Chapter 1

History is written by the victors. The real history is never written at all.

Mills stopped and placed her bag on the floor beside her. The main departure platforms stretched ahead. She checked her pocket watch, returned it, then glanced around the station: nothing seemed out of place or suspicious. People moved about, some making conversation, others reading the paper, everyone in their own world making their way to their own destination. A train crewman appeared and began calling for passengers to board.

Mills decided she would wait a moment before boarding herself. Looking around, she caught sight of the front page of a paper being read by a gentleman dressed in business attire and wearing a round top hat. Pictured in off-white and black: one behemoth-class warship loomed far above a dusty city. The headline mentioned something about Baleste and the ongoing battles in the region. Though the war had ended almost half a year ago, the empire's struggles with insurgents continued throughout the newly claimed territory.

A light wind swept through the platform as Mills gazed toward the bright opening leading outside. A chill of youthful excitement moved down the back of her neck; beyond the city, a vast world awaited. Though on the surface she wore a soldier's steel mask, a mixture of nervousness and elation permeated through her body. This was her very first mission, and the start of a real adventure. What awaits me out there? she wondered, reaching to cup the back of her neck with a gloved hand while glancing behind her.

The crowd had begun to thin out. Mills reached down, picked up her small bag, and walked toward the train. Stepping up onto the entrance of the car, she made sure to appear as ladylike as she could, taking the hand of the gentleman helping women and children up the steps and even managing a polite smile while doing so.

No expense had been spared in the design of the Volcov train, inside or out. Its robust interior was something to behold; metal elegantly enforced every recess of the locomotive. Mills paused for a moment to peer through the small window on the door leading to the adjoining car. She watched as people took their seats, moving up and down the wide aisle, a fine material lining the chairs along both sides of the car. It was all beautifully designed, she thought, admiring the details throughout. She turned away and began toward the compartment hall to find her room. Arrangements had been made in one of the sleeping cabins and while it wasn't as inconspicuous as she would have liked, her superiors knew best. Besides, she would be well within the empire's dominion for the entirety of the ride; it would be a good idea not to tire herself out before reaching Damascus.

As she turned into the compartment hall, she found a young woman of similar age waiting ahead, wearing a long coat, gloved fists on her hips, watching Mills with an expectant air. Mills passed her without so much as a glance, looked down the dimly lit hallway, most of the compartments empty, then turned to her cabin and slid the door open. Her suspicions were confirmed.

"Mills, you made it." An older woman sat on the bench with a curt smile. "I'm sure you weren't expecting to see me here."

Although caught off guard, Mills quickly stepped inside and gave the sergeant a salute. "Ma'am."

"At ease," Sergeant Jahani said. "Please, take a seat."

Mills noticed a man in a long coat standing beside the door. Both he and the sergeant were dressed in the same covert manner as the young woman outside. He slid the door closed behind Mills as she entered the spacious cabin. She placed her bag down and took the seat opposite Jahani, hands on her lap, face impassive.

The sergeant sat forward, legs crossed, hands clasped on her knees. Beneath the wool coat, Jahani wore a buttoned long sleeve and a knee-length skirt, black pantyhose and black heels. The bright glow from the curtained window illuminated her smooth, dark complexion and the black hair pulled back in a tight bun.

For the most part a stoic figure, though Mills had heard a rumor that she was known to flash a sadistic smile even in the most precarious of situations. Mills ran through the possibilities of the visit before Jahani began to speak.

"We were just scouting ahead, making sure everything is in order, tying up final arrangements," Jahani said. "I thought I'd come and see you before making my exit."

"You're not my contact, are you?" Mills asked, knowing full well the answer.

"No, no. I just got in. Everything is taken care of over there, that I can assure you. The weather can be a little unpleasant this time of year, I'm sure you're aware. Apart from that, what do you know about the situation?"

"I know a bit."

A bit was generous. The briefing had been short and deliberately vague, so much so that she was going into this practically blind. Whatever they wanted her to find out there, they hadn't seen fit to tell her much about it.

Jahani adjusted her skirt and glanced to the man beside her. "Aemon, take Tamren and find your seats. We'll get off at the next stop."

"Yes, ma'am." Aemon turned toward Mills with a smirk and a nod of his cap before exiting the cabin. The door slid closed behind him. Jahani faced Mills, searching.

"Look at you," Jahani said with a chuckle, settling back in her seat, hands clasped on her lap. "How has it been?"

"It's been good." Mills got more comfortable in her seat. "I'm a little nervous, I suppose."

"Well, that's to be expected." Jahani said.

Abruptly, the train began to move, gliding slowly over smooth tracks.

"You know, I'm very proud of you, Mills. Finishing the program. It's not one that many see the end of."

"Thank you, ma'am." Mills looked down, then up, almost blushing. "I was trained by the best."

Jahani smiled. "Oh, you give us too much credit. You really were a great student." She glanced down for a moment, then looked back up. "This is a little unconventional, as you know. It's apparent nothing can be left to chance here, even if it means keeping you in the dark before you've met your contact. What I can tell you is that this mission is essential to keeping the peace."

She paused to consider her words, then went on. "Out there, things may not always be what they seem. People included. Trust what you know. Trust your instincts." She held Mills' gaze for a moment. "That's all I'll say on it."

"Of course, ma'am," Mills said.

Mills had never seen this side of Jahani. It was strange, in a way; she seemed so open, so friendly, as if they were equals. Throughout her training at the academy the sergeant had been one of the toughest of her instructors. For a moment, staring at the smiling Jahani, Mills was transported back to the lower levels of the east wing academy.

Groans echoed deep within the concrete corridors of the underground facility. Mills stood waiting for her turn to enter the training chamber, the meat grinder, she'd heard the others call it, while Infirmary Officer Ellen Khon clasped the remaining buckles of her shield. Metal plate tucked into finely stitched leather, the shield fit comfortably around Mills' chest over her heart, its compact design offering more maneuverability than a standard vest.

Near the side of the room a young man thrashed with muffled cries as two medical officers worked on him. Mills couldn't help but look over her shoulder. Isn't there somewhere they can take him? She'd been dreading this for days. Three years here and her time at the academy was winding down, every step closer to the end more treacherous than the last. It didn't help that her peers had been relentless with wild speculation and rumors. Just weeks ago a fellow trainee had stopped her in the hall, hand on her shoulder, whispering of a body bag seen being wheeled out to one of the elevators.

"You've got this, Mills," the infirmary officer said, making final adjustments to the heart shield. "You've gotten this far. Just remember your training."

Mills stayed silent, annoyed with the nurse and the faculty in general, annoyed with the cries of agony burrowing deep into her skull. When did I get like this? Where's my empathy? She felt physically and psychologically fatigued, worn down by the patterns of her routine, the rigid way things were done down here. And then there were the strange gaps in her memory.

Sergeant Marshel walked out of the training room, stopped in front of Mills, and stood with his hands behind his back. "Alright, you're up." He nodded toward the nurse. The nurse mustered a patient smile and gave Mills a firm pat on the shoulder, a small gesture of goodwill. Mills simply glanced at her with tired, nonchalant eyes and walked to the chamber entrance.

The facility's sound dampeners, built into the drab gray walls, kept the noise to a low murmur.

Wide, with a low ceiling, the room was drenched in white light. Bullet holes littered the cement walls, waiting to be patched after the week's training. This particular room utilized adjustable ballistic walls for different cover configurations via sliding mechanism, but there was no cover now; the room was an open field.

Jahani stood waiting at the center of the chamber in simple training attire: knitted long sleeve, fitted trousers over boots, a chest shield over the top. In her hand she held a black pistol.

Mills walked over and stopped in front of her, pistol in hand. She couldn't help but feel exposed standing there in the empty room.

Sergeant Jahani began to give instruction. Mills stood at the ready, listening intently.

"Of all the things we've hammered into you here, blocking a bullet is the hardest to get right. It demands more from you than almost anything else we teach, perfect read, perfect timing, complete control of your mana in the moment. One slip and the shot gets through. But there are situations where nothing else will save you: outside of cover, no time to dodge, looking to open up a counter. Even as a statement." She paused. "Your indirect work has been reasonable so far."

Reasonable, Mills thought. I barely hit two out of five shots on average in indirect fire training!

"Today we begin direct fire."

Sergeant Jahani stopped pacing and stood before Mills, looking at her. A slight shiver touched Mills as she looked back, unflinching.

"You have decided you are ready. So here we are." Jahani turned her back to Mills and began to walk away.

"I've seen an individual block a bullet at five feet. Today we're giving you a little leeway. We start at forty feet." Mills could hear her voice clearly regardless of distance.

The sergeant stopped, turned, and faced Mills. Mills tugged at the plate on her chest.

A rising tide of panic began to swell within her.

"It all starts with the mind," the sergeant said in a low, hard voice. "Are you ready, Mills?"

That familiar feeling of anxiety crashed over her. Her gun hand began to shake. No, not now. She had to stop herself from shaking her head and screaming, please stop this, stop this stupid exercise!

The mana coursed through her now. She breathed in deeply, steadying her weapon as the sergeant stood sideways and lifted the pistol. Mills' vision narrowed onto her target in absolute focus. She watched Jahani take aim, her finger pulling back on the trigger in slow motion.

So, long story short, I have been working on my first book in my series for 3 years. I'm currently at the very last rewrite. I came across some publishers online that accepted the first chapter and I did ask for feedback, in case anything could be changed, edited or rewritten entirely. I have no issues with critique whatsoever. If anything, I believe it makes me a better writer. I've been writing since I was 15, but only the past couple years decided to write an actual full length book, because I thought I had a good plot. The issue is, more than once have I received feedback over my use of artificial intelligence The problem is I have NEVER EVER used anything to assist with my writing at all. I never will. Everything I put down on paper, came from ME AND ME ALONE. It made me cry, because I dedicated my heart and my soul and so much time and love in this story, just to get accused of using a fucking emotionless robot for my writing???? I do not use it, I refuse to use it. I just wanted to rant about this and maybe find out if anyone else has issues with this too?

Please Give me honest feedback if i should start writing this.

COMRADES

Leon has never given much thought to what he believes. It was just there — like the small German town he grew up in, like Mats, his best friend since childhood.

When Mats invites him to a gathering one evening, Leon has a rough idea of what to expect. But the men there don't shout slogans. They talk. They listen. For the first time in his life, Leon feels like he belongs somewhere.

What begins as something almost ordinary pulls him deeper — step by step, barely noticeable. And by the time Leon understands where the path is leading, it is already far too late to turn back. He knows too much. He has done too much. And Mats, the friend he owes everything to, is no longer the same person.

There is only one way out. One last job.

Comrades is an unflinching story about friendship, loyalty and the quiet mechanics of radicalization — and how far down the wrong road a person can travel before realizing there is no way back.

I've written songs for a long time but never attempted to write a story like this. Man, dialogue sure is though. I'll probably write other scenarios before moving on to something bigger but I would love to hear if you think there is even somethingt here. Any feedback is appreciated. Dont worry, my skin is even thicker than my skull :)

Addy's luck.

Do not look at your wrists, avoid tension at all costs, and above all, don't let the rope get wet.

These three rules are what kept me from thinking about the never-ending chafing most of the time. I had, however, yet to devise a plan to stop the thoughts of blisters on battered feet.

These are made for trips and maybe walks, I think, looking down, not for any of this—this marching for days on end like some king's man.

Forgetting myself, I quickly look back ahead, making sure not to let her out of my sight, and swiftly match the pace again.

Under a pitch-black sky, we walk along a ravine on something that could barely be called a path, just visible by the lantern's soft glow. Walls of sharp black stone surround us and grow tall and then taller, each step taking us deeper into the heart of the world. Our light seemed to wane against these depths, until looking up would no longer tell me if the stone had ended where the night began.

Further along, the path broadened, and vines the size of tree branches started to appear—crawling across the jagged floor like spidery legs, sprouting from the most unlikely places, and seemingly all too happy to be yet another source of friction.

Inevitably, it isn't too long before I stumble on one of the damn bastards and quite unnecessarily relearn rule two, as the rope cuts into the tender red skin around my wrist. Trying not to cry out, I take one big breath and call to her in my smoothest tone possible, "Ghaela."

A moment passes; then I hear a sigh, and she responds, "Apoles," in a manner somehow even smoother.

That annoys me, but it isn't what sets my teeth on edge.

"Do NOT call me by that name!" I say, much louder than intended. "As I've told you many times, my name is Addy. Just Addy." I unsuccessfully try to keep the scorn out of my voice as I say the last part.

"Got it," Ghaela says, seemingly unbothered by my sharp delivery. "How about this: I'll just call you... my prisoner. Might be the shortest road to understanding, eh?"

So we're amused, are we? I think, thoroughly infuriated, knowing she's wearing her favourite grin just by watching the muscles on the side of her face pull tight.

"Well, this prisoner," I say, letting the last word drip from my mouth like poison, "is quite done with this ridiculous pace and these rotten vines. Did your employer not give orders to keep whomever you're meant to be catching intact? Or do they like their prisoners shaven down to the core by the time they even arrive at the bloody place?"

Ghaela lets out a heavy breath and stops walking. Barely audible, I catch her murmur to herself, "Understanding is never easy, eh?"

She turns to me and gives me the well-rehearsed grin. "Pri-so-ner," she says, speaking as though I am slow, "if you really want to know... I believe the exact words my employer used were: 'Bring me the vile bitch in one piece and at any cost.'"

Then, frustratingly, Ghaela just stands there as if this were any kind of explanation at all. After a beat, she already begins to turn away, but I quickly thrust my bound wrists toward her, dried blood plainly visible.

"So, what do you think damaged goods are, hmm?" I say, speaking as if she's the slow one now. "Blood is a piece of me, didn't you know?"

Ghaela rolls her eyes then, but it is my turn to sigh. "Look... I don't know who you think you've captured, but this little odyssey has surely given you plenty of evidence that I am no one of particular might. There isn't a chance of me besting anyone, let alone a gorilla like you, so I don't see why this 'vile bitch' can't get a single break and simply... sit for a while."

Surprisingly, Ghaela now gives me a genuine smile. "Gorilla, eh? Always like hearing new ones," she chuckles. "For what it's worth, I agree with you, wouldn't mind it myself."

About to burst with relief, I say, "So then let..."

But before I can finish, her amusement disappears and she tells me in a stern voice, "At any cost, remember?" She points at each in turn. "These vines, this rope, and even those poor feet are not what should worry you—and they certainly don't worry me."

Perplexed by her words, we just stare at each other for a moment. This is the first time she has shown me anything other than that easy-going demeanour of hers, and I'm surprised by how much I dislike it. The anger I'd been holding leaves my body like water pouring from a broken cup.

With a nervous chuckle, I awkwardly ask, "And what then should I be worried about, exactly?"—a feeling of dread steadily building inside me.

"It's often that what is behind us, eh?" she says it with an almost neutral expression—but, for just a split second, was there fear there?

I slowly turn my head and stare into the black abyss of stone and shadow, wondering if anything in that darkness, right now, is staring back. The shivers down my spine are cut short by the sharp, familiar sting of the rope as Ghaela picks up her soldier's march once more. Fear keeps any retort stuck in my throat, and I miserably fall in behind my captor.

The renewed silence, broken only by the sound of our steps, feels somehow even more smothering than before. I quickly look away when I catch the added pain from staring at my wrist and, for just a second, glance up at the dark sky hanging ominously above.

Has my luck run off? I solemnly ask myself.

But remarkably, as if those dark clouds were listening, they answered with raindrops.

Chapter 1: The Man in the Beige Suit

It was a cool 65-degree day. Wind moved through the neighborhood, carrying the soft ringing of wind chimes.

The day I decided to sell my soul to the devil.

I was riding my bike to my interview. I was interviewing for a job at my nearby Target. My interview was at 4:30 p.m., and now it was 5:00.

"Hopefully I can still get it," I said to myself as I biked to the interview.

As I arrived a tall, lean man in his mid-forties was wearing a beige suit that looked too clean for a place like this  standing in the checkout aisle. He was just looking at me, as if he were examining me. The store smelled like disinfectant, plastic, and that sharp “new product” scent that clung to everything. 

I walked into the interview room. A man about sixty sat behind the desk wearing a worn-out wife beater with grease stains on it. Bags hung under his eyes as if he hadn't slept in a day or two.

"So, traffic, I'm guessing?" he said as I sat down.

"No, sir. I'm just late," I said with a nervous chuckle.

He looked at me and said, "I'm going to be honest with you. I looked at your record, and you have two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. On top of that, you're late. I don't think you fit our requirements. I'm going to have to deny you this job."

He stood up quickly, shoving the metal chair back. Its legs scraped across the floor, the sound echoing through the small room. 

"Sir, please. I need this job, or I'm going to lose my house," I said, my voice breaking as I pleaded with him. 

"I never hurt anyone. I was framed, and the jury was too stupid to see that I was an innocent man."

His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed.

"You will not come into my office screaming at me. You are not suitable. Now leave."

As he said that I instantly reached for the door saying “thanks for wasting my time.”

I opened the interview room and ran out bumping into the beige suit man.

"Would you like to make a deal with the devil?"

As any normal person would, I said no.

He stepped closer and whispered in my ear.

"You can make a lot”

The moment he said that, I replied, "Show me."

As we walked toward his black U-Haul-looking vehicle, he reached into his pocket. On his forearm was a strange tattoo. It looked like a circle with arrows pointing inward, almost like a military logo, with the letters SCP underneath.

As he flipped his newly bought metal lighter and lit his cigarette, I asked, "Are you ex-military?"

He looked at me. His eyes widened for a split second before he quickly pulled his sleeve down over the tattoo.

"Don't worry about it. It's none of your business."

As we got closer to his van, he started asking me strange questions.

“So I heard you were arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Is that true?”

My jaw tightened. “That’s not how it went down.”

“Listen, I was framed. The jury just refused to believe me.”

“The jury didn’t even listen to the truth. They just wanted someone to blame.” 

He looked at me like I was lying.

Before I could defend myself, he interrupted.

"Listen here. The court says you're guilty. That's good enough for me." 

Then I reached his black van. He opened the side door and said, "Your riches await."

As I looked inside, his hand, still warm from the cigarette, clamped onto my shoulder.

HIHI this is just something i wrote down in the spur of the moment after i watched an edit of a home far away and then watched leviticus right after anddd i dont really write that much so if you have any feedback pleaseee feel free to critique!!!

Lord, free my Saviour

Is it wrong to feel guilty for something so seemingly normalised yet still viewed as a sin? 

Just a view from afar, a reach out, yet you’re still just another fantasy kept locked away behind my exit door. Every step I take towards you is a cry of desperation, of shame, evidence that I have paved this route of fate for myself. Though I have trapped myself in this turmoil of thoughts and feelings, I still can’t face the truth of this reality. Perhaps in an alternate universe I could confess my love for you freely instead of keeping it to view only for the pages of my english book. Where I wish you would come and tell me you like my short poems or my cursive handwriting. Not knowing they were about you. Your curly hair now imprinted on the page, carrying the words of my love off from your shoulder and into your head. People hold love in their hearts, in the palm of their hands, but, if love wasn’t a burden, why is it haunting me in every aspect of my life? 

Were you the love in my heart, or merely the love I wish I had?

On that early Sunday morning, the normally warm sunshine illuminating through the stained glass windows was nowhere to be found. Until you entered. It was as if the world was in your favour, with the light now glowing from the crucifix that lay right by your heart. No longer through the image of Christ was the path aglow, for you were my saviour.

A single moment in time in which I would come to realise, marked the first swell of “love” I had truly felt, before knowing what “love” really meant. Through you, I built the meaning of love. Love was the way you made handshakes with your friends, distinct to each. Love was the way your laughter echoed through the narrow hallways of my mind, lingering as an image. Love was the way you became my God, despite the endless lessons on how a love like this was disgusting. But this image would soon start to lose pieces along with my changing meaning of love. 

The way your lips brushed my ear as if you were whispering the words of our future into my soul. The way your eyes say more than your voice ever will, refusing to meet mine for more than a moment. Am I left to just forget the way my fathers face is plastered onto yours, yet my heart feels so heavy as my english book slowly turns into the bible. Seeing Jesus on the very cross hung around your neck, could it be that this was the very fate set for the both of us. 

For I thought God to be the solution to my sorrow, a symbol of hope watching over. Instead I was met with the dimming light of the crucifix. Boring a hole into the soul of the identity I once claimed to be proud of. The God who never made time to answer my endless prayers punished me for speaking three simple words.

“I love you.” 

Where I stand, is the choice between heaven or hell. Where the poor are happy and the rich are unsatisfied, I lean on the barrier against faces of people I’ve known and the face of the person I’ve loved. But who returns this love? 

As I walk through the school gates, I imagine my place in hell waiting for me to cross into the arms of its brainwashed father. As an attempt to suck this toxicity out of my bloodstream. Making my way across the school yard, the eyes in the crowd speak words of repulsion, loathing, disbelief. Maybe it was the Devil himself already reaching out to me, or perhaps Christ was right, that I was not made for this world, this life. Everyday I face the battle of separating what I desire away from what society has programmed me to believe I want. Inevitably, this craving to hold you, for you to just look at me, is slowly getting replaced by the thought of what love would be like if you had never entered through the bridge distinguishing my once structured views of heaven and hell. If I had just learnt how to love a woman. 

If only you were a woman. 

Is it that in the midst of trying to cure myself, I had not realised that the arm I once held in mine would one day hold the weight of a sin you now believed to be punishable by death. 

Do you look at me with eyes of distaste, blending in with the crowd trying to escape, though I still see you glowing, your crucifix now tucked under your shirt. Do you look at me with eyes of pity, as you stand there while I taste the blood in my mouth. Your blackened soul now reflected onto the bruise on my chest. I wish to shoot a bullet through the heart of Jesus, but is it Jesus that I hurt, or you?

Your fist or my father’s, father of the sky or father of my body, it’s getting hard to distinguish. Perhaps these figures are intertwined, all I have ever known. A type of hatred shared throughout in which I wish I could feel, instead of being met halfway with this condescending dread. A pair of eyes turn into two and then three, where I can no longer tell which kick is coming, which glass is thrown, or which hand is pushing me down. 

Maybe it was the slight glint of joy in your eyes, in my fathers, who raised me from birth to believe this is what it should be. Maybe that was what made you stay my lord, my saviour. I thought this disdain was everlasting, until you showed me your way of loving. Might it be that this love was unlike the one I had imagined, although I knew I had been watched over like this all my life. 

And as you walk past me in that school hallway, it’s as if I had never loved you.

“Go rot in hell,” as my father would say.

 Except I don’t know which one.

The solemn moon

It w

It was still evening and the street lamps were awakening one after another. Caen spilled out of the carriage, his black hair falling across one eye as he hit the cobblestones. Dust rose, settling on his face, but he had no interest in looking back. He spread his arms wide against the grey stones and looked up at the moon. His silverish-blue earrings caught the lamplight; he was smiling.

The carriage had stopped but the air inside had not settled. A dark figure now sat where the seat had been empty a moment before. In its hands was a scroll, worn dark at the edges from years of handling. The very one Caen had been looking for.

Caen finally looked back over his shoulder. Sitting in the shadows was a figure holding a silver cane, its handle carved into the shape of a phoenix with a scar covering one of its eyes. He stared deeply at Caen with dark grey eyes that seemed to reflect the ocean.

"You have been following me, haven't you," the figure said. "That is the first warning, kid. I don't give seconds."

Caen kept his face blank, but inwardly, he rolled his eyes. Why do these guys always like to act so stoic?

He pushed himself up from the cobblestones, casually brushing the grey dust off his face and the front of his windcoat. He looked straight back into the dark carriage, his earrings catching the light once more.

"I can't do that now, can I?" Caen said.

The figure was quiet for a moment.

"Look, kid, I'm not in the mood to do this," the figure said, voice dropping. "Not tonight of all nights."

This was within his expectations.

Caen looked at the carriage driver. All this while, the driver had been completely out cold.

The air around them suddenly became quiet. All that could be heard was the sound of footsteps approaching.

I’ll start by saying— I’m extremely nervous to post anything I have written. Since middle school, I have been making up stories for in my head. I will ‘imagine’ different stories for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Sometimes from start to finish. Mainly just snippets and then I move onto something else, different scenarios, different characters.

But I have never officially wrote anything. I wanted to post a snippet for feedback. Is this worth continuing? Is my writing style easy to follow or too wordy? Is it interesting or boring?

38/F for reference, married with 3 little busy bees

Genre- romance, drama, somewhat criminal justice later on (barely touched on in the snippet posted), BL…

… if that’s not your cup of tea— i understand. But I am looking for constructive criticism on my writing, not opinions on genre or life style. Not trying to be rude.

No title, not finished, somewhat of a ‘vision’ but no clear ending, want to finally finish one of my ‘stories’ in my head and give character some closure

Warning- some explicit language, mental illness, light reference to trauma

POV- Kai
The clusterfuck that had become his evening wasn’t even over but it had reached a much more comfortable level of fucked up. Kai took a deep breath and stared at the culprit of his ruined Friday evening. The jerk had the audacity to snuggle his stupid, bloodied face into Kai’s clean comforter and pillow. Kai grimaced and looked over at his laptop’s sleeping screen, untouched drawing tablet and still opened Foundations of Art text book. He then looked over at his kitchen counter where his dinner sat untouched, cold and soggy. He regretted many choices tonight that led up to this moment and the human shaped lump under his blankets.

Three hours earlier…

Kai was excited and looking forward to a long weekend of rest. He planned to clean his apartment, finish up his project from his color theory class and catch up on some reading from his Foundations of Art book. He’d already cleaned and his apartment smelled like the warm vanilla candle burning on his bedside table. It smelled like comfort and peace to him. Monday was Labor Day so he had no work or classes. If he got everything else done tonight he could spend his Saturday, Sunday and Monday doing his favorite thing which was… not a thing. Nothing. Nada.

Well, not exactly nothing. He’d read, sketch, watch anime, eat ramen and ice cream, water and tend to his plants and listen to his favorite bands. He didn’t want to encounter another breathing thing though, especially the kind that talked.

He ran almost everyday (for his mental health according to a therapist) but only late at night or early in the morning. So he rarely encountered anyone except for a few stray cats. He didn’t feel that running made him any better inside but he liked not being completely out of shape.

His weekend plans weren’t the plans you would expect from a 20 year old guy. He had come to terms with the fact that he was pretty much a hermit compared to today’s standard 20’year old male. But a boring but peaceful weekend with no people was fine with him. Great, even.

He sat down ready to read the chapters he was behind on while he ate his dinner. Unexpectedly, his phone rang. Kai frowned. He had already plugged his phone up for the night as it was after 9 PM . The likelihood of him getting a call was almost zero. So, the sound of the shrill ringer surprised him. But when the caller ID read ‘Pest’ he was flabbergasted. He literally spewed energy drink all over bedside table which inadvertently put his candle out with a sizzle. In hindsight, that was the actual sound of his peace being burned to ashes.

He blinked hard and stared at the caller ID to be certain he wasn’t hallucinating, as they hadn’t exchanged calls in close to 3 years. Hell, they hadn’t talked at all in 3 years. When he answered, he was met with a loud female voice screaming, ‘Drink, drink, drink!’ Then, a crowd of excited screams exclaiming, ‘Yeaaaaa!’ Someone must have drank it well.

‘Wren…Wren is that you? Did you mean to call me? Hello?’

The only answer he received was blaring music and a wailing sound that resembled a wounded animal. WTF? Kai was positive it was a butt dial and was about to hang up when he heard ‘Hey Bambi...’ He held the phone with a death grip and stared with blurred eyes down at the shaggy rug he stood on by his bed. But he didn’t see the dark blue faux fur though. Instead, in his mind’s eye, he saw a tall young man with soaking wet dark hair plastered to his forehead, a miserable, pale face, wearing a dark suit and carrying a casket with 5 other young men, in the pouring rain.

Kai swallowed hard and shook his head trying to clear away the past visual that made his stomach ache. ‘You have to come get me. I need—.’ It was stated in drunken yet deliberate way. But it was definitely Wren’s low and husky voice.

‘You need what? Why are you calling me? Is this a prank or a dare or something?’ But he wouldn’t be getting any answers as Wren had already hung up. Kai stared at the phone screen that stated the call had ended at 32 seconds. He gave a short laugh. Only 32 seconds? Why did he feel sick then? Why was he already in a cold sweat and starting to shake from the inside? How could a 32 second phone call with little dialogue affect him this badly.

He went back into his call log just to triple check that he did in fact receive a call from Wren Carter. His hands were shaky and his fingers felt numb making his attempts clumsy and almost ineffective. He tried calling back but it went straight to voicemail. Ugh! First time hearing from him in years and in less than a minute, it’s already like this!

Kai laid the phone down. He went to the restroom to wash his face with icy cold water and stared at himself in the mirror. His already pale face appeared ashen with purple tinged lips. He hadn’t realized he was panting. He closed his eyes and visualized a garden full of colorful flowers and green, leafy vines. He began counting the flowers in his mind’s garden. He took a slow, measured breath in and counted. 1-2-3-4 flowers. He held the breath and counted. 5-6-7-8 flowers. He released the breath and counted. 9-10-11-12 flowers.

He repeated these steps until he had counted 44 flowers. He felt calm and his color had returned to normal. The voice on the phone wasn’t even the main culprit for inducing his panic but just a reminder of the past that he tried so hard not to think about.

He felt familiar dull ache in his stomach that he hadn’t felt for almost a year. He went to the kitchen that was only a few steps away from the bathroom. Actually, everything was only a few steps away as he lived in a very small apartment. It was small but clean and tidy. It was basically two rooms. A bathroom and everything else—open floor plan, if you will. But it was enough.

In the kitchen, he found two prescription antacids. One for daily use and the other for faster relief. He went ahead and tossed back two tums while he was at it. As he chewed the chalky, fruit flavored tablet he heard his phone ding with a text.

He approached his phone like it was a snake. He sat on the bed and picked up the phone slowly with dread. The text came from an unknown number and only contained a pinned location. From the address he knew it was in downtown which was only about 15 mins from his apartment complex. Kai chewed his nail staring at the address. He jumped up but then quickly sat back down and stared some more. What if this is a prank?

He got up again and walked to the bathroom staring at his comfy clothes that were meant for home and being in bed. He would not change. He walked to the door, back to his bed, back to his desk and then back to his bathroom. He basically took about 20 steps to circle his tiny apartment.

Staring at himself yet again, he finally made up his mind and walked in a determined way to his closet. He didn’t want to go. Like really, really, REALLY didn’t want to go. But… what if something bad happens? It’s not like him and Wren had a close relationship. Wren had been best friends with Kai’s older brother, Taro, years ago.

End of snippet. 🤣 if you read this far—thank you so much! Please give me any feedback. I’m a stay at home mom. My littles are getting bigger and I’m looking for something to fulfill the extra time
I have lately. But I don’t want to put my efforts and time into something that.. sucks.

Hi all. I’ve had ideas for a fantasy novel tumbling around in my head for a long while, and I’d love to get some feedback.

This is the opening chapter / prologue of an epic fantasy that will mostly follow a leader named Connail. This chapter focuses on Hengest and his son Colm in a rural village on a festival day, and hints at how Connail’s presence will later affect them.

I know some parts are still very first‑draft, but I’m at the point where I really want human perspective on my writing. I’m mostly looking for feedback on the writing itself (pacing, clarity, voice, characterization, etc). Does this make you want to keep reading?

If anything made you confused, bored, or especially engaged, I’d love to hear where and why.

Thank you in advance!

------

Chapter 1

The path was empty, and the forest enjoyed the respite.

Tall oaks and ash strained to outstretch one another for a breath of light, their crowns groaning and whispering in the high breeze. Wrens flitted through the canopy, trilling as they squabbled over the choicest branches. Below in the sun-dappled understory, squirrels chattered through leaves and up moss-dark trunks, claws scratching bark as they ferried seeds and hazelnuts to hidden hoards.

Fairies dotted the woodland, bobbing lazily from oak to fern to hazel, brushing leaf and stem with their brief, bright care before drifting on again, borne lightly by the forest’s easy song.

And then, the song changed. Wrens called warnings through the branches, their trills turning sharp and frantic. Squirrels froze, twitching upright as they caught new sounds beneath the birdsong. The dull thud of boots, a jangle of iron, a creak of leather, a soft, uneven scuff with each step, all out of time with the forest’s rhythm.

Hengest ambled slowly along the empty trail, enjoying the peace in the forest’s song, and he wished that Colm were there to hear it with him. But then, if Colm were there, there would be no peace to enjoy, would there?

Hengest smiled. No, the boy would be off chasing the squirrels. The wren’s trilling would turn to chaos, and the fae would scatter at his heels, and that’s why Hengest had thought to send him ahead. Not that he would ever tell Colm that.

But he found that the quiet he so craved whenever Colm was with him brought no real contentment. It never did. Once the boy was gone, he was left to face the shape of his own emptiness.

Hengest thumbed the intricate tin pendant at his neck. Drawing from its familiar warmth, he shook himself free of the thoughts that tried to snare him and focused back on the path ahead, where he saw—with some grudging relief—that the road began to rise.

Up one last hill, and on the other side awaited the village with all its graceless noise that the forest had spared him.

Cresting the rise, Hengest looked down upon Loam’s Crossing and the valley beyond. It was early yet, but already the town was buzzing, preparing for the swell of folk who would come for the day’s festivities. He could see them flowing in from intersecting roads. Families, traders, poets and bards, everyone within a day’s walk—and beyond—all pulling their carts and wares hoping for a slice of the commerce and renown that the day might bring.

Him too, he supposed. Hengest shifted the awkward weight of the burlap sack that was slung across his shoulder, filled with humble carrots, potatoes, and turnips. He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered. There’d be much better to be had at the market today.

Bah. Sorcha would sort him out, anyway, she always did.

In the center of the town was the village green, where a massive decorative stage was being constructed beneath the town’s ancient standing stone. A crowd was already gathered, folk staking out spots early to catch a good sight of the show to come. It wasn’t every day that one had a chance to see a King’s Filí.

Hengest reached the outlying fields where the carts were being set up and made his way through the haphazard rows between them . Interspersed along the way were smaller makeshift stages, some constructed nicely, others little more than barrels with planks to span them. The many performers who staked their places made a cacophony of preparation, plucking their harps and lutes and warming their voices.

Many were good, Hengest thought. Most were not.

At last he reached the village proper, where he noticed a curious man. He wore a simple gray robe, no bright colors, and he had prepared no stage. Nevertheless, a small gathering had found him, and he stood before them and spoke plainly, no register, no tune, but somehow still his words hooked Hengest’s ear with their cadence.

“...But why do good folk suffer? When the frost takes your barley, yet your neighbor’s stands tall, have you not wondered why? When a mother dies young while a cruel man goes fat, have you not wished for some account of it? I offer it freely, to all who will listen...”

Hengest made a point not to catch the man’s eye and he ambled on, but the man’s words lingered with him.Have you not wished for some account of it, he’d said.

Aye, and what of it? Shall we yell at the clouds for the rain?

Bah. He let the thoughts go. Why dwell on such things when there was work to be done.

He found Sorcha out front of her shop, ordering about her shopkeep—or rather, her husband, Eogan.

“No, Eogan, I said five, five bags, damn you, what am I to do with—” Then she saw Hengest and waived Eogan away.

“Well, about time, Hengest,” she said by way of greeting. “Hand them over,” and she reached for the bag, but then gave a queer look.

“Well that’s awfully heavy for—No, these aren’t my berries! What am I to do with these?” She shook the bag in Hengest’s face.

Hengest felt a pit in his stomach. “No,” He said, feeling a spike of alarm. “What do you mean, your berries? I sent Colm ahead to forage the berries hours ago, has he not come?”

Sorcha’s face grew red. “Oh, I saw him. Laughing like a fool with the boys, he was! Damn it, Hengest, it’s near midday, now what am I to do?”

Hengest found himself at a loss for words.

“Sorcha, I can’t believe it. We’ll make it right, I swear it.”

Sorcha’s face lightened a shade and she waved his offer off. “No. No, I’ll get it sorted.” She rifled through his bag of sad vegetables, grumbling. “Just like I always do. Young Fionna says she saw the lights touching the brambles just last night, down by the bend. I already sent her running. There’ll be berries plenty.”

-------

“Cut it out!” Colm tried to swat away the hands of Finn and Cenn again as they grabbed new fistfuls of berries out of the basket held in the crook of his arm.

“You cut it out,” Cenn said, smacking Colm in the shoulder with a fist amicably. “The basket is overflowing, Sorcha won’t mind.”

Colm placed a hand over his stomach and groaned. “Gods, we already gorged at the brambles, is your stomach lined with iron, man? Stop!”

Finn laughed. “No, Colm, you’re just soft, you mommy’s boy!”

Cenn smacked Finn much harder in the shoulder.

“Ow! Why’d-” And then he saw Colm’s face. “Oh. Right. Sorry, Colm, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Finn rubbed his shoulder. A long and awkward silence stretched, and Colm grew uncomfortable.

“I’m pretty sure you meant daddy’s boy,” Colm offered.

Cenn snickered first, then they all broke into laughter.

“Sorry, Colm,” repeated Finn. “How’s the old man doing?”

Colm waved a hand. “Better. Thanks. Had to fight him to come today, though.”

“Serious?” said Finn. “He’d have kept you from Hallow’s Day? For what?”

Colm had said too much. “Just lots to do,” he said, and tried to turn the conversation. “Who will you guys be seeing today? Aside from Iseldir, of course.”

Finn’s face lit up. “I heard Ruairc the Bear-heart will be here! I love his song, We Hold the Ford at Dawn. My uncle says no one sings it as strong as him, I can’t wait!”

“Ruairc is old,” Cenn said, dismissive. “I want to see Aengus the Raven-maker. I heard he was at the Breach of Caer Dunn himself, watched all those men die and just—remembered every one of them.”

“He stood by and remembered?” Finn scoffed.

Cenn grew somber. “I’m not much for words,” he said. “Neither are you. Don’t much think we’ll be passing our own on. So, if I die out there, like that, yeah, I hope someone like the Raven-maker remembers me.”

“Well,” said Finn, “Maybe if you stick to someone strong like Ruairc, you won’t fret dying so much.”

Cenn groaned. “Finn, they say there’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity. You sure do blur that line.”

Finn beamed. “Thanks Cenn! I will be brave. I’ll look after you, just stick with me. What about you, Colm?”

“Hm?” asked Colm. His thoughts had drifted.

“Who do you want to see?”

“Oh. Right.”

Colm hesitated. He was excited for Iseldir, of course, he had never seen a Filí perform.

But otherwise, he wasn’t interested in hearing about death or battle or courage. He thought he would find some new funny songs.

But the boys only talked of battle and bravery. He thought he should try to fit in.

Try as he might, though, not one song came to mind. The bards with their boasting had always rung hollow to his ears next to the songs his Ma had sung for him in his youth. Only ever on the quiet days, when Da was out in the field, and there was nothing left but to let their supper simmer. She would wrap him up in her arms and cradle him and sing the songs, masterful songs, different than the other boys would hear from their mam’s. Except for one. And that song was stuck in his mind now, the weight of the tune occupying his thoughts so he could think of none other through it.

“You know the song, The Ashes of the Brave?”

He might as well have asked if grass was green. “Sure. Why, is someone good singing it tonight?”

Colm shrugged. “Well, probably. Someone always does.”

Why was he saying this? His da would kill him.

“I heard the person who made it will be there.”

Finn looked confused. “Someone made that song? I thought it was old.”

Colm laughed. “Yes. Someone made every song, Finn, even the old ones.”

Finn seemed unbothered. “But I thought it was old. Who is it, then?”

Colm’s face turned pink. “I don’t know, it’s just something I heard.”

Cenn gave him an odd look, but before he could say anything Finn stopped short and froze, his eyes growing wide.

“Finn?” Cenn asked.

“Look!” said Finn with excitement, pointing down the road.

Ahead was a fork where a path adjoined the main road, and emerging from the fork was a column of men. Warriors, wearing Connail’s colors. Only, it was not just men.

At their head was a massive figure that drank the light.

Colm blinked. The figure was still there, hulking over the men that followed, wearing armor unlike anything he had ever seen—black plates that gave not one glimmer back of the sun shining brightly overhead.

“No way,” said Cenn.

“It’s the orc! Goliad!” Finn yelled and took of running, Cenn close behind.

Colm, shifting the weight of the basket, took a more apprehensive pace.

“Goliad! Goliad!”

The great horned helm turned slowly toward the sound. The face beneath was shadow given shape except for two points of light that burned from within, catching a ray of sun with a cold flash of crimson.

The hairs on Colm’s arms rose.

Finn and Cenn cheered louder.

The orc raised a gauntleted hand and waved, then continued on its way.

“Hey, boy!”

A warrior split away from the retinue. He seemed young and wore a gambeson two sizes too large, but he wore an easy, confident smile. A friend followed behind him, just as young, but less bold.

“Let’s have some berries, eh?”

“Yeah,” said his friend, “We’ve been on the march, protectin’ the border, alright. Some berries sounds real nice.”

"No," said Colm sharply. "I’m sorry, but they aren’t ours to give. Perhaps if you see Sorcha in town?”

“You think we can just wander around town?” said the first man. “Come on, boy, you have lots, you can spare a handful.”

“Back in line,” a voice said, loud and steady. Colm saw it belonged to an older warrior who had stopped at the edge of the road.

“We’re comin, a moment,” said the first man dismissively, still holding out his palm for berries.

“Now,” the voice said sternly, “Or did you forget Connail’s orders? Tell me, are the berries worth a hand?”

The man’s face twisted, but he clenched his fist and spun around back to the line.

“I was just asking,” he said hotly. The old warrior seemed ready to snap at him, but then Finn opened his mouth.

“You can have some!” he said loudly. “We’re happy to share!”

The two young warriors looked to the older man. “Be quick,” he grunted.

The two men rushed and each took a handful, but then, another saw. “Berries?” A man piped up, rushing over to take a share, and more were on his heels.

Colm tried to protest and pull away, but the men were loud and boisterous and his cries were drowned. In moments, the berries were gone.

The warriors gave their thanks and included Finn and Cenn in their banter, much to their delight, before a bark from their senior brought them back in line.

“Hold up!” called Finn without hesitation, moving to follow after them.

“Finn!” yelled Colm, and Finn barely slowed. “Sorcha’s berries!”

Cenn, at least, seemed to have some shame. “Sorry Colm,” he said. “But we’ll be going to muster in less than a fortnight, you know? After that, we won’t be seeing Sorcha again. Maybe. Not for a while, anyway. But them?” He pointed his chin at the line. “We might be seeing a lot of them, right? You get it, right?”

Colm wiped his face with a palm. “No. No, Cenn, I don’t get it. Those weren’t ours to give.”

Cenn held up his palms.

“Well, we need more,” Colm said. “We have to go back. Come on.”

Colm turned and took several steps, but Cenn didn’t follow.

“You’ll be leaving Sorcha soon, too, you know,” he said. “Won’t you?”

Colm felt a spike of something like guilt, and he could see that Cenn noticed by the way his eyes hardened.

“Right,” said Colm, too late. Cenn turned and left him, Colm stood in the road a long while, staring after his friends as Cenn rejoined with Finn. They were laughing.

Colm looked down at the basket. Nothing but bits of leaves and smears of berry. Empty.

He thought of Lochlann, who sang of how fate doesn’t happen to you. You choose it. There is always a choice.

With a sigh, Colm made his.

My friend's husband wrote about an experience that he had well on vacation. To my knowledge, he is not a writer and I was interested to see what he wrote. I started reading it and I was shocked like oh my God this guy has missed his calling. It was really good.

Shortly into the reading, he said that he used AI to create the writing. I immediately put it down.

I am a writer and I have never wants to use AI or chat, whatever that is. I have no idea what the rules and limits are as a writer.

I feel like he cheated and creating that writing. Your thoughts?

I have an idea but i am lacking writing skills i did use ai for my story ( i gave him everything he just wrote)

But i feel it is low quality.

If you are interested in reading my story give me a rating:

Arc I — "The Experiment"

Volume One: Ashfield

The room was burning.

Not with fire. Just light — a single candle in the corner that trembled like something alive, throwing shadows across the walls that moved the way shadows shouldn't. Fuori stood in the middle of it all with his pistol raised and his hand perfectly still, his grey eyes fixed on the thing in front of him.

He didn't know if it was real.

He'd stopped caring.

"Why?!" The word tore out of him before he could stop it, and the manor took it and ran — corridor to corridor, room to room, all the way down the stone stairs and back again, until it sounded less like a man asking and more like the building itself had been holding the question for years.

Rivenmoor was not the kind of town that tried to be anything. Its streets were old cobblestone that had been drinking rain for so long they'd forgotten what dry felt like, and the morning fog had a habit of staying well past its welcome — clinging to the rooftops and the iron lampposts and the spaces between buildings long after any reasonable fog would have gone home. The town was ancient enough to have accumulated secrets and insular enough to have kept every last one of them.

Fuori's office was on the second floor of a corner building that was losing an argument with time. Below it, a watchmaker's shop that nobody visited. Beside it, a tavern that everybody did. The brass plate on his door said E. Fuori — Private Investigator, nothing more — no flourish, no invitation, nothing to suggest he was particularly pleased to be found.

He was twenty-five. He looked closer to thirty-two, on a good day. Tall and pale with dark hair he never quite remembered to deal with, he wore the same long coat regardless of the season and kept his pistol holstered on the left like it had always been there, like he'd been built around it. He'd come back from London with a law degree and a criminal science distinction and the particular kind of hollow competence that follows a person who is very good at things they no longer believe in. He knew forensics and chemistry and legal theory and a dozen other disciplines, and he was bored by all of them — bored by everything, really, except the problems that had the nerve to push back.

Claude was at the other desk with the morning paper, unhurried, coffee going cold beside him. He was two years younger and considerably less grim — the kind of person who still defaulted to thinking well of people, a habit Fuori found alternately irritating and, on certain nights, quietly necessary. He had started as an assistant and stayed on because he was, to Fuori's mild bewilderment, the only person in Rivenmoor who hadn't walked out after the first conversation.

The knock came hard — three blows, the kind that announce rather than ask. The door opened before Fuori could answer it, and Inspector Jones filled the frame. He was a large man in a uniform that strained slightly across the shoulders, grey moustache immaculate, eyes already making their assessment of the room with the particular disdain of someone who had been here before and hadn't enjoyed it the first time either. He was the head of Rivenmoor's police. Coming here cost him something every time, and both of them knew it.

He dropped a thin folder on the desk without ceremony. "Let's keep this short."

Fuori looked up from his book. He had a way of looking at people that made them feel less like they were being seen and more like they were being processed. "Jones," he said. Then, before the man could move: "Sit down." A beat. "Actually, don't. You look better standing."

Claude opened the folder. "Unidentified woman," he read, his voice settling into something neutral. "Found in an alley behind the train station yesterday morning before dawn."

"Cause of death?" Fuori asked.

"That's the thing." Jones shifted his weight. "No bruising. No bullet wounds. Nothing visible at all. There was foam around her mouth." He paused the way people pause when they're about to say the part they don't want to say. "And a tattoo."

Fuori waited.

Jones reached into the folder and drew out a single sheet of paper — a clean, careful rendering of a scorpion with a chalice cradled in its claws — and placed it between them on the desk.

Fuori looked at it.

Just looked.

Alfred.

He pulled his eyes up. "What do you know about the symbol?"

Jones finally pulled out the chair across from Fuori and sat, as though the question had taken something out of him. "Old local story. Tied to Ashfield Manor — that wreck of a place on the hill outside town — and to the man who built it. A scholar. Spent his whole life chasing something to do with immortality, developed methods nobody ever fully understood. Then someone killed him and walked off with everything he'd ever written." A pause that carried weight. "We sent a team to look into it."

Claude glanced up from the folder. "What happened to them?"

Jones was quiet for a moment longer than was comfortable. "The best investigator I ever knew didn't come home."

Something moved across Fuori's face — not grief exactly, not excitement exactly, something that lived uncomfortably between the two. He brought his palm down flat on the desk, sudden enough to make Claude flinch, and looked up with a smile that had absolutely no business appearing in this particular conversation. "Forget the rest," he said. "We're going to that manor."

Jones looked at Claude. Claude looked at Fuori. Jones opened his mouth and then, clearly, decided against whatever he'd been about to say. There was nothing to decide, really. He'd known that before he walked in.

Claude was pulling on his coat when he caught up to Fuori in the narrow corridor. "Fuori."

"Mm."

"The symbol." He kept his voice easy, like it wasn't a real question. "You've seen it before, haven't you. Your face did something when you looked at it."

Fuori stopped walking for just a moment. One beat. He didn't turn around. He wasn't even looking at me. How does he do that. "Does my face not always look like that?"

Claude huffed a quiet laugh. "I suppose it does, yeah."

But Fuori had already moved on, or was pretending to. He pushed the outer door open and stepped into the rain, and for just a second — the length of a breath — he let himself hear it. Alfred's voice. The drawing. The chalice, the scorpion, a night that had never fully become the past no matter how long ago it happened.

Again. Of all the things in all the towns in all the world — this, again.

The cold came in off the street and he let it.

They arrived at Ashfield Manor at dusk, in that particular light that flatters everything it touches and means none of it. The manor was not flattered.

It sat on a hill above the town — heavy, stone, the kind of building that didn't look like it had been constructed so much as deposited there by something with poor intentions. Time had softened its edges but not its character. The oak trees lining the approach were old enough to have watched it being built, their branches grown so thickly overhead that the path beneath had become a tunnel, swallowing the last of the evening light with what felt like purpose. The iron gate at the entrance stood open. Apparently it always did.

"Something's wrong with this place," Claude said quietly, somewhere behind him.

Fuori was already inside.

The entrance hall was cold in a way that felt chosen. The ceiling climbed twenty feet before it stopped, and from it hung a crystal chandelier of some extravagance that had clearly not been lit in years — its dust catching Claude's lantern light anyway, stubbornly decorative. Portraits lined the walls, large and oil-dark, their subjects unknown and their eyes possessed of that unsettling quality that follows you if you let it. At the far end of the hall, a black marble staircase rose and then divided at the top, spreading left and right like arms opening.

"Where do we start?" Claude asked, holding the lantern up.

"Same place they always do," Fuori said, already moving toward the library. "Underground."

The bookcase in the ground-floor library rotated on a hidden axis. Behind it: a stone staircase, steep and narrow, going down into darkness that felt thick enough to push against.

The laboratory at the bottom was larger than either of them expected. Worktables in long rows, arranged with a precision that had something almost pained about it. Glassware and instruments and coiled tubes and equipment they didn't have names for. And covering every inch of wall from floor to ceiling, pages — hundreds of them, pinned with rusted tacks and connected by red thread drawn between them in lines that crossed and doubled back until the room looked less like a workspace and more like a diagram of obsession. The smell was sharp chemistry underneath something damp, underneath something else entirely that neither of them mentioned.

In the middle of the room, one table stood apart from the rest. On it, a heavy journal, lying open.

Fuori crossed to it and read the page. The handwriting was uneven, the pen pressed hard into the paper: Metempsychosis is not a theory. I have witnessed it. The dead returned. In another face, another body — but the same. The new body does not remember. The soul remembers everything.

He picked it up and moved through the pages quickly — numbers, diagrams, columns of results, sketches of procedures that had no name he recognized. A life's work, all of it, crammed into this room like someone had been in a hurry to finish before they ran out of time.

He stopped.

A page with one image at its center. Rendered carefully, deliberately, like something being recorded rather than decorated.

A scorpion holding a chalice.

There was a shadow in the far corner of the room that didn't belong to either of them.

"Claude." Fuori's voice came out quieter than he'd intended it to. "Who is that."

"There's nobody here, Fuori." Claude lifted the lantern toward the corner. "The room's empty."

But he could see it. The shadow thickening, pulling together into something with edges — leaning slowly forward, and in it, like a face surfacing through dark water, Alfred. His mentor. The man who had died in front of him and then had the indecency to keep existing in every unguarded moment since. Smiling at him now in a way he never had while alive, and it was wrong, it was deeply wrong, and Fuori's chest was doing something he didn't have a name for — why did you let them, why didn't I, why is the same sign here again why is any of this—

The gunshot cracked through the room like the air had split open.

The bullet hit the wall. The echo went everywhere at once. And then Claude's hands were on his shoulders, both of them, grip firm and immediate — "Fuori. Look at me." Fuori was breathing like a man who'd surfaced from deep water, eyes open and seeing something other than the laboratory, somewhere else, a different night, a hand he hadn't reached for fast enough. Claude's voice came in and out of focus. "Fuori. Right here. Look at me."

And then—

The room came back.

The cold came back. The chemical smell and the damp paper and the warm circle of Claude's lantern in all that darkness. Claude's hands still on his shoulders. Fuori looked at the wall — old stone and a small, clean hole in it. Nothing else.

"Alfred knew this place," Fuori said. His voice didn't sound like his.

Claude didn't ask him how he knew. They sat down on the cold floor without discussing it, the lantern between them, and for a while neither of them said anything at all. Fuori still had the journal in his hands. He looked down at the open page without meaning to.

The scorpion. The chalice.

The same mark that had been at the beginning and the end of every worst thing in his life.

It was never a coincidence. It had never been a coincidence, not once, not ever.

He stood up and straightened his coat. "We need everything in this room."

We open with an establishing shot — a boy, a girl, and a bike. Just enough to understand their world.

Then we cut to the boy standing, looking directly at her with quiet love in his eyes.

Cut to the girl sitting on the bike, helmet on, visor open. Only her eyes are visible — and they're looking at him with this effortless cuteness.

He closes her visor.

She opens it. Different expression. Still cute.

He closes it again.

She opens it again. Funnier this time.

He closes it. She opens it with a ridiculous expression.

He laughs. Subtle. Real.

Then we cut to the same framing — her on the bike, only her eyes visible. But this time something is wrong. There's sadness. Anger. A small streak of blood on her forehead. Tears in her eyes.

Screen goes black.

Then two quick shots — her driving that bike aggressively. One close up of her face while driving. One shot of the bike blasting past the camera at full speed.

Cut.

This is my first project outside of school.

and it isn't done yet just a bit of it like maybe the first chapter? I'm still newish to writing books

Untitled document - Google Docs