Chapter I was standing at the altar in my mother's veil when the priest said, "If anyone here has reason why these two should not be joined," and for one stupid second I actually looked around the church to see if anyone would stand up.Nobody did.Emeric squeezed my hand. His palm was cold. I told myself it was nerves."Do you, Delphine Winslow, take this man..."The lights flickered.Nobody paid attention at first. It was an old building, old wiring.Somebody laughed nervously behind me. My father cleared his throat from the front row like he could fix an electrical problem by sheer disapproval.Then the stained glass windows went red.Not colored red, not sunset red. The whole sky outside turned the color of a fresh wound, and the light coming through the glass painted every face in the church the same sick shade."What the hell?," someone whispered, close enough that I heard it.The priest stopped talking. He was looking past me, out the tall window behind the altar, and his mou

Last Updated : 2026-09-03

That's the last thing I remember clearly, stone and timber pressing down from every direction at once, dust filling my throat where air should have been, my own scream cut short into something wet and small. Then there was nothing. No darkness, no light, no sense of up or down, just the absence of anything at all, like the whole world had switched itself off around me.I don't know how long that lasted.Then something pulled at me, hard, the way a hand yanks you back from the edge of sleep, and I gasped so violently I nearly threw myself off the bed.My own bed.I lay there for a second, chest heaving, sweat soaking through the back of my shirt, staring up at a ceiling I recognized down to the water stain in the corner my father had promised for two years to fix and never did. Soft morning light came through the curtains. Somewhere outside, a bird was making an obnoxious amount of noise for no reason.My ribs.I remembered the beam coming down, remembered bracing for a pain so tota

Last Updated : 2026-09-03

Cassian Drell didn't have a website or a listed office. What he had was a handful of old message board posts, arguments really buried under a username nobody had bothered to delete and half the replies underneath calling him unhinged.I read every single one twice."You people have no idea what's coming and the city council has no idea either. I told them, but they laughed me out of the meeting. Fine. Laugh. See where that gets you."I knew the name already, actually. I just had never bothered to care about the man behind it. My father had called him a paranoid lunatic at a dinner party once, years ago, and I'd laughed along with everyone else at the table without giving it a second thought.I found an address eventually, buried three pages deep in an old permit filing, an industrial unit out past the shipping yards, the kind of place developers usually gutted and flipped into overpriced lofts. This one hadn't been touched.I told my father I was getting my nails done. He didn't as

Last Updated : 2026-09-03

The diner smelled like burnt coffee and bacon grease, and half the booths were empty except for one old man reading a newspaper nobody printed anymore. Cassian was already sitting in the back corner when I walked in, the seat faced the door and I understood immediately that wasn't an accident.I slid into the booth across from him."You're late," he said, without looking up from the coffee he hadn't touched."Three minutes.""Three minutes is late when you're the one who showed up begging.""I didn't beg.""You knocked on a locked gate with no code," he said. "That's a kind of begging."A waitress dropped a menu in front of me and I waved it off. Cassian noticed and something almost like approval crossed his face before he buried it again"Alright," he said. "Talk. Why ten days?""I can't explain that part.""Then we're done." He didn't move to leave, which told me he didn't mean it, but he wanted me to know he could."There's stuff I know that I have no business knowing," I said. "

Last Updated : 2026-09-03

"Get back," Cassian said, already moving past me toward his truck."Get back from what, it's a locked door...""It's a door somebody already tried to force open once," he said, digging through a toolbox in his truck bed. "That means either they came back to finish the job, or they got what they needed and left. I'd rather find out which one from a distance than up close.""Jesus." I stepped back anyway, scanning the tree line at the edge of the property, feeling suddenly, stupidly exposed standing out in the open. "You think someone's still here?""I think you don't know, and I don't know, and that's a shit combination to be standing next to a broken door about."He came back with a crowbar and a flashlight, worked the crowbar into the seam by the lock, and put his whole body weight into it. The door groaned, resisted, then gave all at once with a metal shriek loud enough that a flock of birds exploded out of the trees behind us."Fuck," I hissed, heart slamming. "Warn a girl next ti

Last Updated : 2026-09-08

We spent two more hours in that bunker before Cassian finally said what I'd been waiting to hear since the diner."I'm in," he said, standing in the middle of the main room, looking at the ceiling like he was already calculating load-bearing weight in his head. Then he looked at me. "Don't mistake that for trust, though. I'm in because that bunker and that folder are real problems, and real problems are the only thing I know how to fix. Whatever you're hiding from me, Delphine, I'm still going to find it eventually.""Fair enough," I said, and meant it. Trust could come later. Right now I needed hands, not faith.I should have felt some relief walking out of there. Instead my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I already knew, with the flat, tired certainty of somebody who'd lived this exact week once before, exactly who it was.Rehearsal dinner tonight. 7pm. Don't be late this time.Emeric."Shit," I said, staring at the screen."What?""I have somewhere I need to be tonight," I said, sho

Last Updated : 2026-09-08

All Chapters of Doomsday Wedding: He Took My Sister,I returned with A system: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

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