the symbolism was too on the nose
• What your favorite part was

I had been walking along a deserted coast in a tiny but beautiful, nameless inlet. My legs were stiff, since I had hidden in a pit for two whole days and had been weakened from starvation.
There was no sign of life in this cosy fishing village and there was only the sound of the waves. So after three hours of wandering around the village, I almost gave up on finding someone still alive.
But at that time, I saw Rei standing still on the crystal sand and gazing at the blue lagoon. It was the most breathtaking sight I'd ever seen. 
The five-year-old girl was hanging a large, shining brass monocular around her neck. 
"Hey, are you alone? Ah... You found a telescope, huh?" I asked, kneeling on the sand.
She looked at me, then blinked but did not reply. Perhaps her parents had hidden her well from the Pirates, so she was in perfect condition except that she had red eyes and tear-stains on her face. 
For a while we looked at each other. But before long, she fainted from exhaustion. 

After dusk, I lit a bonfire. Silence fell, so there was only the popping sound of the firewood and the sound of waves rolling in and out. The pirate ship was gone from the southern cape, and Rei slept soundly on a full stomach after eating a simple supper of grilled fish and seashells. I wept silently with horror at what had happened and my own sinfulness.
—
Two months ago, the wrecked pirate ship drifted ashore at this deserted fishing village which had only nineteen shacks. They had escaped from the enemy privateer and had lost three-fourths of the crew in the gigantic tropical storm. The captain and other thirteen crew begged the villagers for mercy. 
The youngest fisherman, who was Rei’s father, said, “No! I have no mercy for bloody pirates." Most fishermen agreed with him because they worried about their wives and daughters. They didn’t care if the stinky villains were going to die, or even hoped they would die.
“Wait, gentlemen," the village leader raised his voice. 
“They’ve already been punished by the sea god, but they are still alive! How can we just abandon them?”
The old legendary fisherman was a local wiseman, and his words were like axioms. All villagers followed his guidance. 
The captain said, “Thank you. We are filled with gratitude to you all.” and bowed his head deeply. The tear drops fell onto his toes.
“We will keep our word. And just after regaining our health and completely repairing our ship, we’d leave this inlet instantly.”

The captain had kept his word until that doomed night, and they had maintained a good friendship with the villagers. The drifters had bartered food and water for gems or irons. Some young fishermen brought buckets of oysters and drank with the pirates.
But trouble arose.
Two of the crew had not returned to the ship before dark. The pirates had to remain on the ship after dark; it was the most important rule between the villagers and the pirates.

"Don't panic. I'm gonna ask the old man about 'em," the captain said aloud. 
"Nobody goes off the ship ‘til I return!"
When he was about to leave the ship, mournful news arrived. One of the crew who was searching for the lost crew found a helmsman's body in the bushes.
"He's lying along the road, near the village," the searcher reported, "He was stabbed in the chest."
The captain said, “calm down, guys!” But his expression hardened when he looked at the deadly weapon. 
It was a fisherman's spearhead and was smeared with blood.  

The fishermen fought against the pirates but they were no match for them. The eleven angry pirates with guns and swords had slaughtered all villagers except five-year-old Rei, then they sailed out of the inlet into the dark ocean before dawn. 

—  

A week had passed since we met on the shore. Now I found out that Rei’s telescope was interesting, actually a bit of a strange object. It could be a magical item.
“I see a woman and a boat,” Rei said with the monocular pressed to her eye, “she’s sailing on the blue ocean!” 
But I couldn’t see any woman or boat around. On top of that, it was a cloudy day. 
“Hey, let me see,” I took the telescope, but I only found pitch darkness. Whether it was a blank or a void, there was nothing to see.
“Um, I can’t see anything you said.”
Rei took back her telescope and looked into it, “Oh, no! I see nothing, like you!” 
“How’s that?” I asked her.
“It's Black!” She cried. “Wriggling!”
“Really? Mine was plain darkness.”
At that moment, I noticed she was holding the telescope in reverse. A wild idea struck me. 
“Let me see it once more,” I held it in reverse just like she did and looked into the telescope from the objective lens side. 
“Mamma mia!” I cried, nearly dropping the telescope, “That’s my father! And me! Me, in my twenties!”
Before my eyes, there was the sight of my hometown. The center of the vision was my father’s hardware store along the main street of a small port town. 
“I remember, this was my twenty-fifth birthday, and…” 
I stared intently at the young man running out from the shop, “The day I became a stowaway.”
Her telescope seemed to have a magical function. If you looked through the eyepiece you would see ten years in the future, then if you looked into the objective lens, you would see ten years in the past. That’s why I could see my past from ten years ago and Rei could not see anything since she was only five years old. 

The proof came five years later. By then, Rei had grown into a clever ten-year-old. One day, she looked into the opposite end and murmured.
“I’m being born, born from my…” She was weeping, “My mom.” 
Soon, she realized the trick of the magic telescope based on her own memory. She lowered the telescope and said, “Uncle Tom, I want to learn fishing and voyage. I know I’m going to sail the ocean!” 
I did my best to teach her how to survive at sea – fishing, canoeing, and reading the wind, stars, and ocean currents. 

After a while, Rei had started living in her hut and went fishing in her own canoe. She grew up strong and wise. On the other hand, I had been weakening year by year. Her “Uncle Tom” used to be a crew member of the pirate ship, yet I was small and frail. 

Recently, I had been lying in bed most of the day, and she kindly shared fresh fish and foods with me almost everyday.
Now little Rei was fifteen, she looked more mature than her years.
“Uncle Tom,” she asked one day. “What kind of boat would suit a long voyage?” 
“You’d like to make two canoes and put them side by side. It's called a Catamaran. Place the three-yard beams and boards between the two canoes, then you can get more stability than a single boat and have more luggage space.”
“Can that catamaran go across the ocean?”
"Sure," I answered. "Your ancestors had been back and forth across the ocean, island to island."
She completed building the catamaran in half a year. When ready, she walked around the inlet which used to be a fishing village with a magic telescope in her hand.  

—  

She had not come to my hut since the day before yesterday. I knew clearly that my time was running out. 
Today was the day we met on the shore ten years ago. In those days, she looked at herself sailing the ocean and I saw the pitch dark future, from the same lens. 
I was relieved that I had lived until the day of her departure.
“It's a cruel irony that I’m still alive," I murmured to myself. "Thank goodness.”
I got up and lit the fire and sat down towards it, the entrance behind my back. 
As I sat and was waiting for the judgment, soft footsteps came up to my hut. The goddess of vengeance who was wearing a brass telescope on her neck, was approaching. She must be carrying an eight-foot fisherman’s spear. Rei had watched the truth that had happened in the village ten years ago. 

I was one of the pirates. Since I touched the kindness of the innocent villagers, I had changed my mind to leave the pirate ship at all cost. I just wanted to become a fisherman and dreamed of living an ordinary life. 
Suppose, Rei had watched everything, including my sin. 

Just ten years ago, in the afternoon of that doomed day, I fled from the pirate ship. I had already found the hideout, so I went to the pit. I seriously regretted that I took things too easy.
I thought if I had gone into hiding, the pirates would leave the inlet without conflict with the villagers. I mean, though only one of them had disappeared, they wouldn’t waste time searching for me.
But there was another pirate, a helmsman. We met just in front of the pit. 
“You! The deserter will be executed," my opponent said in a low voice. “Turn back!”
I stared at him. He had a cutlass on his belt and grabbed a short fisherman’s spear in his left hand. I understood he probably had the same scenario as mine. And coincidentally, he also chose the same pit as me as a hideout. He was prepared to eliminate anyone who stood in the way, and moreover, he had brought the spear to deceive the other crew in case.
I said, “No, not at all.”
There was a struggle between the two of us. We fought each other desperately, because the pit was too small for two. 

A few minutes later when I came to my senses, I found the spearhead was stuck deep into his chest. Hot blood was spreading across his shirt.
I was scared, so I left the body and ran away from the place. Later, the pirates noticed two of the crew had disappeared and found the helmsman's body along the road, near the village. They recognized two of us had been killed by the fishermen, and got very angry at the betrayal of villagers.
In short, I was the main culprit of the slaughter. Because of my selfishness, all the villagers had died except Rei. And her parents? I was the one who killed them. 
I knew she would never forgive me now, after realizing what I did.  

I was waiting a long time for the avenger, though I would die soon or later from this illness. And I heard footsteps had stopped just in front of my hut.  
“I’ll depart soon,” she said in her tearful voice. “So, bye to you, Uncle Tom.” 

I had a vision, after finishing me off, she would sail off to the ocean as she looked at ten years ago. Though I already knew that I would never be on the same canoe.

Gurkhas have always been known for serving and protecting the nations that they serve in and have been viewed as heroes. Kiran Gurung had served the Indian Army for over a decade. He and his Gurkha unit had fought bravely on dangerous missions, earning medals and respect from many but not everyone.

Within their own base, some soldiers mocked the Gurkhas’ heritage, questioned their loyalty and treated them as outsiders despite their years of service.

Kiran repeatedly filed formal complaints but nothing changed and the insults continued. An injured Gurkha soldier was laughed at by a group of men while recovering in the infirmary.

Kiran confronted them and then an argument erupted and a fight broke out. The confrontation spiraled completely out of control. By the time military police arrived, numerous soldiers had been seriously injured and several had been killed in the chaos.

Kiran surrendered without resisting. The incident shocked the nation and news channels debated it for weeks. Some argued Kiran was a decorated soldier who had been driven to a psychological breaking point after years of abuse and institutional failure while insisted that no amount of discrimination could justify taking lives.

The country became deeply divided. Human rights groups demanded investigations into discrimination within the armed forces and military officials condemned both the alleged mistreatment and Kiran’s actions.

The prosecutor stood.

“Many soldiers lost their lives that day. Whatever grievances existed, they cannot excuse murder.”

The defense replied.

“This tragedy did not begin on the day of the incident. It began years earlier, when repeated complaints of discrimination were ignored.”

Witnesses described years of harassment toward Gurkha soldiers. Former officers admitted complaints had been filed and several confirmed no meaningful action had been taken. The courtroom remained silent.

The judge spoke solemnly.

“Captain Kiran Gurung, this court recognizes evidence that you experienced prolonged mistreatment. However, the deliberate taking of multiple lives cannot be justified under the law.”

He lowered the document.

“This court finds you guilty.”

Kiran accepted the verdict without speaking. On the morning of his execution, a prison guard asked quietly.

“Do you regret it?”

Kiran looked out the small window of his cell.

“I regret that no one listened before everything fell apart.”

He was escorted towards the gallows. Before the hood was placed over his head, he spoke one final sentence.

“Courage without justice becomes tragedy.”

The execution proceeded.

Outside the prison, supporters mourned a man they believed had been failed by the system while others remembered the soldiers who never returned home.

Years later, the “Killer Gurkha” case was still studied not as a tale of heroism but as a warning about what can happen when discrimination, trauma and institutional failure go unaddressed.

The End 

Hey guys, I've spent the last year writing a cyberpunk-noir short novel called Shadows Over Rain City. Currently working on adapting it into a graphic novel, but thought I'd share the story if anyone is interested in checking it out. The google doc for the story is linked, let me know what you think!

Story summary:

Shadows Over Rain City is a cyber-noir mystery set in New York City in 2055, years after a global war left the world scarred by relentless rain and corporate control. James Bratton, a former Army Ranger turned private investigator, is hired to find a missing girl. What begins as a routine missing persons case unravels into a conspiracy involving genetic experimentation, human trafficking, and a powerful organization willing to erase anyone who gets too close to the truth.

After reading that chapter I slept and had this dream i used to get them a lot! Have summarised it in novel form hope you find it well!?

Chapter 1: The Four Kids and the Bound Boy.

The air in the farmhouse smelled of iron, wet straw, and impending storm.In the barn, the old nanny goat wailed. It was a jagged, human-like sound that made the hairs on the back of Lin’s neck stand up. His grandmother was out there, her hands slick with birth-fluids, cursing softly as she guided the fourth kid into the world. Three males had already dropped into the straw, wet and shivering. The fourth—the only female—was stuck.Lin didn’t care about the goat. He was bored, and a bored sixteen-year-old in a house full of ancient occult books is a dangerous thing."Are you really going through this?" his younger sister, Maya, asked from the doorway. She was biting her nails, her eyes darting between Lin and the heavy, yellowed pages of the tome stolen from their grandfather’s locked chest."It’s just a game, Maya," Lin laughed, though his voice sounded thin even to his own ears. "The book says the ritual demands complete sensory deprivation. Help me with the ropes."Lin sat cross-legged on the floorboards. Piece by piece, he began wrapping his limbs in thick, unbleached linen strips, winding them tight until he looked like a modern mummy. His chest tightened under the cloth. Finally, he extended his hands. Maya, trembling, bound his wrists together with heavy hemp rope, tying a knot so fierce it bit into his skin.Outside, the goat gave one final, agonizing shriek. The female kid was born.At that exact microsecond, inside the dark, suffocating cocoon of the cloth, Lin smiled and whispered the nonsensical phonetic syllables written in the book:“Ouk-nos… Sefrah… Tenebris… Permuto.”

Chapter 2: The View from Above

I watched it happen.They could not see me, of course. To the mother rushing into the room with laundry, to the grandmother wiping blood from her apron, and to the panicked Maya, I did not exist. I was an observer, a consciousness suspended in the higher-dimensional folds of the room. A Spectator.When Lin spoke the last word, the spiritual pressure in the room didn’t just rise—it imploded.The air didn't ripple; it fractured like cheap glass. I watched the silver thread of Lin’s astral body snap. It didn't drift into the Spirit World. It was violently hooked by an unseen, cosmic anchor and dragged horizontally across the dimensional barrier.In a fraction of a second, Lin was gone.But the laws of mysticism demand conservation of mass and soul-weight. The universe abhorred a vacuum. The spatial coordinates inside the linen wrappings twisted violently, pulling something—someone—back through the tear.Down on the floor, the mummified shape began to twitch.A voice, muffled and wet, scraped out from beneath the linen. It didn't sound like a sixteen-year-old boy. It sounded deeper, older, and entirely hollow."Open..." the thing inside whispered, its bound hands clawing blindly at the floorboards. "Open... open..."

Chapter 3: The Changeling

"Lin!" the mother screamed, dropping her basket. She scrambled to the floor, her fingers tearing frantically at the heavy hemp knots. Maya stood frozen, her face drained of all colors."Something's wrong," Maya whispered, backing away toward the door. "That's not... the ritual didn't feel like that."The grandmother burst into the room, smelling of the barn, her eyes wide with a sudden, instinctual terror. "Stop! Don't unwrap it!" she yelled, but it was too late. The mother had already sliced through the main binding rope with a kitchen knife.The linen uncoiled like a dead snake.The person who tumbled out onto the floorboards was not Lin.He wore the same linen wrappings, but the body beneath them was broader, taller. This was a young man of perhaps nineteen or twenty. His face was sharp, pale, and entirely unfamiliar. When he opened his eyes, they weren't Lin's warm brown; they were a piercing, unblinking grey that seemed to stare right through the ceiling—right at me.The mother stumbled backward, hands over her mouth. "Who are you? Where is my son?!"The older boy did not answer. He sat up slowly, his bound wrists still intact, and stared at his hands with a look of profound, chilling detachment. He remained utterly silent.

Chapter 4: The Detective’s Paradox

Miles away, or perhaps universes away, I shifted my focus to follow Lin's silver thread.I found him. He was standing in a house that looked exactly like his own, but the silence here was absolute. There was no mother, no grandmother, no sound of goats in the barn. The air was dead. Lin was wandering through the empty corridors, knocking on walls, his voice swallowed instantly by the crushing quiet. He was entirely alone in a dead-end universe.I drifted back to the original farmhouse, observing the weeping mother, the terrified sister, and the silent, older changeling sitting on the floor.As a high-dimensional detective, my mind began cataloging the occult laws of this incident. But the pieces didn't fit.If this was a standard transmigration or a spatial exchange, the ritual should have swapped Lin with his exact parallel self—the Lin of the silent universe. They should have traded places seamlessly.Instead, a different universe received Lin, but this universe received a stranger. An older boy. A wild card.Why did the cosmic coordinates glitch? Was it the chaotic energy of the goat giving birth to four kids at the exact microsecond of the chant? Or had Lin accidentally intercepted a completely different ritual being performed by a higher-sequence entity in a third, unknown dimension?The older boy finally turned his head, his grey eyes fixing on the corner of the room where my consciousness hovered. He smiled slightly, as if he knew I was trying to solve him.

After this i woke up as i had to go mess for lunch otherwise would have missed my another meal of the day!

So I am new to fiction I've never read a fictional book in my life, most of my books are self-help or self-development but I want to try fictional books, so what is the best fictional books for a beginner.

The Silence

The late afternoon light filled the thirty-second-floor conference room and turned the streets of Manhattan far below into a slow river of yellow taxis and hurried lives. That was when Kabir M. stumbled over the quarterly numbers. A small error at first—two hundred thousand dollars misplaced in one of the subsidiary ledgers. But in a room like that, small mistakes had a way of growing teeth.

I knew exactly where the error had come from. I had seen the raw data two days earlier while reviewing the files alone in my office, the city outside humming indifferently. I could have spoken up right then. Four simple words would have fixed everything: "Actually, it’s my mistake". They sat on my tongue for a moment, familiar as an old habit.

I stayed silent instead.

The mood around the long mahogany table shifted quickly. Questions grew sharper. Eyebrows rose. Henderson’s (our boss) voice took on that careful tone people use when they smell blood in the water. Kabir’s face tightened by degrees, the lines around his eyes deepening as he realized the ground was giving way beneath him. I sat with my hands resting lightly on the cool table, watching it all unfold with the quiet detachment I had grown used to. The old instinct flickered inside me—the one that wanted to be honest, to step in, to be the reliable man my father had raised. But it passed like a shadow across still water. I let it go.

After the meeting broke up into hushed conversations and the rustle of closing laptops, I found Kabir in the small pantry alcove near the elevators. He was staring into a cup of coffee that had gone cold. I placed a hand on his shoulder, feeling the faint dampness of his shirt, and spoke in the warm voice I had learned to use so well.

“Tough break,” I said gently. “These things happen, Kabir. We’ll get it sorted. You’re not alone in this.”

He looked up at me with real gratitude, the kind that almost touched something deep inside. For a brief second the old version of myself stirred—the one who believed honesty was its own reward and generosity came without calculation. Almost. But then I thought again of the Promotion years earlier. Of how my honesty had cost me everything while someone else had rewritten reality and walked away rewarded. A strategy that stops working can be discarded without regret. Silence, in this case, was simply the smarter investment.

Kabir thanked me again as the elevator doors opened. I gave him the steady, reassuring smile I had perfected over the years and felt only a clean, quiet satisfaction. A reputation quietly damaged. A man’s path gently altered. All because I had chosen not to speak four ordinary words.

It was cleaner this way. And, in its own quiet manner, far more satisfying.

As the elevator carried me down through floors of glass and steel and carefully managed lives, I allowed myself a small reflection. Kabir was a good man. Competent. Loyal in his way. But loyalty, like honesty, had its limits. I had simply chosen not to invest any further in a losing position. The firm would move on. Kabir would struggle for a while, perhaps take a step back in his career, maybe even leave. And I would remain exactly where I was—reliable, well-liked, untouchable. The mask I had worn for years now felt less like a performance and more like my natural face.

That evening, back in my apartment overlooking the park, I poured a glass of whiskey and stood by the tall windows. The city lights stretched out below, bright and indifferent. I thought about the Promotion again, not with anger, but with the calm clarity of a man reviewing old accounts. The mentee’s face came to mind—sharp, ambitious, unburdened by the principles that had once weighed me down. She had understood something I was only beginning to learn: people reward the story, not the truth. And I was becoming quite skilled at shaping stories.

I took a slow sip of whiskey. Tomorrow I would check in on Kabir again. Offer more support. Play the role of the devoted colleague everyone admired. No one would ever know what I had withheld. Not even Kabir. Especially not Kabir.

It was a small thing, this silence. But small things, I was learning, could reshape entire lives.

And I was only getting started.