Funeral Favors and Clockwork Fortunes
By @john1208
At their grandfather’s lavish funeral, Ruta dramatically throws herself onto the casket, claiming a 'karmic vision' gives her the right to swap betrothals. She steals the brilliant Dr. Ignas, leaving her shy cousin Laima with Captain Jurgis Ruzgas - a disabled, depressed war veteran and Laima’s former bitter academic rival. Ruta knows Ignas is destined to invent a panacea, while Jurgis is doomed to perish in a tragic scandal. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between Laima’s overthinking panic and Jurgis’s cynical bewilderment, the satirical timeline quickly derails. Ruta’s frantic impatience to become wealthy forces Ignas’s slow-brewing research to market early, resulting in a toxic disaster. Meanwhile, a stubbornly shy Laima refuses to let Jurgis accept Ignas’s 'charity' treatments, unknowingly saving Jurgis from his past-life fatal mistake. To survive, Laima secretly funnels her botanical patents into Jurgis's mechanical designs, convinced she must meticulously follow the strict, punishing rules of the city's 'Karmic Destiny' ledger to avoid exile. Together, the bickering rivals accidentally build a billion-cog prosthetics empire. But as Ruta’s stolen marriage implodes, Laima is about to realize the oppressive 'rules' of destiny she’s been stressing over were a complete fraud fabricated by a gossip-mongering undertaker. Will her newfound empire survive the hilarious truth?
4
Gilded Embers
By @john1208
I just wanted a quiet cup of cardamom tea. Instead, I woke up five years in the past, right as an assassin shattered my bedroom window. In my previous life, General Rustam took that blade for me, triggering the slow ruin of his military career while I coldly turned my back on his crippled body, refusing to even visit his deathbed before Kamran's arson claimed me, too. Never again. Now, I’m the capital’s most famously cheerful airhead, a bubbly nuisance who aggressively showers the stoic, blushing general with sweets, silk, and unyielding public affection. He thinks I'm just a fragile, eccentric noblewoman with a bizarre crush. He doesn't know that when the sun sets, I hunt the conspirators targeting him, carving a bloody path through Kamran's syndicate to keep him safe from the shadows. But Kamran’s treason hides a desperate, tragic motive involving the royal family that could upend the entire Zirid Hegemony. Can I protect the man I love without becoming a monster, or will my secret blades sever the very trust I'm trying to rebuild?
3