The Alchemist of Recollection
By @john1208
Emric Van Deur, the cold and calculating architect of the global shipping empire Mare Solum, awakens in a humble, sun-drenched coastal apartment with no memory of how he got there. His confusion turns to shock when he's confronted by a woman named Fieke, who claims he is the father of her missing son, Bas. To Emric, Fieke is a stranger, their supposed passionate night a phantom memory he sacrificed for ambition. But the child is real, and he has been kidnapped. Forced into an uneasy alliance, Emric and Fieke must navigate a labyrinth of forgotten feelings and present-day danger. As they unravel the clues behind Bas's disappearance, Emric discovers fragments of a man he no longer is - a kinder, more passionate version of himself who left behind a trail of cryptic messages. It becomes clear that this was no accident; his past self engineered this crisis. Can this cold-hearted strategist learn to trust the ghost of the man he was in order to build a future for a family he never knew he wanted?
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The Corrupted Immortal's Runaway Rival
By @john1208
Yuthra woke up pinned beneath the frozen roots of the sacred Qilyan Tree - an impossible location that shouldn't appear until the final chapters of the grimdark novel, The Abyssal Lotus. Realizing she now possessed the body of the doomed rival destined to be sacrificed for the corrupted immortal Roshkar’s dark ascension, she immediately fled. Masking her spiritual signature, the shy but stubbornly resilient Yuthra settles in the impoverished mud-brick village of Oshkadar. There, she quietly plots a cold, calculated revenge to dismantle the brutal monastic sect that groomed them both for slaughter. Her cat-and-mouse evasion works perfectly - until a brutal provincial raid brings the terrifyingly devoted, madness-plagued Roshkar right into Oshkadar’s dusty market, where he bumps into Kevi, a child bearing Yuthra's unmistakable face. Now, her former rival is tearing the world apart to reclaim the woman who slipped through his fingers. But Yuthra has just discovered a horrific truth the novel left out: outliving her scripted death triggered an unwritten 60-day cosmic collapse. Can she manipulate the obsessive monster hunting her before time runs out?
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