“And how do you survive an aura attack?” Torat said, speaking to a room full of young adults. The oldest wasn’t more than twenty-five years of age.
A room full of over twenty Order recruits stared silently at him. No answer came. Torat knew for a fact that all eight of them knew the answer to the question. He’d taught them this eno...
2025-04-21 21:45:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe door opened silently. It was like the whisper of a gentle wind on a quiet night. Doors as old as it was usually groaned and creaked from the weight of their age. This one did not. Tsuyoshi stepped inside. His legs moved slowly, sluggishly, they shuffled along the ground as he walked in, closing the door behind him.
He smacked his lips ...
2025-04-20 23:39:21 +0000 UTC View PostFor the third time, the woman with him gave Melmarc an odd look.
“You’re sure you haven’t been here before?” she asked, skeptical.
Melmarc nodded. “I did my mentorship program here, but I didn’t stay for the entire duration. I ran into a bit of a mishap.”
The woman’s jaw twitched and Melmarc knew that she didn...
2025-04-19 04:25:36 +0000 UTC View Post“And you must be Detective Alfa,” the lady said, softly, as the door slowly closed behind her. “I’ve heard much about you.”
Alfa did her best to keep the frown out of her face. She’d been told that her meeting would be with someone important to decide her fate. But the commissioner had not given her any other piece of informati...
2025-04-13 16:15:54 +0000 UTC View Post“Tall, grey, and ugly,” Aurora muttered under her breath. “Too many stairs, too.”
Standing beside her, Melmarc turned up a puzzled look. He looked at the stairs, then the building, then her.
“It’s ten steps, mom,” he said, like a child who suspected there was a hidden meaning to what he had just heard.
“Big peop...
2025-04-06 15:23:51 +0000 UTC View Post“Why?” Valdan’s voice was firm despite his confusion. “Was this morning not enough?”
Ted yawned like a boy too tired to deal with the stress of the morning, which was funny since it was night, late enough for there to be stars and for the moon to be out, and he was at level forty-nine. He could stave off sleep for days if he real...
2025-04-06 06:39:08 +0000 UTC View PostThe gentle air that came with the rising morning was tinged with the smell of pine and leaves. There was no pine of any kind within the Giant’s Garden, yet it always carried pine. Aiden had spent enough time here in his past life to remember it. Always the smell of pine and leaves. Sometimes there was also the smell of leather.
But leath...
2025-04-05 02:31:12 +0000 UTC View PostSilence was an old friend, a quiet friend. In the last few days that had seemed like forever, Naymond had sat in it, allowing its presence comfort him, envelope him.
It would come as a surprise to most people who knew him, but Naymond didn’t like noise. He didn’t like the constant existence of bustling life as people tried to live as t...
2025-04-04 08:09:43 +0000 UTC View PostMouth open and lungs full to bursting, Valdan let the skill rumble from him like a thousand giants on a stampede. An ear-splitting roar fled his lungs, filling the air like a thousand flies clashing against each other, if flies were like the sounds of crashing waves.
It shook the air and the world around him, took purchase in the heart of ...
2025-04-04 03:05:19 +0000 UTC View PostValdan’s grip was tight, a little too tight. Certainly tighter than a swordsman’s had any right holding a sword. Lightning coursed through his veins and muscles. He felt it in his gritted teeth as they served as conduits. It was in the air around him. His placid rage. His unbridled pride.
When he brought his sw...
2025-04-03 04:05:47 +0000 UTC View Post“What title did I gain before we encountered the Time Mage?” Ted asked. “What did I become?”
Aiden froze. It was a momentary thing, a harmful thing. He felt his chest seize and his hands threaten to ball into fists. It took him a moment to realize what was happening. A rare occurrence, his body genuinely thought he was in a dangero...
2025-04-02 01:37:58 +0000 UTC View PostMornings were always an interesting time of the day. They began it, rousing people from their sleep, pushing them into the tasks at hand. If there was not a task pending from the day before, there would be a new one to handle with the rise of morning.
In what he liked to call his short life, Oyedi Mbaku hated mornings. He was not a morning...
2025-03-23 18:02:39 +0000 UTC View PostRunning fast was a confident trait of children. As you grow, you learn that at some point in time, speed is a necessity, whether it be to escape bullies, to catch the person you wished to bully, or just to win a race. Growing up, speed—at some point—is an attribute of the healthy young.
Aiden spun around a child like a basketballer try...
2025-03-22 12:44:40 +0000 UTC View Post“Hello, Princess.”
Sam’s voice was smooth and soft. On a more handsome face, it would’ve been soothing, almost sensual. On him, it was not. This was not because he was not handsome, as much as Elaswit hated to admit it, Sam was actually quite handsome, all those summoned from another world by her father were handsome and beautiful ...
2025-03-20 10:36:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe echo of pain filled the air in the form of sound. Pain struck flesh as an open palm struck hardened cheeks. A small audience stood witness, a handful of people—six men and one woman. Seven witnesses in all.
They winced with each sound that echoed through the entire forest bouncing off the barks of trees, dancing on the top of leaves ...
2025-03-18 17:46:29 +0000 UTC View PostAfter only a few days of sitting on the bare floor, Melmarc was growing accustomed to it. There was a part of him that considered the possibility that he was not actually growing accustomed to it. There was always the likelihood that his instincts that led him to sleeping on the ground were still a part of him.
Uncle Dorthna had said that ...
2025-03-13 07:14:10 +0000 UTC View PostValdan grunted as he ran into a tree, shoulder first.
“Fuck,” he swore as he turned himself away from the tree, rolling off its bark.
Aiden ignored Valdan’s word. The knight rarely swore. Now, it happened quite often. It seemed like the time he was spending with him and his brother was corrupting him in his own way.
Ted s...
2025-03-08 09:48:58 +0000 UTC View PostValdan held a hand over his eyes as he gauged the position of the sun in the sky. It was perhaps an hour past high noon. With no time piece in sight, this was the only way he could accurately keep track of time. At least, as accurately as he could.
“Is it hot?” Ted asked from beside him.
Valdan shook his head. “Once you are bey...
2025-03-06 08:53:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe throne room was no longer the breath of fresh air it had once grown to be. Brandis sat, a solemn man, as he stared at the space he had come to call his own. The red carpet that trailed from the entrance, up the stairs, and the platform leading to his throne had been walked upon by predecessors before him. Woven from the intestines of the dra...
2025-03-02 19:26:19 +0000 UTC View PostDetective Dantani walked past a handful of police officers in uniform. He kept a stern face as he moved. Greetings thrown his way were received with nods and barely comprehensible grunts. He had grown up in a small town where adults, for some reason, were obsessed with being greeted. As such, he had grown to hate greetings.
It had first st...
2025-02-26 20:13:04 +0000 UTC View Post“Here. Try not to abandon this one, too.”
Melmarc took his phone from Uncle Dorthna happily. The entire thing was extravagant. There was a gracious bow at the waist, and he received it with both hands. Like a subject accepting a gift from their superior.
“What happened to the other one?” Uncle Dorthna asked, ignoring his dram...
2025-02-25 22:03:57 +0000 UTC View Post“What the fuck did you say?”
Aiden swallowed. It was a little difficult with Torat’s hand on his neck but his anxious saliva went down nonetheless.
Still, he did not show his fear. The first rule of lying that he had learned in life was that just because your lie was called into question or your victim showed doubt, it did not ...
2025-02-24 23:18:00 +0000 UTC View PostFjord was on his knees. If anyone was present, they would’ve seen the pain in his eyes.
Maybe thirty minutes ago, he’d gone from following the knight who had killed one man and apprehended the other to running away. When he’d seen the beast that had come for the knight, he had been in no hurry to stay in the bushes and see what would...
2025-02-23 01:33:24 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you say about this one?”
Melmarc was currently looking at a dummy phone. From what he could get from the information written under the dud, the phone’s price was on the high side of things. As for the phone’s specifications, they didn’t look worth it.
Raising his head, he turned his attention to his brother.
...
2025-02-21 05:26:49 +0000 UTC View PostMelmarc watched his mother go through his father’s clothes in a hurry. With the door closed behind him, he took a few more steps deeper into the room. His eyes glanced over at his father, but he didn’t allow it to settle on him.
A lot of people liked to talk about how peaceful people were in their sleep, sometimes even about how peacef...
2025-02-20 00:12:58 +0000 UTC View PostInstinct was such an interesting thing. At least, those who dabbled in the study of the body and of the mind would claim so. It was the part of the being that sought to protect them. However, it was not all right. Sometimes, in its attempt to protect you, it could also deviate from your initial plans.
Anyone who knew half of anything would...
2025-02-17 23:18:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe room was bright when Melmarc opened his eyes again. Someone had left the curtains open so the light shined directly into his eyes. Wincing from the discomfort, he turned his head to the side.
His throat was dry, parched. If he was to liken the feeling to anything, he would liken it to a man who had been in the desert for far too long o...
2025-02-17 18:40:45 +0000 UTC View PostAurora had tears in her eyes. It had been a significantly long while since Dorthna had seen her cry.
“Please,” she begged as her husband bled out quietly on the floor and his teammate stood there completely confused and helpless.
A second ago she had just offered him her life. It reminded him of the same offer her husband had mad...
2025-02-17 05:19:24 +0000 UTC View PostMildly put, Aiden was scared.
The idea of Ted dabbling in demonic mana since the town of cannibals in his former life was a very worrying thought. It meant that his brother had either been intentionally keeping secrets from him or that he had really not been paying much attention.
Considering the kind of person he had been at this po...
2025-02-15 23:12:02 +0000 UTC View PostUncle Dorthna’s spell was simple. Melmarc didn’t feel anything in the beginning, just the simple poking and prodding as his uncle worked his way up his body up to a very painful spot on his head that Melmarc had not even been aware of.
“That’s going to be a heavy one,” his uncle muttered under his breath when Melmarc groaned from...
2025-02-13 20:30:54 +0000 UTC View Post