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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