The Mirage Magnate
By @john1208
At their grandmother's deathbed, Vittra makes a shocking, tearful plea: she wishes to swap betrothals. Knowing the future, Vittra claims the handsome illusion-actor Navarro, destined for global stardom, and pushes her seemingly empty-headed cousin Ximara onto Ciprian - a disgraced, sickly scholar constantly coughing up blood. Ximara cheerfully agrees. What Vittra doesn't know is that Ximara sees right through her act. More importantly, Ximara discovers Ciprian’s illness isn't a disease at all, but an overloading light-core that will obliterate their entire district in exactly eighty-eight days. With absolutely no time for romance, Ximara drops her ditzy facade in private, partnering with Ciprian and her radiation-eating aether-mongoose to channel his lethal energy into revolutionary projection hardware. As Ciprian rapidly rises from a dying bookworm to an untouchable tech billionaire, the narrative shifts to reveal Vittra’s crumbling stolen destiny. Vittra’s toxic greed is already pushing Navarro into using illegal memory-narcotics to maintain his fame. But when the eighty-eight days are finally up, will Ximara’s cold, platonic empire be enough to contain the catastrophic blast, or will Vittra’s desperate, vengeful sabotage ruin them all?
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Bound by the Liar's Prophecy
By @john1208
Ziratu’s mentor dies with a gruesome warning, leaving behind a flesh-bound novel detailing how Vashnir, the Silent Arbiter, will soon slaughter Ziratu and her little brother, Kidin. Always cold and calculating, Ziratu immediately implements a flawless, emotionless plan to evade her fated murderer. She fakes an engagement to the cremated remains of a disgraced noble, believing this legal loophole will place her entirely outside Vashnir’s jurisdiction. Instead, her bizarre, deadpan attempts to dodge the deadly inquisitor only convince him she is a dangerous mastermind. Told in alternating third-person perspectives, the story follows their escalating cat-and-mouse game until a ritual glitch permanently binds their souls into an unbreakable, entirely non-romantic investigative partnership. Forced to hunt the city's real eldritch threats together, Ziratu discovers the horrifying truth: the novel was completely wrong. Vashnir isn't a serial killer, but the only man capable of saving Kidin. The flesh-bound book was actually penned by Ziratu's own past incarnation, an elaborate web of lies designed to force this exact partnership. But what terrifying, world-ending entity was her past self trying so desperately to defeat?
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