روايات بقلم Western.R

There’s always a line, a very thin one, between selfish ambition and outright cruelty — sometimes it’s easy to pretend you can’t see it until you’ve already stepped over, but in Antonio’s case, he had no such excuse. He knew. There wasn’t a world where he didn’t know. And if he had any doubts left, they were shredded somewhere along the way, torn up with every step he took past it.Why? Why had he let it come this far? Why hadn’t he stopped it when he still could?~Alecia’s phone buzzed where it sat, facedown on the kitchen counter, the screen lighting up with an unknown number. She hadn’t even touched it yet, but something deep in her stomach had already twisted with that low, crawling awareness that settled in long before your brain caught up to explain why. Like her body had recognized something her mind was still slow to reach for.She picked up the phone, thumb sliding across the screen without thinking kr greeting. “Alecia.”Her father’s voice called coldly with a familiar chi

The DeLuca estate felt heavier than usual that morning. Not in any literal sense, of course, but in a suffocating way a house did when everyone inside it already knew to keep their heads down. Conversations barely happened, the footsteps sounded softer than usual. Nobody stayed where they didn’t absolutely need to be. They’d all learned the rhythm of Antonio’s silences over the years. Especially on days like this. Days when he didn’t want noise clouding his mind.He sat in the lounge with a drink in hand, though anyone paying attention could see it hadn’t been touched. He wasn’t drinking. He was staring through the glass doors like he could already see something coming for him from a distance. Maybe he could. Or maybe he just liked to pretend he could. The whiskey sat sweating in his glass, the ice melting slow as time itself.His phone buzzed once on the table beside him. A glance told him all he needed to know — the gates had confirmed Bianca’s arrival.When the door opened, Bianca

The rooftop was polished steel and silent glass. A view of the city wrapped around the private lounge, floor-to-ceiling windows reflecting the skyline like it was a set piece. Alecia didn’t bother looking at it. She sat across from two producers and a junior writer, all three of them dressed like they were trying to look like they weren’t trying too hard.Her coffee sat untouched.“So,” the woman said, folding her hands neatly, “we’re thrilled to have you involved. You’re magnetic onscreen, but even more magnetic as a character. What you’ve survived, what you’ve gone through, it’s...eye opening. People want this story and honestly there's no better person to tell it than you.”Alecia leaned back in her chair. “You don’t want it from me. You want it with my name on it.”The junior writer laughed nervously. “That’s fair.”The man across from her—older, maybe late forties, a quiet predator with too-white teeth—smiled slowly. “We want something layered. Not black and white. A story about

Valentina received an email at 6:08 AM. Olive handed her the tablet with two fingers, brows raised. “This was flagged by media monitoring.”Val didn’t touch it yet. She finished her espresso, perfectly calm. She was in Lucas’ study, bare-faced, wearing one of his shirts, feet tucked under her on the armchair like she had all the time in the world.“What is it?” she asked.Olive shrugged. “Docuseries pitch. Your name’s in it.”Val didn’t raise a brow, didn’t blink. She just reached out, tapped the screen, and started scrolling.It was an industry pitch deck — clean fonts, grey-blue branding, overly ambitious tone. Streaming platform attached. Documented “female downfall and social media redemption,” centered around Alecia DeLuca’s public breakdown. But by page twelve, the framing shifted.They weren’t just telling Alecia’s story. They were rewriting Valentina’s.Page fourteen labeled her “The Ice Twin.” Page fifteen described her as “emotionally unavailable, raised to be desirable, yet

The morning light filtered through her curtains mercilessly. Alecia DeLuca sat at her vanity, swirling water in a glass to wet her brush. Her robe was heavy white terrycloth, crisp but worn at the collar. She hadn’t slept. Her makeup bag was open, but she stared at it instead. Kennedy was on call in the bathroom, adjusting the mic wires to the collar of a plain black blouse.“This isn’t you begging,” Alecia said, more to herself. “It’s me taking over.”Kennedy stepped forward, her voice steady. “Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to—”Alecia held up her hand before Kennedy could finish. “You think I’ll survive if I stay silent?”Kennedy shook her head. “No. I think—”“I don’t need quiet sympathy, Kennedy. I need to speak.” Her voice wavered, but her eyes didn’t. They were sharp. Full. Focused.Kennedy nodded, handing her the glass of water. “Just don’t say anything you’ll regret.”She pressed the glass to her lips. “You forget—I don’t regret much.”---She arrived at the

Unfortunately it all started with a single post.It was anonymous, however low quality, and without a watermark. Just a thirty-eight-second video taken from the dim corner of a private industry bar—smoky, exclusive, it was the kind of place where all staffs and customers probably were made to sign NDAs for the menu would be given.At the center of the video was Marco DeLuca, surrounded by a circle of half-drunk agents, actors, and producers. They were laughing so loudly. In the background, champagne bottles popped while someone shouted that they'd just secured a major deal—an international show, with streaming rights sold across multiple countries.Marco raised his glass to toast.“A toast,” One of them called out, cheering.He chuckled and replied, “A toast moving on and succeeding.”They all clinked their glasses and downed the liquid in it in few gulps.“Stupid bitch fakes a breakdown and the world throws her a pity party, and I’m the bad guy? Fuck that. She wanted fame, well now s

Draven's POVI heard it through the bond, felt it.It was not painful exactly. It was more like watching a flame get devoured by something vast and inky, the light still present but shriveling to nothingness at odds with something that predated its fiery birth by eons. The connection in our bond with Lyra sputtered. Then it fractured. Then it howled without a sound.I was running before my mind caught up with my body.The battlefield between me and her was a mangled scene of fallen wolves and scorched ground and men continuing to perceive that the fight had been anything, until now, other than what none of them knew how to prepare. I shoved through it all. They grabbed my arm, I freed myself with no glance to see who it was. And I did not answer when someone else called my name.I got to her as she seized up.She was standing, and that was the only mercy of any of it. Standing, but barely. Her hands were at her sides, shaking, and her head was tilted back at an angle that seemed wron

Lyra's POVThe instant the Devourer’s demand seeped into my mind Malachai had gone from smugly manipulative to abjectly scared. I could feel his spirit in my mind backpedaling, retreating into the darkest corners of my consciousness.“No” his voice rang in my head. “You cannot hand me over to that thing, Lyra. It's worse than death. Worse than imprisonment. It consumes divine essence completely. Not kills. Not transformed. Erases. Removes from existence retroactively. If it does, I have never existed at all.”I was still reeling from the Devourer’s offer when the Goddess Circle exploded into telepathic bedlam. Forty two voices arguing at once about whether or not to turn over Malachai.“He’s a monster that would enslave all of us, given the chance,” one voice argued. “Feed him to the Devourer and kill two birds with one stone.“We do not negotiate with cosmic horrors,” wrote another. “The precedent of that is worse than fighting.”"But can we fight?" a third asked desperately. "It's

Draven's POVThrough my connection with Lyra, I felt her terror rise. Sensed the shift in Malachai’s presence in her mind, from smugness to something like concern.“Turn back,” her voice rang out through my head, using Guardian power to project across distance. "Draven, don't go closer. That there thing, it ain’t like the others. It's the Devourer. Cosmic-dweller that craves divine essence.”“Then I’m right where I need to be,” I responded back, with the knowledge that through our connection she would feel it. “Because the seventh site team is directly in its path.Instead of turning away, I approached the manifestation. My wolf howled at me to run, but I controlled it. People needed help. That was what mattered.The team I was summoned to bolster was in disarray when I got there. Three members of the Goddess Circle had already been coordinating efforts to seal a standard Void incursion. Now they were up against something entirely different.The thing they’d been battling, a shapeles

Cassian's POVThe moment Lyra’s eyes turned back to being silver, something inside my chest felt released. Not relief exactly. The extent of the devastation was beyond relief. But she was still herself. Still fighting.Draven propped her up, both trembling from the strain of what had just occurred. Around them, members of the Goddess Circle fell like puppets with severed strings. They could already tell that the power they'd channeled while putting Malachai on hold had carried them beyond safe limits.“Get healers,” I ordered the nearest wolf. “Circle up members, then injured fighters.”The wolf ran to obey. I walked over to Draven and Lyra hesitantly."Is he contained?" I asked.Lyra stared at me, and I saw it right away. The shadow that passed in her eyes, that hadn’t been there before. The weight of ancient cruel things, of something slithering behind her behind things that she should never have been able to see or explore.“He’s contained,” she confirmed, her voice raw. "Inside m

Lyra's POV"Lyra!" Draven’s voice called to me from far, far away. In a human real-time world I felt his hands resting on my shoulders, but mentally I was somewhere else. And trapped in a battlefield inside my own mind.Malachai's essence was vast. Ancient. Dominated in a way I could never hope to overcome. He’d been locked away for centuries, but he hadn’t wasted that time; he'd spent it studying, learning, and preparing for precisely this moment.What a super strong ship, he would echo in my mind. "Immortal. Inter-linked to forty three other celestial origins. You’ll do just fine, little Guardian.”I instinctively fought back, trying to nudge him away like I would try to displace any other invader. But fighting Malachai was like attempting to shove the ocean back with my bare hands. For each inch I gained, he surged forward three more.My vision flickered. One moment, watching through my own eyes, Draven’s awful fear-filled face an inch from mine. The next moment piercing into Mala

- Cassian's POVThe outside attack was vicious from the very beginning. Marcus’s troops had built fortifications that transformed the approach to the temple into a slaughterhouse. They were Alphas, and Alphas led from the front."Push left!" I yelled, leading a squad around a barricade.Elara was fighting alongside me, fast and vicious. No wasted energy. Just blows that brought down foes fast."They're funneling us," she called. “Guiding our advance toward choke points.”I saw it immediately. We weren't winning ground. We were being herded."Fall back!" I ordered. "Regroup at the southern ridge!"My wolves responded in an instant, trusting my judgment because they have been trained to do so. We disengaged, retreating to higher ground.From the ridge, I was able to see the big picture. Marcus’s troops were not holding the perimeter. They were buying time. And with dark energy throbbing from the temple’s core, time was nearly out.“The ritual is almost done,” I told Elara. “We’ve got to