Dozing Through the Velvet Trap
By @john1208
In the foggy, brutalist coastal town of Gresnov in 1977, ambition is everything. When Kovanya is publicly humiliated in the town square by her reborn sister Lishka for refusing a prestigious factory promotion just to sleep in, Kovanya happily accepts the disgrace. To escape her family's relentless drama, she marries Bramen, the town's shunned, silent ice-hauler. Bramen finds her absolute laziness utterly adorable, happily working double shifts just to buy her the softest pillows. While dozing in a sea-cave to avoid her screaming relatives, Kovanya's hammock snaps, accidentally crushing an assassin and saving the shadowy Chairman Vossig. Her reward is a lifetime VIP suite at the newly built Solitude Sanatorium, a lavish palace of endless room service. Lishka seethes, having schemed for years to marry a future mogul and gain entry to that exact elite circle. But the luxurious sanatorium is an eerie, atmospheric trap - a labyrinth designed to silently eliminate the region's VIPs. While Lishka exhausts herself navigating deadly conspiracies, Kovanya's hot-tempered refusal to leave her plush bed inadvertently ruins the architects' sinister mechanisms. Told in alternating perspectives between husband and wife, can the laziest woman in Gresnov sleep through a conspiracy meant to consume them all?
4
Slumber in the Scythe's Shadow
By @john1208
The Grevka Commune in 1978 is a paranoid, grueling meat grinder. At her father’s rain-soaked funeral, Velsia Drenka makes a cheeky, shameless announcement: she is officially retiring at nineteen. Refusing to earn a single work point in the muddy fields, she marries Bramen Vost, the commune's feared gravedigger, simply because his isolated cabin is quiet. While her reborn sister Miksa exhausts herself scheming to marry the region's future oligarch, Velsia buys a barren, toxic-looking plot on Slagfall Hill solely to string up her hammock. As Velsia naps through the oppressive days, Bramen meticulously cooks and cleans, harboring a bittersweet, unspoken love while silently disposing of the regime's spies to keep her safe. When Slagfall Hill unexpectedly cracks open to reveal a massive vein of luminescent ignis-quartz - a literal goldmine - Velsia's lazy days draw dangerous attention. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between Velsia and Bramen, the dark truth slowly surfaces: Velsia’s past self orchestrated this entire scenario, erasing her own memories to ensure her survival. Will Velsia uncover the bloody lengths she went to, or will Bramen's devotion keep her safely in the dark?
2
I Refuse to Let My Doomed Husband Die
By @john1208
I was supposed to marry the rising star of the Imperial Armada. Instead, my cousin Bianca hijacked my engagement at the grand Solstice Gala, declaring they were destined soulmates. Her real reason? In her previous life, she suffered horribly at the hands of a monster, and desperately stole the only 'safe' military man she knew. I almost feel bad for her, but to protect my little brother from our uncle's wrath, I quietly accepted the public humiliation and the consolation prize: Commander Niccolo Dandolo, a disabled, brooding war hero dying of Abyssal Rot. Bianca thinks she secured a glorious future. She doesn't realize her new husband is a lazy man-child who only succeeded because I secretly wrote all his naval strategies! While Tiziano's career rapidly implodes without me, I'm busy force-feeding foul-tasting alchemical smoothies to my dangerously depressed new husband. Niccolo just wants to brood in his wheelchair and await death, but I am entirely too stubborn to let my patient expire. Now he's fully cured, ridiculously wealthy, and glaring at anyone who breathes in my direction. Can a painfully shy apothecary survive high society with a lethal, overly-attached war hero on her arm?
1